Judge A Book By Its Covers

It has been a while friends! Summer has come and gone and I have been lucky enough to get not one but two amazing covers for my debut novel, All We Have is Time in my inbox over the last few months. They have both been revealed to the world now, so I thought I’d give you a little behind-the-scenes look at how that happened.

What They Asked

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” but when the brainstorming starts around what you want your book cover to look like, that’s exactly what you do.

My publishing teams asked me a whole list of questions — what book covers did I like, what other art images in general appealed to me, what were books in and out of my genre that had covers that I thought worked well. They also asked me for important settings or elements from my book and for character descriptions. They asked me what I liked and didn’t like in broad terms for book covers, and what the themes of my book were.

What I Told Them

I sent a two page document back to my teams. It was mostly reference images with a few brief explanations. I said I liked text forward covers, and that I think that served my genre-blending novel well. It has elements of fantasy, romance, sci-fi, and historical fiction, so striking a balance was key.

I told them I didn’t love full character portraits, but silhouettes of people were fine, that I didn’t personally like back of a woman historical covers, that I couldn’t take the Papyrus font seriously anymore. I told them I wanted readers to get a sense of romance and distance from the cover.

My editors took all of this information to their art teams, who put it to work in their designs. I saw a draft of both designs asking for feedback, and gave a few ideas that were tried and either incorporated (most of them) or reverted after seeing that it wasn’t working as well as the original.

What I Got

A few months later, I received two stunning yet completely different covers in my inbox:

Why Are They So Different?

Remember what I said earlier, about judging a book by its cover? Turns out booksellers and readers do that a lot, and booksellers and readers in the US have different cover preferences than booksellers and readers in the UK. My team took my personal preferences (I sent them both the exact same two page document) and combined it with their knowledge and expertise of their home markets. Then, thanks to two talented art teams, I got these two gems, which I couldn’t be more thrilled with! I can’t wait to see them printed into book jackets.

Which One Do You Prefer?

I can’t pick a favorite child, I love them both for different reasons (seriously!)

All We Have is Time publishes in February 2026 in both regions (the 24th in the US & Canada, the 26th in the UK & Commonwealth) but, both the US edition and the UK edition are available for preorder now, so you can choose your favorite, even if I can’t!

Want to stay up-to-date on my publishing journey? Check out my Instagram!