Do you believe that true love waits or that first sex is best out of the way quickly?

If you're a fan of Trouble, come along to this free event, aptly labelled Sex Re-Education.

Join Non Pratt, author of Trouble (a novel about what happens when you find yourself pregnant at 15) and Cosmopolitan Sex Therapist Rachel Morris in a discussion about what you are taught at school and what the reality in the school yard is.

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Trouble was reviewed in the Guardian this weekend! Amazing!

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Charli and Tori talk about the reasons why they love Trouble - and we couldn't agree more!

This is a post by Jack, the cover designer for Trouble. Read the first part here, the second here and the third here.

With confidence in the sperm route renewed, I just had to focus on getting the front bit as impactful as the spine bit. I tried various versions, trying to get the immediate impact up without sacrificing the idea or the prettiness.

Eventually we all agreed: fewer sperm (but not too few), letters as big as possible and blue for the front, pink for the back. Definitely no red anywhere. The spine we left unchanged from the very first outing.

We sent the files to the printer.

And then, a couple of weeks later, books came back! We were very pleased.

And now they're in shops and in peoples hands and on bedside tables everywhere, so that's nice.

And that's everything. Thanks for reading (and sorry that took so long!),

Jack

This is post by Jack, the cover designer for Trouble. Read the first part here and the second here.

In the summer I went to the Bookseller Cover Design Conference at the Southbank Centre. At the end of the day they had a Cover Agony Aunts section in which a panel of Industry Experts critique work in progress submitted by audience members. I sent in my trouble cover because I was genuinely looking for help – whilst some people liked the cover a lot, there were still a fair few that said it was "disgusting" and “not something they’d want to touch”.

Here it is on the big screen:

Thankfully pretty much all of the panel liked it. (And the spine was great!) 

As is the way at these things, all the attendees were interacting via the internet. A photo of the Trouble cover was put on Twitter.

I was a bit nervous about this because at this point Non hadn’t actually seen the cover, and Non is ALWAYS on Twitter. (Mostly talking about Frozen.)

It meant that by the time I got back to work in the afternoon there were a whole load of new responses to pick through.

There was this:

Which then gave way to loads of comments, like this:

(which is bad I think)

And this:

And there was this exchange too, which was slightly unsettling.

Even Patrick Ness got involved.

(I promptly changed the L.)

All these comments made me a bit nervous, so I shelved the sperm and went back to the drawing board. I explored some alternatives and revisited some rejects. A few weeks later I went back to the Covers Meeting with these three:

But thankfully everyone said: “Why aren’t we doing The Sperm One?”

This is the second post by Jack, the cover designer for Trouble. The first part can be found here

From the many many covers I tried, we had to choose just a couple to take to the Covers Meeting. This is the big meeting where all the Walker Books Art Directors, Publishers and Sales & Marketing teams give their verdict on our cover proposals.

These were our chosen four. A cool one, a photo one, an illustrated one and a weird one:

The sperm one was our favourite. Then, just as we were starting to feel pleased with ourselves, Sarah Foster (Walker Books Australia MD, who happened to be passing) commented that “it kind of looks like a family planning brochure.” And we all paused for a moment, and conceded “yeah … it kind of does.”

So I quickly made some more “fun” versions:

We then took just the blue one to Covers (Annalie doesn't like orange).

These are some of the notes from that meeting.

It was a pretty good result. But still there were more reservations - will it work as a thumbnail (on Amazon, iBooks etc.)? Can the front be made to be as punchy as the spine? And crucially, is it gross to cover a book in sperm?

This is a post by Jack, the cover designer for Trouble.

My name is Jack and I designed Trouble. Over a couple of posts I’m going to say a little bit about the process. Spoiler: contains sperm (and lots of it).

First of all I read the manuscript. I was really looking forward to it because everyone was saying it was frank and funny and real and moving. Happily, they were right (this helps).

Then I talked to Non's editors, Annalie and Denise. We tried to work out what exactly the book is.

Then we tried to work out who the book was for, and what else they like. Stuff like this, mainly:

(And Frozen - everybody likes Frozen.)

Then I just got going. I like to do as many covers as I can, as quickly as I can. That way I can get all the more obvious routes out of the way and then try a few less obvious ones too.

My first attempts tried gritty photos from the internet coupled with bold type.  

And from there I just kept going. In the first round I designed about fifty covers - some photographic, some illustrated, some weird, some downright rip-offs – almost all terrible. I printed every one at the size of a playing card and dealt them all out on a table. Along with the expert guidance of  my Art Director, David, and the editors (and anyone else who happened to be passing) we then tried to whittle them down to just a few favourites.

From all these, we had to choose just a couple to take to the Covers Meeting...

One of our Trouble VIP's, Elise, shares her thoughts on Trouble and gives it 5/5!!!

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Grief isn't always a knife-sharp twist in your heart or a dull bludgeon in your stomach, sometimes it's a net, cast suddenly and silently over your soul so that you feel trapped and suffocated by its grasp.

-Aaron

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Take a look at this review of #TroubleBook from A Case For Books! Click here to read more!

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