Welcome to October's Cover Makeover!

Last month we asked you to nominate your Fantasy stories in need of a cover makeover.

Our very lucky winner was Royal888 and her story Her Heart, His Obsession. Here's what Sarah had to say about her story:

I have had the same cover on this book for a long time. I have had a few actually, but the last time I got a new one was a while ago (maybe a year?).

Also I feel that I have had very few new readers recently for this book and would love to have a new cover to help increase the chance of a potential reader clicking on my story and at least give reading my first chapter a chance...

The blurb for Her Heart, His Obsession reads:

This is a dystopian future when humans with magic powers and mythical creatures have suppressed humans with no super abilities. There are very few neutral territories where all beings can live in peace. But for how long?

The days got darker from the day Athena met Dante. She got a glimpse of the waves of his dark powers instantly and vowed to herself to protect the innocents against him with the help of her healer coven.

Suddenly, life changed dramatically for all Athena knew and loved all because of Dante's quest for power. Could she save them from this dark warlock? After all Dante had no weakness but there was one person who had a place in his cold heart. That place belonged to Athena.

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The Briefing

We specifically asked for Fantasy stories that didn't focus on werewolves or vampires, and this story definitely fits this criteria.

I had a bit of a crazy month, and Sarah very graciously allowed me to just do my thing when it came to giving her story a cover makeover. 

Sarah has 'cast' celebrities as her main characters, and this is reflected in each of the book covers.

While this is common practice on Wattpad, from a professional point of view (i.e. if you're looking to publish or profit from your stories) you need to make sure that you are protected from a legal standpoint (and conducting yourself ethically from a business standpoint). This means that your image licensing needs to be legit, and when it comes to using models (including celebrities), the best approach is to only use images where the models involved have signed a proper release consenting to the use of their image or likeness. Purchasing stock photos from a reputable provider will usually mean that you're covered, but it's always good to check if you're unsure. As I often say, the last thing anyone wants to get sued over a book cover!

For book covers on Wattpad, unless you're writing FanFic I would generally recommend avoiding using celebrities on your covers. The biggest reason for this (apart from legal/licensing issues) is that you want your cover to stand out, and I can 100% guarantee that within your genre there are going to be lots of other people casting the same celebrities for their main characters and using them on their covers. You of course want your cover to be appealing to the general public, but you also don't want to get lost in the crowd.

All of that being said, there were some things I really liked about the existing cover for Her Heart, His Obsession.

• This book is the first in a series of three, all of which have fairly decent covers that are relatively cohesive as a set.

• I am a big fan of monochrome. Enough said ;)

• I love how dark the elements are--plays really well into the story's themes

• The use of contrasting fonts for the titles is excellent (and something I mimicked in the final design)

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The Makeover

Taking all of this into account, my goals with the makeover were to give Sarah a cover that had a sort of 'dark fairytale' fantasy vibe, while still staying true to her story and aesthetic as an author.

For this cover design, I started with the background. I deliberately wanted to move away from using images of celebrities, but kept the physical characteristics of the 'cast' in mind when selecting models.

At the core of the story is a relationship between Athena and Dante, and so it was important to try and represent them both in the new design. By all accounts their relationship is complicated (to say the least). There is a sense of overwhelming power; magic, destruction, obsession, justice, hope, and love.

I tried to create a sense of 'active' power for Athena, and a more 'passive' power for Dante; like he's in control by default, but she's going to fight him for it (and probably win) by choice and action.

While I loved the simplicity and monochromatic tone of the original colour, I felt that there was room to embrace some colour and "sparkly magic" (<--technical term). This was done through several layers in Photoshop, as well as some fancy schmancy filters your Instagram account would be super jealous of.

I'm not going to lie: it took a lot of trial and error until I was happy with the individual elements and overall composition.

In terms of text, I wanted to keep the contrasting fonts between the two lines of the title used on the original cover. 'Her Heart' needed to be something soft and personal, something desirable and ultimately representative of how Dante treasures her. The trick here was also to find a font that wasn't too frilly--Athena is strong and courageous, not weak and powerless.

By contrast, 'His Obsession' needed to be striking and heavy, full of power and conviction, something binding and inescapable.

Generally speaking, I try not to use more than two fonts in a design (three MAX). Since this story is Fantasy / Adventure, it made sense to use an all-caps serif type, similar to 'His Obsession'. (Fantasy covers LOVE a good all-caps serif font. Seriously.)

While I love the font used for 'Her Heart', to use it for the author's name would completely change the tone of the entire cover, making it more Romance or perhaps even NA / YA-centric, rather than Fantasy / Adventure.

Anyway, that's enough from me. Here's the new cover!

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Do you want a FREE Wattpad cover makeover???!

Each month, lucyface will be giving a lucky Wattmag reader the chance to have one of their Wattpad book covers completely re-designed!!

This is an incredible opportunity to have YOUR Wattpad book cover polished to a professional, publishing-ready level. When she's not writing, Lucy works as a professional graphic designer with her business render / compose.

Lucy's clients are international best-selling authors, Wattpad Stars, Wattys award winners, and authors signed to big publishing houses. She works with writers to create customised book covers, kick-ass websites, and scroll-stopping social media graphics that effectively market to online readers.

For your chance to win a FREE Wattpad cover makeover, go to the next chapter in THIS BOOK >>>>>

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If you want to learn more about designing your own book covers, then you might be interested in checking out Lucy's Wattpad book, "How to: The Basics of Book Cover Design".

In this book, Lucy talks a lot about... the basics of book cover design (surprise!). She also provides info on where to find free, fully licensed stock images, fonts, and other design resources, as well as recommendations on the best places to spend money, and how not to spend too much (she's queen of the tight budget!).