These were the first four designs that the Hofstede guys came up with. I liked the "dog behind the fence" one, and the two with the stencil-style writing appealed to me too, but the one with the red cross kind of had too much of a Penguin Modern Classics feel to me. Maybe it was just that I preferred to have my name in all capitals.

The next two covers worked with the stencil-lettering deal a bit more, and started to explore colours. They're nice, but on the whole it was decided that perhaps the colours weren't striking enough. I wasn't too sure about having a book with a white cover. I also had a real problem with the dead dog on the back of the book because I thought it was a spoiler for one of the major plot twists in the book. Which I've now spoiled by telling you that, so what was I being so precious about in the first place?

Of these two, I think I preferred the one on the right, with the spattery, smudgy kind of effect.

Playing about with the barking effect of the title a bit here, again just a little bit too clean. Still not so sure about the white background, either.

I really didn't like this one, with the smiling doggy looking out all smug from the cover. To my mind it renders the villain of the book somewhat comedic and too self-aware by far. Next!

Eventually we tried losing the white, and by this stage the nasty spolier dog on the back cover had become a fallen-over bicycle. Not too sure about the blurry white-hot dog, but the red is certainly striking.

And finally, the finished cover. Still got that nice red, and the blurry stencilly outlines. Love that green - reminds me of those old Splice icypoles with the green ice on the outside and vanilla ice-cream on the inside. I'll take it.