Cover reveal!!! This is not a drill!!!

It's really happening!! Here is the cover for my debut novel, Love Be Damned! (Everyone say, "Thank you @starrysola!")

Hey everyone!

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been *panicking* lately. With the release of my book approaching soon and a reasonable amount of things still left to do, it makes me wonder how people independently publish multiple books a year without having a nervous breakdown.

My self-publishing journey so far has been filled with multiple ups and downs (which I’ll likely cover in a future newsletter when I’m not currently going through it), but I have to admit that one of the highlights of doing this independently was getting full control over what I wanted my cover to look like.

I always knew I wanted to design my own cover when I got published (although I know for most traditionally published authors the amount of input you can provide is minimal) but it wasn’t until I started this journey that I had to consider what would actually sell a book. I was never one of those people that said that you can’t judge a book by its cover- mostly because then I’d be a liar. Literally everyone does this. It’s why books have covers to begin with. A bad cover is poisonous marketing, and can definitely turn people off of buying even the best books. Conversely, a good cover can do a lot of the promotional leg work when getting people to pick up your book.

That said, I honestly had no idea what I was doing when I hired an artist to design my book cover. In fact, I was so green that I just asked the same artist that did all of my previous character art, @starrysola on X, if she was willing to help me with this project. Luckily, she agreed, and didn’t turn me away despite not being a professional cover artist. (She’s fantastic to work with, by the way. You would never guess that my cover was her first time doing a book cover.)

Initially I wasn’t sure what to lean into for my cover design, and so I had several ideas of what to start with. For context, Love Be Damned is the story of teen fashion designer Ayana Miller as she attempts to save her sister, Sabrina, after her sister’s boyfriend (Damian) turns into a demon named Zelroth that is out for her soul.

With that in mind, I drafted several collages in order to figure out what how to convey this concept visually using Pinterest images, previous character art, and the Shuffles by Pinterest app. (See below) (Please don’t judge me, I know they’re terrible. You’ll see what they turned into and absolutely wonder how in the world I got my nice cover in the end, lol).

I had three ideas for how this cover should look:

Option 1: Ayana in her studio looking into a mirror that is covered in photos of her friends/family. In the mirror is Ayana in her prom dress with the knife she uses to kill Zelroth, and behind her in the mirror is Zelroth (menacingly, lol)

Option 2: Sabrina, Ayana, and Damian all standing in front of mirrors (again, likely in her studio) behind each of them is another version of themselves- Sabrina, possessed by the demon, Ayana in her prom dress with the knife again, and Damian, as a shapeshifting demon

Option 3: Ayana and Zelroth standing in a cracked mirror with each of her friends and family also getting a crack in the mirror to show them off. Ayana is again, in her prom dress holding the knife

Out of the three choices above, I ultimately went with Option 3, the mirror concept. I chose this for various reasons (not least of all because it looked cool), but mostly because in the book, Ayana is trying to destroy Zelroth, a shapeshifting demon who uses mirrors to capture souls.

For some reason, I really wanted this book to be pink initially (probably because it’s my favorite color), but I’m glad I let go of that notion, because Option 3 was calling to me. For one thing, it had more genre-based elements that indicated what the book was about: The prom dress indicated Ayana’s love of fashion, while the sword, the demon behind her, and the setting of the mirrored realm all communicated that this was definitely a contemporary fantasy book.

I know it’s common advice, but I honestly do recommend looking at similar covers in your genre and age bracket just to get a feel for what is selling in the market. Doing something insanely unique (like making a pink cover for a YA contemporary demon book) could have consequences like confusing readers about what your book is about. Things like that will ultimately screw you over later when no one is picking up your book because of it. As much as it sucks, genre conventions are there for a reason.

So- with a concept chosen, we were off to the races!

I emailed my cover artist the concept, along with Sims 4 models of all of my characters (I find them much more efficient than just a character description, although I did both) and soon she got back to me with a series of mockups for how I wanted the cover laid out. This was just to expand on the original design to see how I wanted Ayana positioned on the cover, and how I wanted the demon behind her to look. She presented me with options on which ones I liked so that she would be able to draft based on that (below*). Personally, I really liked D and A, and so I believe we split the difference between the two when the artist actually started drafting the cover.

Several mock-up drawings of the early concepts of the cover, labeled A-E, featuring Ayana and the demon, Zelroth.

I will also say that I did a lot of crowdsourcing for early opinions on my cover concept, mostly because I wasn’t sure if I was making these initial choices because I liked them, or if because they were good choices for the book. I had a lot of friends and other authors also look into these layouts, and they mostly agreed that I picked the right way to go with this.

If you are designing your own cover, I definitely recommend letting someone else take a look at what you’re planning, just to make sure it’s communicating what you want. It’s much easier to pivot when you’ve barely started than when you’ve committed to going full speed ahead.

With that settled, I emailed with my cover artist regularly over the next four months to check in and provide references for the cover draft. I got to choose fonts, colors, clothing references, jewelry, makeup- you name it. I really felt like I was involved in this cover, and it was great to have so much input on what I wanted.

That’s not to say there weren’t any roadblocks, though. For example, there was a point where I realized the cover was way too crowded. Initially, I asked for all of the characters featured in the book to be on the cover, but that proved to be a mistake. I literally emailed the artist three times in a row because I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t happy with this version of the cover (below*), only to realize that there were just too many people on it. (It’s a miracle she didn’t block me, lol) The spacing left no room for the title, and frankly, it was distracting to have so many people crowding the main character.

An early prototype of the cover where Ayana is standing in front of the demon, Zelroth, while all of her friends and family are trapped behind her in mirror pieces. This includes her sister, Sabrina, her love interest Carter, her guardian angel, Nova, her best friend Eva, and her cousin Theo. This cover concept was quickly dismissed due to including too many people on the cover.

This was easily fixed, and the secondary characters of Eva and Theo were removed from the cover in later versions, in favor of making Ayana’s dress stand out more, giving the primary characters more cover space, and leaving more room for the title.

Updated version of the cover excluding the characters of Eva and Theo from the bottom corners to make room for the title and the supplemental cover elements.*

Throughout the four months spent working on this cover, multiple details were changed, including Ayana’s facial expression, her pose, her dress, and even the sword that she wields. That’s not even mentioning the updates that happened to the characters surrounding her- Sabrina, Damian, Carter, and Nova- who also underwent multiple changes throughout this process. (See below*)

Early version of the cover concept with the beginnings of color and the mirror design being pronounced. The art and the drawings are in their initial flat state, and the colors are placeholders.

An updated cover from several months into the process with a new dress for Ayana, along with an updated pose, earrings, and fleshed out colors for all of the characters.*

Finally, we had a finished cover. And after several months of working very closely with the artist, I can confidently say that I came away with a wonderful product that I am so proud of. I think it perfectly represents Love Be Damned.

So, for those of you who got this far into the post, I hope you’re ready! Here is the final version of the cover (below)!

Final version of the cover of Love Be Damned by Briana Garrett

Working on this cover has been really enlightening and incredibly fulfilling, especially considering that a year ago, I was fully convinced that this book would never be released. Now, I have a full-blown cover with wonderful art with my name on it, and I’m so excited to get to share this book with you soon.

Feel free to share and subscribe! Also, keep watching this space for future book announcements about my debut.

Thanks for reading, and please be sure to give the cover artist (@starrysola) plenty of love on social media when the cover is live on Monday, March 17th. She deserves it!

(*All pre-rendered sketches shared here were shared with the artist’s knowledge and permission)

Hope to update you all soon!'

-Briana G.