Melissa Walker

Jennifer Echols has a new book out–yay! She stopped by on her GCC tour to talk about the cover for Love Story. (Check out her previous Cover Stories for Going Too Far and Endless Summer.) Here’s Jennifer!

“I asked for [my character] Erin in the foreground, looking over her shoulder at Hunter at a desk writing in the background. My publisher doesn’t ask me for my input–I just give it, LOL! I didn’t really think they would follow my advice, because my covers are all from stock photos, not photo shoots, and a cover as specific as the one I asked for would have been hard to find. So I also sent them pictures of what the characters should look like. And I asked that above all, the heroine should look happy.

“When I first saw the cover, I thought, ‘The heroine is happy! Hooray!’ and also ‘Why does the heroine have a diamond stud in her nose?’ My editor offered to have it Photoshopped out for me, but I wrote it into the book instead.

Original cover

“I knew a cover quote would be added, so at one point I asked my editor for a final version of the cover that I could use in ads and so forth. She asked me to wait a few days because the art department was making my name bigger. I did not know what to make of that, and I blogged about it here. But in the end, my name is only a little bigger and pink!”

Thanks, Jennifer. I think this is a really romantic cover, but the pinks/purples aren’t overdone, which is key (and I love Jennifer’s name in pink instead of black). Sometimes covers get sickly sweet, but I think this one achieves a really nice balance, and a connection with the reader because of the eye contact.

What do you guys think? Happy Love Story reading!