A reader first, a designer second — both in service of your book

There's a particular kind of quiet that settles over a room when a book has you. I've been chasing it since I was small — the sort of child who read at the dinner table, under the covers, and on the walk home. What I didn't expect was that the chasing itself would become work I could offer to other people.

I'm Charlotte, and I help authors in two ways that most people keep separate. First, I read. Authors in the reading communities I belonged to started asking whether I'd look at something before it went out, because I had a habit of saying more than "I loved it". I would tell them where I put the book down, where I sped up, which character I stopped believing and exactly when. Some of that was uncomfortable to hear. Almost all of it was useful.

Second, I design. I was making graphics for reading accounts — quote cards, release countdowns, tidy little shelf photos with typography over them — and realised how many beautiful manuscripts were being let down by covers that didn't signal their genre, or launch campaigns that looked like four different brands.

So I learned properly. Type anatomy, grid systems, print specifications, spine calculations, retailer thumbnail requirements, the tiresome but essential technical side that separates a pretty image from a cover that actually ships. Now the two halves of the work feed each other: reading a manuscript closely is the best possible brief for designing its cover.

I work with independent authors, small presses, and traditionally published writers who want extra care around a launch. Fiction is home territory — literary, romance, fantasy, mystery, speculative — though I'm always glad to read outside it when a book is generous enough to teach me something.