If you're not a designer, designing your own cover is a challenge, but a highly rewarding one once you feel you have it right..

The covers were meant to provide a view of the main themes of the book: crime, finance, electronics, and some sex, all with a Japanese flavour. First of all I went with the idea that I should make the thing look a little like a 1950s/60s pulp fiction novel (click to enlarge):

I actually quite liked this in some ways, but I could see that there was something very wrong with it.The red and green at the top seemed a bit like Soviet Red Army colours, and the font, much as I love Trajan for some things, really didn't work as well as I'd hoped for the title. This is not a cover that would leap out of the Amazon catalogue on screen, and scream at you, "Buy me!". So I tried again (actually, there were many aborted attempts, but this was just one that made it to the semi-complete stage):

I like the green, but it's a bit light. And where's the sex? Or the Japan? And the balance is wrong. A friend told me I needed a semi-naked lady with long legs on the cover. So that's when I bit the bullet, and decided iStockphoto was my friend. And I came up with the final cover, which has actually got quite a lot of praise from people, and has quite a few people believing that I employed a professional designer.

Considering that I have the drawing skills of a retarded 5-year-old (any animal I attempt to draw comes out looking like a cross between a wombat and a diseased elephant), I take this as a great compliment.