Title & Cover Confusion

My July ’09 book, Tiana’s story, has had a very rocky road so far and its not even on store shelves.  Not only was the story challenging, but its been a huge headache finding a title for it.  I even went to all of you for title help and turned in four pages of title suggestions. My editor and the marketing team liked nothing though.  They kept wanting flirty, sexy, sassy.  Fun.

And then a week ago, they chose a title, and four cover mock ups arrived in my inbox, with three of the covers quite similar and one very different.  I still didn’t love the title (More Than A Pretty Face had become Faking Beauty) but I liked it better with the artwork.  Just when I thought we had a cool cover, I got an email a day later saying the sales folks hated the title and the artwork.  The artwork was too pale, and they wanted something bolder, more colorful.  So it was back to the drawing board.  They’re still at the drawing board now.  But I think we do have a new title courtesy Megan Crane–Easy On The Eyes.  I’ll share the cover art when I can, but in the meantime I thought you’d enjoy the cover battles I had over Mrs. Perfect.

For those of you who’ve been around awhile, you might remember Mrs. Perfect was originally called Alpha Mom.  And here is the first cover they sent me:

If you’ve read Mrs. Perfect, you’ll know that the woman on the cover in no way resembles Taylor Young.   There was actually a cover before this, and she was wearing pearls and the tray was white plastic.  I explained that Taylor lived in a four million dollar home.  She wouldn’t use a Target tray, she needed posh.  She needed silver.  And where was her jewelry?

They sent me the cover above, adding in sparkles at her ears and throat and painting her tray with color to make it brighter.  I was crestfallen.  Faux jewelry was not Taylor, either, and I begged for a different cover but was sent the same cover in four different color variations.  The two I remember most were the baby blue and pink, and the turquoise and orange.  Didn’t like either at all.  But finally, after the sales folks said, no, this won’t work with our big accounts, they held another photo shoot and these were the two images sent to me as possible covers:

Our final cover for Mrs. Perfect wasn’t either of the shots above, but we were definitely a lot closer.  Finding titles and covers make me anxious but when we get it right, its all worth it.