Publishing A Book Sucks! (Part 2)
I think one of the most exciting parts of the publishing process, no matter if you self-publish or traditional publish is seeing your book cover. Its surreal seeing your vision of your story come to life on the front of a book. This work of art will be the first representation of who you are as an author, so you want this to be your best.
If you are an avid reader like myself then you understand the importance of your cover. The cover could either draw your readers or repel them. Why do you think book stores display books in their windows? I can't count how many times I have been walking in the mall, minding my business and strolled past Barnes & Noble, only to see an enchanting book cover that lures me into the store.
So, this was my next step in the self publishing process.
Step 2: I should also mention that I did this while my book was still being edited. To be honest my cover was done before my book was done editing, which was okay because it was motivation for me to get my book done. I couldn't wait to share my awesome cover with everyone.
At first I didn't have the slightest idea of what I wanted on my book cover. I had a bootleg book cover for my book on Wattpad that everyone loved, but I knew I couldn't use that because it wasn't my original work of art. So, back to the research I went. I discovered several options I could use to create a book cover.
1. A website that has pre-made book covers. At first glance this seemed like the best option for me. The covers were affordable and ranged from $60 on up. All I had to do was arrange my name and title on the cover and voila I was done. Afterwhile I realized that the covers seemed to generic and similar to others I had seen around the web. I if I wanted my cover to stand out this was not the option for me.
2.A professional cover designer. I looked at the cover designs of some of the popular books in my genre and looked up the designers. When I looked at their prices I was tempted to go back to option one and settle for the generic book cover. Their works ranged from $350 on up to as much as $600-$700. Again, I couldn't afford that on my single mom budget.
3.Use word,indesign or some other software to make my own. I thought about this for literally a minute, then I remembered that I don't have an artistic bone in my body besides my writing ability.
That option quickly went out the window.
Then while I was reading a book on Amazon called "The Witching Elm," I decided to check out who the cover designer was. I liked the dark cover and I thought it represented the story so well. I was surprised when the designer was someone off of the website called DeviantArt.
DeviantArt.com is a site for established and up and coming artists to share their work. After looking up that particular artist and not being able to afford his prices I kept looking. I came across a lot of artists that did book covers. After talking to numerous ones I finally settled on one, Jessica Dueck.
She was affordable and hard working and most importantly she was patient with me. I went from not knowing what I wanted to changing my mind numerous times about the concept, colors and etc. After about a week she was done. I was so excited and happy with my results.
What I didn't know though was she wouldn't be the one to put the entire jacket of my book together. This was the only disadvantage of using a independent designer versus a professional company who can do your design and your book layout.
In the end she charged me a total of $60 for a cover she designed from scratch. She gave me all of the needed files so that I could carry them on to my book layout person. Check out her work on DeviantArt and on her site. She is amazing.
Because my editing wasn't finish yet I couldn't quite do my booklayout part. This is because the person doing your book layout has to know how many pages your book is and how big you want it, i.e 6x9, 8x12 etc. Once I did finish editing. I then proceeded to the website called Fiverr.
Fiverr is a website where people put their services online starting at $5. You can find people that edit books, make book covers, t-shirts, promotional videos, find you followers, make you a website and etc. There is no limit to what you can find on here.
This is where I found my book layout person. I actually hired two people. The first person named Vicovers put it together expeditiously after a few tries. I then saw the spine was turned the opposite way, which is a European thing for books,(she was in england) lol. I went back to her to correct this, but she had taken a break from Fiverr.
I then found Zakarianada. She made everything right. She fixed the spine, she resized my pdf files of my book to match the cover size and she even put it in a correct file format that she said my previous cover hadn't been in. She was awesome. I recommend her for your book cover needs if you use Fiverr. https://www.fiverr.com/zakarianada
Once this part of the process was done I was so relieved. I was ready to share my book with the world! Or was I?
Update: This is another version she did. That I actually went with. Again, she is amazing!!! And now she also can do your book layout, so no need to go to Fiverr! *screams and run around the room*
