What’s the story with the eBook cover design?

Some of you may have noticed there is a new page called eBook Cover Design on this blog. Perhaps you scratched your head, wondering what on earth I’m up to this time. Let me explain…

About halfway through my new series ah…er…trilogy I realized that due to budgetary restraints I would not be able to hire a book cover designer. I know, I know, you must NEVER design your own book covers. All the experts say so.

Still, authors do all the time and granted many of those covers are not so great, but some of them are pretty good. And let’s be honest, some of the so-called professional covers leave much to be desired. And top of that I figured if it was good enough for Hugh Howey, then it was good enough for me.

The Learning Experience

Realizing I’d have to do my own covers I set out to learn myself something about book covers and design. What I thought would be a relatively short learning curve turned out to be a months long self edu-ma-cation. And man did I make some pretty awful ugly covers for a while. But I kept at it.

I practiced. I learned Canva and then Pxlr. Then I discovered you can’t get high resolution covers from those platforms, which was why even the covers that started to look pretty good still had that grainy amateur look about them. Finally, I faced facts and taught myself GIMP. Also a free shareware but with many similar capabilities as Photo Shop.

I read Derek Murphy’s book “Book Cover Design Secrets” (highly recommend by the way if you want to learn about book cover design). And I just kept at it.

Somewhere along the way, things gelled and I realized I’d learned how to design book covers. (Soon, I’ll show you the covers for the new series but not today.) Anyway, after all the time, study, and practice I also realized that I really enjoyed designing covers. I find it relaxing and it feeds a creative urge I’ve always had to create ‘art.’ Not art as in the written word but you know art art.

Paying it Forward

While all this was happening, I’d also gotten to know a lot of indie authors and have made some great friends in that regard. Who have helped me in so many ways. And like me, many of them are operating on limited budgets and resources are stretched thin.

In case you were unaware, there is a real cottage industry out there selling stuff to writers (especially indies) – from magic formulas that will make you a best seller to how to format eBooks, to marketing, to email lists, and so on. Some of these services are great, some of them are exploitative, and some are quite expensive for an indie author struggling along.

So, long story short, I decided to offer pre-made covers at the nominal fee of $25. Along with the cover you get some customization, your title, your name and tagline, we could change font colors and things like that. Mostly, I just wanted to offer indie authors a decent cover that they could afford and would be somewhat unique (that didn’t look like all the other pre-mades) to them and their story.

So that’s the story. If any of these covers ring your bell, feel free to drop me a line and we’ll make it happen. If not, I may be able to do a custom cover for you for just a bit more. And even if you don’t need or want a book cover they might be fun to look at.

So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Have a great weekend.

Annie ❤