Tuesday 21 February 2012

Marcie's Murder: We Have a Cover

The Plaid Raccoon Press is pleased to announce the cover design that has been chosen for Marcie's Murder, the second in the Donaghue and Stainer Crime Novel series. Marcie's Murder will be published in e-book format in late March and in trade paperback format in early April.

This design, which you see on the left, was selected after much deliberation, agony, mind-changing and consultation from a set of four proposed designs. After debating the pros and cons of each design in-house, we invited readers of this blog to weigh in with their comments. We were pleased with the responses but a little dismayed that each design was chosen as the favorite of more than one person. After reviewing all the blog comments, tweets and e-mails from everyone we decided on one last eyeball test in which we printed out all four covers, stuck them onto copies of Blood Passage so that we could see what they would look like in their final 5.5" x 8.5" trade paper format, and gave them an old-fashioned eyeball test. They sat for three or four days on a lovely black lacquer table next to my computer and we looked at them over and over again. Finally, we put them up on a bookshelf as though they were on display in a bookstore and looked at them that way for another day. It was all very scientific and could end up as the basis for a paper to be published in some journal that deals with this kind of stuff....

In the end, I realized that throughout these eyeball tests I kept looking at this particular design. I won't explain what I like about it, because I'd rather that readers decide for themselves, but by the end of this process there was no longer any doubt in my mind which design I wanted.

My business partner (a.k.a. my wife) ultimately agreed with me and as a result the Raccoon has made its choice.

We hope you like it!

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