Book Cover Design Part 4: a new edition

*This is the 4th installment of a series. Here's Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Have you ever come up with an idea for a project years after completing it and wondered why it didn't come to you sooner? That's what happened to me with this redesigned concept for my book cover for A Bitter Pill to Swallow. I can't even blame it on not getting any feedback from other people. In 2015 I showed my penultimate drafts to a friend who's a professional graphic designer and not 1 but 2 art critique groups. Not until this year did I realize that there was a good way to put all my cover design elements on a single cover. If you recall, my original design involved 4 variant covers.

Let's go back to where it all started, a simple sketch I made while on my lunch break:

I had considered combining all 4 panels into a single book cover, kind of like this:

But there was one problem: the character in the bottom left panel. His presence on the cover would be a spoiler, kind of like if Bruno appeared front and center on the poster for Encanto. I guess that's why I never pursued that concept early on. Instead, I decided to give each character their own variant cover with the pills in the background for branding, in addition to a cover design only featuring pills. 

 

But even after all that work, I knew as an artist that there was no one right answer, just a myriad of other ways I could illustrate my covers, and that inspiration could strike at any time. The thought of reconfiguring my cover occurred to me once again when I had to put out a new edition earlier this year after increased paper prices and changes at a major book distributor left me with no choice. That design is basically the same as the old cover, with the addition of my award sticker. Just the act of opening up the file to make those small updates got me thinking about what else I could do. I knew I could do more,  but at the same time, I wasn't in the mood to come up with an entirely new concept. Why not use what I already made instead of reinventing the wheel?

After months of tinkering, this is what I came up with:

 

 

I'm so pleased to have 3 of my main characters together on the cover and still have the space for my award sticker and a quote from a blurb by a well-known author. I call this version the anniversary edition and am making my big announcement about it today because June 24th, 1993 was the day I began writing the short story that would grow into my novel. It certainly has come a long way from its humble beginnings in purple ink inside a 14-year-old girl's pink notebook.

This new edition is available online and through special order though most bookstores. The ISBN is 9798211153196. If you've read A Bitter Pill to Swallow and liked it, I'd greatly appreciate it if you could take a little time to rate it on IndieBound, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books,  Google Play Store, Amazon, or Goodreads if you haven't done so already. And if you haven't read it, I hope that the new cover might get you interested.