charles barrow's writing

I've been thinking about re-designing my ebook covers, so I've been checking out book covers generally, seeing what's in vogue, what's not, and found these two inexplicably similar examples. One book is a novel, so fiction, the other is nonfiction, both with different authors & publishers. But surely the same designer, right? Same diver, in the same trunks, on the same board. Almost the same colour sky, and white & blue font colours. Weird. Too much of a co-incidence, surely. If these are done by two different designers perhaps one of them can claim/blame zeitgeist. I like that the diver is poised and ready in the first image, and just starting his fall in the second. A moment in time, captured nicely. I'd pick up both of these titles in a bookshop, judging them on their covers alone.

I mentioned a while back that a cover redesign was in the works. Jess has worked hard on it and I'm thrilled with the results. Please welcome the new cover for The Stolen Days of John Mann.

I saw my dear friend Jess at the weekend. She is a very talented artist. She created the cover for my book on the right there. You can see more of her work at   www.jessdavies.net    While we where chatting she surprised me by suggesting she'd like to re-design the cover. I like it very much but I was intrigued to hear her say she has had an idea for another image, and was it possible to change the cover at this stage? I told her that it is possible to change an ebook cover as and when you like, it is almost encouraged by some experts. If your book has lost its allure and no one is reaching it down off the shelf then give it a face lift the experts say. Jess would like to re-work the image to have it better reflect the character, tone and mood of what can be found on the inside, she said. Funny then, but it would seem that book Botox does the very opposite of the variety used on humans.