My Photo on the Front of a Book by a Bestselling Author

It’s true! Victoria Hislop, bestselling author of The Island (over a million copies), The Thread and The Return has a new book out called The Last Dance and Other Stories and on the cover is one of my photos!

However, and I’m sure you knew there would be a “however” in there somewhere, this won’t prove to be my breakthrough moment into the world of book covers of author photos.

Firstly, it’s not a photo of the author; secondly, my photo only makes up a part of the overall image; and thirdly, someone managed to screw up the credit for my contribution.

Back in August I was approached by a picture researcher, on behalf of the publisher. They were working on the cover of the new book and wanted to include a bouzouki in the image. It turned out the photo I’d taken in my blog post about my bouzoukis (see Bouzoukis) was exactly what they needed. I was offered a small payment and a link to my website in the credits.

It would have seemed churlish to refuse.



My complimentary copy has arrived and it feels more than a little odd looking at the cover and realising the bouzouki doesn’t just look like mine, it IS mine.

Unfortunately, on the inside flap at the back of the book, they have spelt my name and web address wrong.



Ayers is the most common misspelling of Ayres, and it crops up in letters all the time, but publishers usually have proof readers that are a bit more on the ball.

OK, so the writing is tiny, and the only people who are ever likely to look at it are those mentioned, but as one of those mentioned, it is a little disappointing.

I have phoned the publisher and put it into an email, but it’s a bit late for anything to be done about it. Discussion is now underway to see if it’s possible to correct it if it’s reprinted in the future.