preeeetty – Elodie Nowodazkij

It’s Friday on my side of the world…which means it’s time for #Selfpub Corner…

Topic of the week: cover

Covers are important, they really are. But just to show you how important the cover of One, Two, Three has been important in getting the word out, here are a few quotes from reviewers.

“I totally went off the cover,” A flurry of ponderings.

“I surprised myself with this book I literally only requested this book based on the front cover.” Natalie

“The minute I saw the cover, I had to read this” Tonja

As you can tell, I am super happy with my cover designer: Derek Murphy from Creativindie who created magic!

I mean, look at this beauty 🙂

As a self-published author, you have many choices: you can buy a pre-made cover (which I will talk about with other selfpub authors in a future post), you can go with several types of cover designer–including ones that may even arrange their own photo shoot.

The prices will definitely differ depending on what you choose. Pre-made covers are usually cheaper (you can find some on sale for $15), the ones where a photo-shoot is organized will be more costly.

And then you need to decide, what type of adds-on do you want? Some cover designer will also do promotional items, others may offer discounts for future works.

How did my process work?

Once I contacted Derek to see if he would have some time. He sent me a few sites to look at pictures that would fit with my story, so he could get a sense of where I was going.

This is one of the image I sent him, do you recognize it? 🙂

http://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-9859367/stock-photo-broken-and-bleeding-heart-on-the-wall

He then sent me 9 different proposals of covers…and I showed them to my street team, who also fell in love with the same one I did: a slightly different version than the cover I have today.

Based on that, he reworked it with different fonts and different placings. I chose this one because I felt the rhythm going through the cover.

He also sent me Facebook cover, quotes boxes and so on…

For example, that one:

What did I learn?

1. The emotions. Oh, the emotions.

Working on the cover is VERY exciting, like everything else in the process. Do you see the dancer walking away on the cover? well, it has been used by other books, and I saw it only close to publication. Cue, freaking out.

Like, writing on my Facebook Team 123 secret group and the wonderful ladies there held my hand and reminded me how different the covers were, despite their one similar element.

Still. This is a reality that one needs to realize, some elements of your cover may not be entirely unique. However, with a strong designer, your cover itself will be unique.

🙂

And I am still in love with mine, like the very first time I saw it.

2. Choosing the cover designer.

Personally, I googled cover designers for selfpub authors and I asked my dear friends Juliana and Jen to see who they were using. I also looked at the copyrights information of the selfpub books I really liked the cover of.

Here are some names in case you’re looking. There are different price ranges and there are more in the resources article at the end of this super duper long post 🙂

Derek Murphy (love his work as you know 😉
http://www.okaycreations.com/ (Juliana worked with them and her covers are GORGEOUS!)
http://www.maeidesign.com/

3. Planning the cover – timeline and type of cover (ebook, print, both)

Before contacting the different cover designers, I first had to decide which format I wanted. And of course, I had to know approximately when I wanted to do the cover reveal and when publication date was going to be, giving a bit of buffer.

4. A tagline

Always helpful to intrigue people.

5. Author photo

Of course, you also need an author photo for the full cover. Here you have to decide what type of author photo you want, but more generally speaking, the advice I received was: a photo where people can really see your smiling face 😉 This will be the topic of another post.

6. Possible early reviews

If you have early raving reviews, you could add a line to your book. Look what L.G. has on her cover: a review from Cora

7. Will I do anything differently for my second book?

Yes. In the sense, that my second book will only be an e-book (it’s a novelette), so I am not going for the full range of ads-on that I did for my first book.

8. More resources

Hope this was helpful! Let me know in the comments, and do not hesitate to ask me any questions 🙂

Next week’s topic: Netgalley, including the views of several self-published authors on the topic