This is a cover for Rebekkah Ford. For this cover, we redid a cover I created for her three years ago, back when I was trying to find willing authors to take a chance on me so I could build my portfolio (thank you!).
At the time, we came up with this:
The goal was to create something mysterious, with a bit of a taste of horror for her first YA paranormal. At the time, I took inspiration from the cover of Clockwork Angel, the cover art of which I adore.
However, this was an earlier cover of mine, so the font effects are a tad amateurish (and I hadn’t even justified the original back cover copy… which I later updated once I discovered that trick). Not only that, but the cover felt too much like a horror novel, and wasn’t attracting as many romance readers as it should (since this is definitely a paranormal romance).
So Rebekkah contacted me again a couple months ago to see about updating the covers for this series. She had a few stock images in mind, and after working through a few proofs and font placement, we came up with this remake for the first book:
(See how much better the back cover formatting looks after three more years of experience?)
The woman on the cover clearly resembles the main character, Paige, the shadow in the distance could easily be a sinister dark spirit (or a mysterious immortal), and the eerie forest distinctly fits a prominent setting of the story. I blurred the background to help make the model stand out, then flipped it for the back cover, and darkened the spine to make sure the words were readable. This cover should now attract paranormal romance readers. In addition, the straightforward text should attract a bit of an older audience (this series fits the upper YA/NA categories).
Personally, I like both covers, but having read the book, I suspect the new cover will attract more of the target audience.
You can find Beyond the Eyes on Goodreads.
Stock images from Shutterstock:
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=281147264
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=107037647
Read more from the author’s point of view:
http://rebekkahford.com/2015/09/25/two-mistakes-i-made-with-my-first-book-cover/
Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist 