How do our covers get made anyway? This is the question I get asked more than any other.

Today, I spent this morning helping "oversee" step #1: the photo shoot. Now, editors don't usually get sent to the photo shoots, but this was my special treat of the day!

I got to watch an impossibly slender and pretty "girl" (because models are always "girls") swan about in a succession of diaphanous gowns so tiny that even at the height of my Weight Watchers mania I couldn't pry myself into one. And hers had to be clipped back.

The photographer really did say things like "Lick your lips"! At one point he made these sexy sounds that the model pretty much ignored.

Later, these shots get whittled down to one, and that one gets painted with all the pretty background filled in.

Then, you end up with something like the one here by Adele Ashworth. (Great cover and great book!)

That's pretty much how covers get made