Firstly I would like to thank everyone that took time to give me feedback on the design of the new cover for Themself. In particular I’d like to name check Tom Mouat who first suggested a minimalist approach (as did a couple of others). This prompted me to spend some time looking at book covers in the bookshop at London Victoria train station. What I saw there was that nearly every non-fiction book (and a lot of the fiction) had a fairly minimalist cover.

Bookshop visit

I was sort of surprised by the number of books that have a block colour cover, large text for title & author, and nothing else. Although most of those also had a small illustration on the cover, usually about half the width and a third of the height. Those illustrations were simplified, not photo quality images.

New cover design

So when I got home I did a new cover, which you can see below. It took me an hour or so to reduce a picture of my laptop to a black and white line drawing (transparent actually). I then took the previous draft of the cover, removed the background image and re-arranged the front cover. I also used the font that had come second in the poll I ran. The reason I went for the second choice was because the comments suggested that this worked on a plain cover, but not over a photo.

Now that the cover has been settled on I’ve uploaded it to the printer. New paperbacks will have this new cover (although it hasn’t worked its way through to amazon just yet). I’ve also produced a front cover version with a slim green border so that it will work as a thumbnail image for ebooks and on webpages.

Get a copy of Themself

As always, if anyone would like a review copy let me know. I can supply Themself in kindle, epub or pdf versions. It’s also free if you have Kindle Unlimited (my preferred way for you to review it).

If you are feeling generous, or like supporting writing, then you can buy Themself, here are some links:

If you find it on sale anywhere else, please let me know and I’ll update the links.

new cover for Themself by James Kemp, coming soon to book sellers near you
new cover for Themself by James Kemp, coming soon to book sellers near you

 

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