Development of a Book Cover

If you are an independent author – as I am – then whatever you do, do not attempt to design your own cover. You will fail, it will be lame.

Good advice…? Or a challenge!

The advice goes like this: it’s much better to spend your time writing than struggling for days to create your own book cover. It is more efficient to be writing and to outsource your cover design time. Also, you will do a poor job. You are a writer, not a designer. Yes, you are a creative type but you don’t understand design, even if you think you do. Essentially, you will just muck it up and waste a ton of time.

Makes sense and it’s correct in most cases. But I’m special (I’m just kidding). I want to make my own covers. I want to get good at it because I love doing it, I think that one day I can get really good at it. And also, I can’t afford it. I mean, I could put the cost of a custom book cover on the credit card. I could save up the pennies in a cover design pot. And that would probably be the sensible thing to do but I really do love it so in spite of the good advice that I agree with… I’m going to have a crack at it.

But I am not a designer. It takes me a while to get it done and my skills… well, my skills are developing. I show the development of my latest cover below. I’m not sure the most recent version will be the last ever, final version – in fact, I’m sure it won’t be – but it’s good enough for now. I hope…

I hope this demonstrates my process of gradual iteration. Starting with layout and moving through colour, fonts etc up to lighting and final polishing.

If you have any suggestions on how to improve my final cover design, please tell me!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let me know what you think!

The book is being proofread this week, I will release it soon after 20th Aug.

 

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