Design a book cover for a chick-lit/romantic comedy novel

R. Witherow

I need a book cover (front and back) designed for a chick-lit novel. I'm looking for a graphical/illustrative design rather than a photo. I want this to be clearly identifiable within the genre, and it’s aimed particularly at a UK audience of women aged 18-45.

This cover will be used primarily for e-books, but needs to be good enough quality for print also (i.e. needs spine, trim space etc). The cover should look good at thumbnail size (the text should still be readable) and it should be clear in both colour and black and white.

To get a feel for what I am after please take a look at Amazon.co.uk and look at cover designs by the following authors:

Marian Keyes
Sophie Kinsella
Mhairi McFarlane
Lucy-Anne Holmes

Some incidents/settings in the book which you could possibly work into the design are:

London (e.g. the city skyline)
Office job
Flamingo (a costume she wears at one point)
Australia, the Sydney coast (she visits toward the end of the book)
Wine, cocktails
Spaghetti
Houses (think London Victorian terraced housing)

In general, this is a humorous book with a strong romantic narrative about a young woman in her late twenties. Her life is a little chaotic. She lives in a decrepit flat share with three friends (two women, one man). There are two male love interests in the book. Her parents have moved to Australia and so she is a little abandoned. It’s partly a coming of age story.

I hope that gives you some ideas, but feel free to use your imagination.

This is the proposed cover text:

Front Cover Text

Title: The Real Rebecca Greenleigh
Author: Lucy Kiel
Tagline: What if one lie could give you everything?

Back Cover Text
Header: /A new job, a gorgeous new boss … everything is finally falling into place for Rebecca Greenleigh. Except for one small problem.

She isn’t who anyone thinks she is./

Main body: /While her best friend gets promoted, Rebecca Greenleigh’s life is heading in the opposite direction. Redundant, unable to pay the rent, it seems Becky must leave London and move in with her parents – until she gets an email that seems too good to be true.

She’s been invited to a job interview. The kind of job she never thought she could get. In fact, the kind of job she’s never even applied to.

And she definitely didn’t apply to this one.

What’s going on? Has fate thrown her a lifeline? Or is it madness to even consider it?

But Becky’s desperate. And everyone lies in job interviews, right? Especially when the guy asking the questions looks that good …/