Create an irresistible book cover design for Sascha Martin's Time Machine

John Nichol

I write books for children.

I want a cover design for an eBook, to be uploaded to the Amazon Kindle Store. The book is called "Sascha Martin's Time Machine," and it's a children's picture book written in rhyme. The cover should appeal to both children and parents (since it will be parents who do the searching on Amazon for ebooks for their children). Colour is hugely important. The book is part of a series based on a boy inventor, so I'd be interested in ideas for the main character and how he should look. His inventions always lead to disaster, and this particular disaster has Sascha's school being inundated with creatures from the past. The cover design needs to reflect this accurately, and should convey the sense of a book that is both exciting and funny. As part of the brief I am uploading the text of the book, so there's plenty of material to draw from. I'd like a cover design that captures the scope of the disaster, and which intrigues and amuses searchers so they'll want to have a look at the text. It's a story that's meant to have children laughing and squirming, so the imagery has to be visceral - it can't be stilted or prissy or cutesy - it has to provoke an immediate response in kids where they want to read the story (or hear it read aloud), and at the same time they're prepared for a wild and even yucky ride. Though the creatures and their size become more fanciful as the text progresses, they come from the Australian continent's past - specifically the megafauna of the Miocene era - and I'd like that to be clear in the illustrations. Of course, there's a lot of scope for interpreting creatures that are known to us only from their fossils, so there's plenty of room for artists to be creative here. Lots of room for humour and scariness. The cover design should include the book's title and the author's name (John Nichol).

Eventually I want the book illustrated throughout - as well as the other books in the series - in both eBook and printed book format, so I'll have my eye out for illustrators who can have fun with their work, who can really tell a story with their illustrations: someone who can create a visual identity for the series and its main character, plus the minor characters who recur in the stories.