Gratitude

At some point in the future, I intend to write a series of posts about this crazy writing/self-publishing journey of mine. A large part of that journey has been preparing my books to be attractive to Amazon users. Obviously, their appearance is the largest piece of that puzzle. All of us judge books by their covers, whether we admit it or not.

You'd be surprised at how many options there are for having a book cover made. This summer, I scoured the Internet to research the process. I discovered that you can make your own book covers or have someone else make them for you. While making my own seemed like the way to go for a time, I soon realized that the money I'd save by doing so wouldn't be worth the lack of quality. So, I started looking for a professional.

What I found out was that you can pick from an almost limitless number of artists. Tons of them have their own websites. There are other sites where you can open up a project for multiple artists to work on and pick the best. Then, there are also sites where the artists congregate, and you can list a job offer on their forums. Pricing varies greatly. The most simplistic covers can be done for less than fifty dollars. Others can cost thousands.

When I started looking for an artist, I was lost in the endless waves of the web. My desire to "get it right" nearly paralyzed me as I contemplated reaching out to people whose work I liked. What if the perfect artist was out there and I just needed to look a little deeper? It wasn't fun, and I soon realized that I had to make a decision. I finally did, and I have no doubt that I made the correct one.

The artist that I ended up reaching out to for my covers is incredibly talented and a complete professional. She guided me through the process of having the covers made for both The Last Kinmark and The Guilt of the Innocent. She made beautiful artwork for them and was patient with me as I constantly went back and forth on the typography.

I have no doubt that I'll work with her again on The True Believer and, hopefully, many more books. I can't recommend her highly enough. In addition to her own work, she also offers lessons in design that I'm sure are as good as you'll find anywhere. If you want to learn or need ANY artwork done, you should look up Istebrak A.