Tag: signaltonoise

Signal to Noise: the art that could have been

The art of choosing a cover can be a complex one, particularly when – like we did with Signal to Noise – you have a book that breaks genre boundaries and audiences. There is of course old adage that urges you not to make your mind up based purely on the first impression that a book’s artwork gives you, but we surely all have? We are of course somewhat biased: you don’t get in to publishing without having a slightly obsessive number of beautiful books you can’t quite shake the urge to purge, even when you’re now sacrificing floor space for shelf space (and spill over space, and TBR space…) But the power of a great cover is not something to be sniffed at.

Our head of art has previously shared on his own blog the sometimes arduous process behind actually creating some of our other covers, but today we thought we would share with you the two other strong possibilities for Signal to Noise, to give you an idea of the dramatic way a cover can change the shelf identity of a book, and how we arrive there.

First up we have the final cover, when you go into your local bookstore or click buy now on amazon this is what you’ll receive:

Iknowright – pretty gorgeous. But what could have been?

Obviously music is a huge part of Signal to Noise, and very specifically it’s through Meche’s vinyl record collection that the trio cast their spells so the first cover we discussed with the incredible cover artist Erik Mohr naturally had a record at its heart.

But this was too literal. Signal to Noise may have vinyl records as one of its stars, but it is more than that. This is a mixtape of story – split between two periods of time and pulled together by music, much like the magic and characters of the book. It’s also nostalgic, but not mawkish. Which is where cover two came from:

While we loved this cover it still didn’t quite capture the essence of the book for us. We had the mixtape and the retro feeling, but we needed something that captured the fantastical of the book, and the colours. Signal to Noise is a vibrant book, and Moreno-Garcia paints a picture with her words. The cover needed to capture that spirit.

We think the final cover did just that.

Signal to Noise is available to buy in the UK, US and as a DRM-free eBook directly from our store now.

You can vote for Erik’s cover in The Qwillery’s debut author cover war here!

For more on Signal to Noise please hit the navigation tags at the top of this post.