Do you judge books by their cover design? It’s very hard not to. Books are colour-coded these days. Pastel colours suggest a light beach read. Especially if the cover art is an actual painting of a beach. Pagan books are definitely colour coded. Green implies Nature, Pagan themes, Druidry, and perhaps creativity. Blue has recently become a popular colour for books on witchcraft—so much so that I wrote an Instagram post about it. Purple is also a good colour, implying spirituality and depth. Black implies the occult. A lot of folkloric witchcraft books seem to have black with a hint of red. Brown-and-cream books immediately imply cosy vintage and folklore vibes. I can’t think of any Pagan books that are brown-and-cream (let me know in the comments if you know of any).
The cover design of my first book (The Enchanted Forest) was beautiful — a pen and ink drawing of a dryad by Dena Moore with a green wash behind it. The second book cover (The Sacred Grove) was okay — very 90s, but nice. I loved it at the time. The third one (Auguries and Omens) was a disaster. I vetoed one design and the final one was… okay but not great. For the fourth book (The Magical Lore of Animals) we were back to Dena Moore in full colour with a beautiful painting.
But the more recent books have been beautiful. Avalonia asked me what I wanted on the cover of All Acts of Love and Pleasure: inclusive Wicca, and I suggested Paul Rucker’s beautiful painting of the Divine Andogyne.
I’m quite pleased with most of my designs for my self-published book covers, though these have got better since the software has improved.
The cover of Pagan Consent Culture was designed by Shauna Aura Knight with input from Christine and me.
I designed the cover of Dark Mirror and The Night Journey for both editions. For the second edition, the Doreen Valiente Foundation let me use a wonderful photo of a witch mirror taken by Doreen Valiente and I added a backdrop of stars.
And the beautiful cover of Changing Paths was designed by keifel agostini from 1000Volt Press.
My dear friend Lydia Knox has done a beautiful painting for the cover of Pagan Roots. Can’t wait for it to be out in the world (forthcoming January 2025). And I cannot reveal the design yet, so watch this space, and of course my website, www.yvonneaburrow.com
This post was prompted by reading one by Tom Cox about book covers.
Dowsing for Divinity 