Your New Book Cover: A Guide for the first time Self Publishing Author

So you’ve written your book. You knew from the get go you wanted to do everything yourself, and that’s awesome, I’ve been there. You have every character getting from Point A to Point B and you just know that you’re going to be the next Stephen King or J. K. Rowling. You’re on top of the world.

But there is a very important factor you might have forgotten. It may have been something you looked in to, got overwhelmed and decided you would come back to it later. It’s the first thing that says everything about your book. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen… The Cover

Now, I know that some of you have already probably started the search for a good cover and probably haven’t found a good artist yet. On the other hand you might have found the artist you want to work with, but now you have to save up your pennies. Well, I may have a solution to all of your problems.

As most of you that have been following my blog know, Tori was the one who actually found our cover artist. After an exhausting and nearly fruitless search, we were ready to turn to Photoshop and make our own covers. Then, like a beacon in the night sky, she came across a website that has become one of our favorite places (and run by one of my favorite people) truenotdreams designs. The site is run by Skylar Faith and is one of the most beautifully designed and most professionally run Cover Design sites on the web. Skylar has been quick with responses, addressed every concern, and made me feel like I was appreciated. We even inspired Tricia to work with Skylar for the redesign of her book, The Claiming Words.

In case you have forgotten, here is the amazing work that Skylar did for me:

She has also done amazing banners, character posters, and other features for me. Her packages are being put together and the page is coming soon to her site. Skylar had the most affordable custom covers and provided products of the utmost quality. She allowed me to make installment payments, but that is on an individual basis.

On the other end of the spectrum, you might not have exactly what you want figured out in your head and you need a little help. Well, my friend, a premade cover might be the way for you to go. For a majority of self published authors,  premade covers are an affordable alternative to the custom made route. For the purpose of this post, I was searching around the internet for a site that I felt would help emphasize this post. That’s when Tricia told me about this fairly new premade site that she featured recently on Authors to Watch called Honeyshadow Designs. Now I checked them out and I have to say that I am impressed. They feature well made, affordable premade covers.

Here are a couple of the image from their site:

 

Now, I haven’t had any contact with the artists from this site, but I definitely have to commend them. This is a fledgeling site that even does premade PRINT covers! I thought that was pretty awesome.

Keep in mind that these are just a couple sites on opposite ends of the spectrum. There are a bunch of great sites that have pretty awesome covers, I just don’t have enough time or energy to post about all of them. Don’t take my word for it, though. Google is a powerful tool. Like I said, there are a LOT of great designers out there, I was really looking at affordability v. quality and I think that for both of these categories, truenotdreams and Honeyshadow exceeded my expectations for quality while staying in my range for price.

I hope that you found this to be at least a little helpful. Thank you guys for continuing to follow me. If you would like more posts like this, please be sure to leave me a comment.