Cover unification project
A post for the Insecure Writer���s Support Group
I recently read The Rosie Effect, a novel by Graeme Simsion. Its hero Don has Asperger syndrome, a psychological condition that makes it necessary for him to have a very orderly life: all activities are scheduled, all chores belong to the prearranged to-do lists, all meals adhere to the weekly menus (orange juice on Fridays), etc.
I have Asperger too, although to a lesser degree than Don. I crave order in my life as well, and this craving pushed me into an interesting writing-related project.
Over the last few years, more than a dozen of my short stories were published in various magazines. As I retain the rights to these stories, I decided to make them available to my readers on Wattpad, where each story can have its own cover. I scoured the Internet for the best free images and created a cover for each story.
After I posted all the stories on Wattpad, I looked at their covers, and a doubting worm started squirming in my head. The covers looked too different, the fonts and styles all over the place. To satisfy my Asperger-driven need for order, I decided to change all the covers, to make them conform to a certain stylistic standard. Simultaneously, such a uniformity would create my own ���writer���s brand��� on Wattpad, at least in theory.
I reused the same images as before but I designed the covers differently. On all the new covers, the title is below the image, the author���s name above the image, and all the covers have a frame. I used the same font for the author���s name everywhere and another font for the titles.
The covers still look ���home-made���. It���s clear no professional artists or cover designer has ever touched them, but at least they are unique, exclusively mine. Nobody���s covers look like them. Is it bad? Is it okay? Did I go overboard with this project? Should the covers have more of a variety? After all, the stories don���t belong to the same series or even to the same genre. Should the covers have a distinctive professional quality? After all, I���m not selling them.
To judge, you can see all the covers on my special board on Pinterest.
For those curious enough to read, the stories themselves are here.
