The thrill-ride of book publishing continues as we hit our next milestone: the cover of our new book, The Four Keys to Everlasting Love: How Your Catholic Marriage Can Bring You Joy for a Lifetime!!! This Catholic marriage help book is already available for pre-order at Amazon.com (what a dream come true).
Our editor called publisher Ave Maria Press’ art department their “secret weapon” because of how great they are at developing attractive cover art, so we were overjoyed to work with them. Like everything else in publishing, coming up with a great cover is a long process. First, they asked us for ideas. We were super-excited about the key motif, so dear hubby Manny sketched this.
DRAFT A
Our publisher ran the idea past some focus groups and decided that the cover also needed to showcase the idea of marriage as a shared journey. So they combined both ideas in this stunning version.
DRAFT B
But, because I’m a lawyer, I have to tinker with everything. My sister-in-law Nancy described quite well the difference between working for most people — who say “great!!!” — and lawyers, who say “great! Now change this, fix that, improve the other thing….” I asked the art department to make the grass a little greener, because doesn’t everyone want that? And I asked them to make our foreword writer Christopher West‘s name a little bigger, because we are Very, Very Excited that he is supporting our Catholic marriage advice book. (His Facebook page just exceeded 50,000 likes, which is pretty major. Plus, he’s awesome.) So, the art department, gave us this, our final cover!!!
FINAL COVER (HURRAY!!!!)
Don’t you just love it? Please, please, tell all your friends and help spread the word.
In other news, our awesome book editor Heidi Hess Saxton left to become the Editorial Director at Servant Books/Franciscan Media. Our book project is now being shepherded by Ave Maria Press’ current Editorial Director Bob Hamma. We are honored to have worked with two people of such high caliber. And after Heidi left Ave Maria Press, CatholicMom founder Lisa Hendey joined them as editor-at-large. What a small world!