A New Cover

 

While I was writing about my past writing failures yesterday, I mentioned that my second novel was so bad, I even hated its cover. Naturally, that led to taking action. When one only has two books under her belt, she fusses over them. I changed the covers of those books too many times to count.

Ignorant of the ways to find or create a proper design, I first went with KDP's cover creator. Have you ever taken a gander at that? It's "awesome". Essentially its offerings are variations of geometric shapes in the colors orange and green ~ an orange triangle next to a green circle, for example. I, for one, am grateful that Kindle put so much thought into its designs. Nothing screams "professional" like a Soviet-style graphic in the worst colors imaginable.  

I may have even gone with one of those ~ I can no longer remember ~ until I hired a Fiverr artist to create new covers. I might have been better off with the triangles. I've learned my lesson about Fiverr: Do not hire someone for whom English is a second language. Granted, they do their best, but the translation is skewed. Both of my novels revolve around female protagonists, but not female children. Yet, that's what I got. I ignorantly assumed I had explained my needs clearly. The back and forth grew fruitless, so I finally accepted her finished product. And yes, having no good alternatives, I went with them. 

When I discovered Canva, I was finally able to do what I'd always wanted ~ create my own covers. It seems easy and it mostly is, but fonts are tricky. A thumbnail on Amazon has to stand out, A font that's too big is generally okay, but not one that's too small. No one will be able to read it. And different font styles denote different genres. Getting too artsy is also problematic. The cover image should be large ~ my images fill the frame. That can also create problems. One might find just the right image, but the book title and author name placement don't work. (I don't want the title pasted across someone's forehead.) Because I write women's fiction, every one of my covers except one features a woman. While I like the lone cover that doesn't follow that rule, I may well end up changing it at some point, in order to conform to my brand. (Yes, I have a brand, even if I'm the only one who knows it.)

Back to that second novel that I recently condensed into novella form, yesterday I once again changed the cover. I truly hated the iteration I had gone with:

Now it looks like this:

Better. Not perfect, but better. My name is a little small, but it'll suffice for now.

I am a notorious cover changer, but why not? It doesn't cost me anything to have a cover I like. The covers on Goodreads never change, but I've stopped caring about their recalcitrance.  

I like controlling my own destiny. No one knows what I want better than I do, and often even I don't know what I want until I find it. 

If you want to spend money on a cover, I hope you get a good one. It could just be that I'm awfully hard to please.