If you follow me on Instagram, you may have noticed something very exciting that I posted today 👀

Yes, that’s right – I’m delighted to announce that next week I’ll be revealing the brand-new cover for Synthetica!

But wait, I hear you cry, Synthetica has been published for a while now, so why the new cover? Can’t you just update the current one?

No. And here’s the short version why:

• The artwork was never what I originally envisaged for this series
• I’ve changed my name

And now for the long version:

Way back in 2015, I was really struggling to get my book finished. I just didn’t have the confidence in myself that I needed, plus there was a lot going on in my personal life which meant I wasn’t in the best headspace. To cheer me up, my then-fiancé/now-husband commissioned a designer he knew through his day job to create a book cover for me. I was absolutely over the moon that he’d organised this for me (and still am! Folks, if you don’t know what to get a writer for their birthday/special occasion seriously consider commissioning a book cover or other artwork for their book for them) and I started talking to the designer about concepts and what I wanted.

Now, if there’s one thing I’ve learnt through all my years in marketing and working with designers, you’ve GOT to provide a clear brief. I honestly thought I had at the time – I sent him examples of Murakami covers I liked, said I’d like to keep things simple etc. So when he came back with something very similar to the final cover you can currently see on my website, I was…thrown. It wasn’t what was in my head at all. Don’t get me wrong – there were certain elements I liked (and which I’ve kept for the new cover), but overall, I just didn’t click with it. But because my husband had gone through a lot of effort to commission the designer to do this for me, I kept schtum, asked him to tweak a few things and then decided to just roll with it. On the plus side, having a cover before finishing my book spurred me on to actually finish the damn thing!

Perhaps that’s a valuable lesson I need to remember if/when I get traditionally published – a lot of traditionally published authors don’t get any say in their final cover designs. And I guess that’s also the beauty of being an indie author – yes, sometimes it feels like a lot of hard work because you’re literally doing EVERYTHING, but I also get to call all the shots which is kinda cool.

Anyway, fast forward to this year. I’m finally in a place where I feel ready to tackle the rest of the Synthetica series and I knew that as part of that, I’d need two more covers designed. I sat down and thought a lot about what to do – do I go back to the original artist and ask him to design the next covers? Do I do it myself? Or do I commission someone else?

In the end, I decided to commission a design agency that I’ve worked closely with in my day job to do the new covers for me. I know them really well, and every time I’ve asked them to do some work for me, they’ve absolutely gone above and beyond to make my vision happen, so I knew my ideas and series concept was in safe hands. Was it the cheapest option? No. But I’m also a firm believer that sometimes you need to pay a little more money to get what you really want. And boy, did I get what I wanted – seriously, this series is going to look amazing.

Plus, you may have noticed that my book is currently under a different name – this was my maiden name, but I double-barrelled my surname when I got married and it’s now far too long to fit on any book cover. So I decided to use a pen name instead, which meant that even if I wanted to keep the original cover, I’d have to update the name on it anyway, so I thought I might as well overhaul everything at the same time.

So there you have it! In my next post, I’ll be talking about what I’ve discovered/rediscovered about the self-publishing process via Amazon, as well as the trouble I’m already having with them concerning my pen name. Make sure you also check back on Tuesday 27th June for the final Synthetica cover reveal as well 🎉!

Have you ever decided to redo your book covers? If so, why? If not, would you?

Z xx