Illustration by Alexa Darkness

Ever since I received the illustration for the book cover, I can hardly wait to tell everyone how the main character for The Diary of Modern Cinderella, Risa Akagi looks like. If you did take a look at the cover of The Diary of Modern Cinderella (I hope you did), it’s a no-brainer that the girl on the cover is Risa Akagi herself.

Well, she’s the epic center of the story, so it makes sense for her to be on the book cover, right?

Initially, I was thinking of having this picture as the book cover but after thinking through, colorless Risa looks trashy to me. So yes, I ended up scraping the idea of having the sketchy artwork as a book cover. I should have gone and told Alexa to have colored sketch just like Drawing Men’s Hip art cover.

Some of you might be familiar with Drawing Men’s Hip but if you don’t, here’s how the cover looks like:

Okay, no kidding. That’s the title of that book. If you can draw and love drawing ikemen, then this book probably a heaven sent to you. I’m not sure if this book is available in Kinokuniya but one thing I know for sure is you can buy this book online from CDJapan. I bet the book is a lot cheaper if you buy it online compared to Kinokuniya unless you live nearby. Kinokuniya is not even close to my house so I prefer to get my manga fix online.

In case you’re wondering, I bought most of my manga from CDJapan with the exception Yowamushi Pedal: Spare Bike with Toudou on the cover. I hope Toudou won’t do this to me anymore because it’s costly to buy manga using proxy.

Maybe Risa looks great if the line is colored instead of the pencil look. However, she still looks great even after Alexa has given some colors on her.

So, this is how the end result looks like.

Pretty neat, huh?

I’m happy that the illustration is already complete even before I’m done with the manuscript, but I have another problem: how the cover supposed to look like?

At that time, I don’t feel like thinking about it because the manuscript was far from complete and I shouldn’t let myself caught with something that is not yet a priority. Besides, I can always pass this pic and let the book cover designer uses his magic wand to transform the picture into a beautiful book cover.

After the manuscript is complete, I’m somewhat skeptical to hire a book designer to do the cover design for The Diary of Modern Cinderella. I don’t know why, but I feel like I want to do the cover design myself even though designing cover, especially for the paperback version is a hellish experience to me. I did the cover design myself for my non-fiction book so I know how gruesome it is to do this all by yourself especially Createspace keeps on telling you something is awfully wrong with the cover design.

At the end of the day, I’ve decided to do the cover design myself. It was still difficult for me, but this time, it’s a lot better than the last time I’ve designed a book cover for the paperback version.

This is how the book cover looks like after tweaking here and there for a couple of minutes. I always thought that I don’t even have a creative gene in my DNA, but the end result doesn’t look so bad at all.

The book cover for the paperback version also looks like this. I’m not sure how it turns out because I’m using a different method to design the book cover this time so now, I’m currently waiting for the proof copy to arrive at my doorstep. The saddest part is, the proof copy won’t reach me until the middle of February. So yes, you won’t be seeing the paperback version release so soon.

The good news is, you can preorder the e-book version now on my website or on Amazon Kindle if you prefer Kindle version. If you’re interested in this novel and would love to pre-order it, you can do so here:

Pre-order The Diary of Modern Cinderella

Over to you

What do you think about the cover for The Diary of Modern Cinderella? Do you love it or hate it? Share your thoughts in the comment below.

Author’s note: If you have taken the illustration, please don’t claim this as yours and ALWAYS credit back to this page if you’ve decided to re-post elsewhere. Alexa is already aware that I’m using this illustration for the book cover so please respect her hard work. The character concept is by me and is illustrated by Alexa herself.