So, I had an interesting experience this week. It was a discussion in an author group about homemade vs. professional covers for books. I shared my experience with The Album’s cover, and I thought it might be fun to write a blog and show the whole process.
The initial concept for the cover of The Album came from my friend, J. When I was writing the book approximately twenty million years ago, I was sending her the chapters as I wrote them. One day, she said to me, “I have an idea for the cover.”
I was terrified…what if I hated it? But, I had her send it through to me, anyway. It turned out that I loved it. So much so, that I mocked up versions for the entire series with that theme. Behold, my amazing work…
So, I made these in Canva…in case you can’t tell lol. I was very proud of my work, but I knew I’d probably need a professional’s help…especially for The Stalker’s cover, which my cover designer accurately described as, “Screaming, ‘I’m self-published!'” What can I say? I didn’t have any better ideas, but I was proud of the first three.
So, basically, I sent him these and said that this was my plan for the series and to basically just remake The Album’s cover exactly as I had it and we’d be good to go…which he did.
But he also said, “Look, I know you have your heart set on this design, but would you consider something like this?”
I immediately fell in love…well, after crowdsourcing the ladies at work and my friends on WhatsApp, of course! But I was concerned. I went back to Mark and said that I didn’t see how he could make it work with the picture of the bride being black and white, and that I couldn’t think of any other options that might work.
To which he replied with, “What? Like this?”
I gasped because it was so beautiful, but I was still unconvinced. I said that I didn’t see how it could possibly work with the other books in the series, to which Mark basically said, “Hold my beer!” and came back with…
I’ve covered up the concept for The Stalker, since that cover isn’t revealed, yet. Let’s just say that…wow. It’s amazing what a true artist my cover designer is.
He takes my concepts and just makes them next level awesome. Ultimately, these are what the three current covers look like, now.
So there you can see the progression of my books covers from a concept my friend came up with, through to the final product which was a million times better than I ever could’ve dreamed.
