Working on a book is long stretches of being a lonely loner followed by a sudden realisation that, oh crap, now you have to work with actual, living people!

For the independent author there are a few choices when it comes to getting a book cover, including making something yourself in something like Canva. But if you can afford to save up the cash you can work with an illustrator or graphic designer. I won't go into the details of finding someone, partly because I already knew who I wanted and partly because that feels like a topic all of its own.

​The relationship between a writer and artist is always going to be different. But I can talk through how it worked for us and what I did to try and make things easier for Rachel my cover artist. The first step was to just establish the kind of things I was a fan of. I sent Rachel a few of my favourite book covers, with the reasons why I liked them.