The Creation of a Book Cover

Silvina asked a question on my "Where Does The Time Go" post that I thought might work better as a post itself instead of a comment back. She said: I'm curious about book covers. How exactly do you choose a book cover? Do you contact an artist? I love that she asked.

I am fortunate that I come from a creative family. My mother was/is an artist, specializing in Alaskan landscapes mostly. One of my sisters paints, another's a florist, another is crafty...the list goes on. Before I got back into writing and publishing I actually designed and created specialty greeting cards for people. It was an awesome job but not overly profitable and I am so hands-on that I printed them all myself which also meant folding, cutting...it was all a bit overwhelming.

Anyway...because of all that, I design my own covers and many of those for other books through the publishing company. Some, like Sharon E. Cathcart's "In The Eye of The Beholder" are designed by artists (James Courtney created her cover). Jaimey Grant designed the cover of "Deception" with an occasional "try this" or "try that" from me. My children's book "How Sadie Learned to SMILE" uses a cutout from one of the illustrations in the book. I created several backgrounds for it using that same illustration and bounced them to the illustrator until we agreed on one we liked. Video producer Patrick Sipperly designed the cover for our collection of short stories: "Time Out On A Roller Coaster". It was a concept he came up with and I happened to like.


I spent some time this summer creating book covers for several of my works in progress. Many of you know I hurt my back and was unable to sit to work for long. Oddly enough, I was able to hover over a mouse at my graphics computer so...that's what I did. I spent a lot of time browsing the pages of a site called Dreamstime looking for my characters. I would then pull them into the template I use and play until I got it right. Dreamstime has comp images you can use for free to see if they will work. At that time you buy the ones you like and the annoying watermarks go away :) An example would be this cover for one of my novels. It isn't finished but hopefully you can see the swirly watermark on the couple and on the girl in the frame.



Notice too that the front of the book is on the right and the back of the book is on the left. There's also that "dead" space on the back (To the right of the girl) where the bar code will go. You have to be careful about that...not putting anything there that you don't want covered. To see this in more detail, check out my OneStopPublisher.com Cover Creator Page. I don't have a lot of covers on there, though. I need to update it. I'll do that in my spare time!!!

Let's look at another cover. It's for an upcoming book of mine called "The Escort"...at least that's the working title. The cover (along with the lovely watermarks) shown here is basically 3 photographs sandwiched into one.


















How was I able to look at those three pictures and decide they would work? I don't know. I guess that's the artistic side. Other than some minor tweaks, I do know, I love this cover and it expresses exactly what I wanted to express about what might be inside.

Now, do be aware that when you use sites like Dreamstime and others you may run the risk of others with the same pictures on their covers. Vicki Hopkins, author of "The Price of Innocence" has commented that she's seen her photo art on three other books, I believe. I personally love Vicki's cover and think it fits her book, so to me...it's a who cares.

The man in my Escort book (he's not the escort, by-the-way) can be found on another cover as well. Take a look at this one by Miss Mae. You know what? I'm okay with that because as much as he might depict her character, this man is my character as well. He fits too perfectly for me not to use him. Her book, "When The Bough Breaks" won a Best Young Adult Novel award and also a Best Cover of the Month Award. I've heard from a very good source that it's a worthwhile read. I can personally recommend "The Price of Innocence" as well.


Some artwork doesn't need a lot. Take the picture of the sword, for instance. We turned it into a cover for a soon to be released novel by Richard S. Wiggins, Jr. titled "Kilaal's Sword"...I sent the author a bunch of sword pics and asked which one. He chose this and I got to work. According to his instructions, the sword needed jewels placed strategically in the handle. That was actually the hard part. The cover turned out pretty good, in my opinion. The author liked it and that's the most important thing to me.

So, in answer to your question, Silvina, if an author does not have an artist in mind, I usually tackle the project myself or with one of the other designers through the publishing company. I would say that I'm not so sure I choose a cover or if, in many ways, it chooses me. More often than not, it has a lot to do with the author's tastes, the fortune to stumble across a great artist or perfect photo and a whole lot of intuition. Covers are as personal as the words on the pages they cover. I'd urge every author to browse sites and make a file of covers that catch the eye. Take a tour of your library or local book store. See what jumps out at you. Most of all, when you begin creating your own cover, whether you do it yourself or with the help of a professional, have something created that you love. If it doesn't touch you, how will you be confident enough to present it to others? The ultimate goal is to sell your book. You have to love your cover and believe in the contents to do it.

Celebrate the life of "Deception" on July 15th

My very good friend -- can I say that about someone I have never met in person before? Yes, I believe I can, especially after working with her so closely these last few months. Anyway...my very good friend Jaimey Grant (aka Laura Miller) has a new book that will be released July 15th. That's tomorrow!!! It's a beautiful book inside and out with the most lovely cover and aaaah story...intriguing characters, love, a bit of mystery. It's everything I want in a book and what I strive to write (except the history, of course since I don't really write historical and....you get the picture).

TreasureLine Publishing is hosting a release party for the book and for Jaimey/Laura at TreasureLineBooks.com. There are going to be great prizes including ways to win a free print copy, 7 (yes seven!) eBooks, an absolutely stunning handmade pearl daisy pendant (can I put my name in please?). But mostly it will be a day of celebrating the life of another hold-in-your-hand book by an extremely talented author. Hope you'll join us...

Disappearing beneath my publisher's hat

I have mentioned a time or two that I have put my own writing on hold somewhat in order to help others. Coming together with the TreasureLine group has been wonderfully exciting. It is thrilling to see book after book come to life. We recently released Sharon E. Cathcart's "In The Eye of The Beholder" ~ the subtitle is: A Novel of the Phantom of the Opera so those who know me know I loved being a part of that project. I got my first taste of Sci-Fi/Fantasy while working with author Richard S. Wiggins, Jr. on two novels: "The Making of a Masterthief" and "The Last Warrior of Ertansha". I was more involved with "The Last Warrior of Ertansha" and I will simply say it is one of my all-time favorite books now. I never thought I would enjoy Sci-Fi/Fantasy but....wow, he really pulled me into the story and I enjoyed every page. I even found myself sneaking up at night to work on it. Thank goodness for laptops!!!

The last few days have found me immersed in "Deception"...notice the quotations? That's because it is a title. I have had the honor of being paired to work with author Jaimey Grant on her latest title: "Deception". Jaimey is a very hands on author and, together (from half-way across the country), we tinkered with her cover, her taking the lead though humoring me with changes even when it was as simple as moving a word from here to there. I'm pretty pleased and anxious to wrap it around Jaimey's extremely well written words.

We will be unveiling several more books in the not too distant future. I'll try to keep everyone updated as well as....hopefully....continuing to pursue my own writing. Speaking of...my mom stopped by the other day and asked if I needed help with anything. Don't ever ask me that!!! I handed her a folder and said "type." She called me today and told me to NEVER again send her home with an unfinished manuscript. My bad. It's actually my current work in progress :(

So, whether you see me or not, I'm here. How well I hide is dependent upon the hat I wear. I do hope you'll take a minute to take a look at all we've been doing. Any of these books would make a great summer read.

Helping others through One Stop Publisher

This has been a really great day. I can't really pinpoint why. Do you ever have those days? I feel as if I made a lot of connects and was asked to do a blog interview surrounding my collection of faith-based short stories, Becoming... I said yes, of course! I realized too that there are a lot of people out there just like me with the dream of a hold-in-your-hand book. That realization made me even more glad that I began my One Stop Publisher company. I've occasionally had second thoughts about it. I'd love to be able to do nothing but write. However, that's not really reasonable PLUS part of my dream has always been to help others with their dream.

I think the day I helped an 8 year old girl publish her first book I knew I'd continue. We still have some revisions before she "goes public" with it but, she has a proof in hand, and is so proud. I remember the day I held my first book with my name on the cover in my hands. Talk about Cloud 9 (or would that be Cloud 8, Dina?!). It hasn't been a huge seller, though I have sold 2 this week. But, it opened the door and it was practically painless. It gave me the confidence I needed to continue. I'm not so sure a room full of rejection letters would do that. Plus, I still have options. I maintain all rights to my work and can pursue other avenues at any time.

So, does that mean I will continue on the self-publishing path? I don't know. For now, it's working for me and I'm meeting a lot of others who have had success as well. Some of us are teaming up to help others through my One Stop Publisher and links to their sites. It's exciting! I also set my own hours and can change my mind about my projects!!! That is even more exciting and I have exercised that right several times (if you look at my What's She Up To page of my author website, you will see that I recently had a change of heart). And with that, I'm going to change directions and take myself to bed. It's 1:30ish a.m. and I'll be sitting at a tennis tournament all day tomorrow....between running kids to school and other activities. At least it's supposed to be warm-ish--I think.

So, I think I'll leave you with a couple of links:
The Shelf Life of Linda Boulanger on FaceBook
One Stop Publisher on FaceBook
Coffee's Hot -- great networking site
If you get bored....check out the blogs I follow and do some reading. There are some really talented writers there with fun and interesting and insightful things to say. (You can get there from my profile, I believe).

BookBuzzr's Book Widget

You might have noticed a new box on the left hand side of the blog right under the name and what the blog is about. Right above the box it says Becoming... and in the left top corner, it says BookBuzzr. There's also a bright yellow/orange box that says "Read Free Sample" which I hope you will click on and read. It's an interesting display of my latest release, Becoming...

I'm not pitching the book at this point (though I might add that you can order it via my website for FREE SHIPPING through February 9th). I want to focus on that little box and the "look inside" feature that it offers. If you've read any of my blog or converse with me in the world of FaceBook or Twitter, then you know I've been throwing myself into learning about marketing and social marketing in particular. One of my Twitter connections led me to the website BookBuzzr.com. I was skeptical because of this one simple word: FREE. Now that word shouldn't scare a person but we all know free usually isn't. Just like with my free shipping, you still have to buy the book to get the free shipping. I guess I could ship you an empty box and then the shipping really would be free though it wouldn't serve either of us very well and I don't want to do that so don't ask me to. Still, I was intrigued by what I saw in my hopping around on the BookBuzzr.com site and I'd like to briefly share that experience with you (Brief from me? Yeah, right!).

According to the The Story page of the BookBuzzr.com site, that little box is an (and this is a direct quote) "embeddable book-widget that's shareable across multiple social networks. And with book-pages that look and act like pages from a real book." I personally liked the widget and decided to try it out on Becoming... although I'm truly thinking toward the marketing end of A Marriage of Necessity and how it will look as a widget :) Anyway, I decided to give it a test run. It was actually fairly easy to use. Of course, being a self-published author and doing my own formatting and POD publishing submissions, I have direct access to my pdf files. The site does, however, give you a link to an easy pdf converter. I may try it even though I don't have to since OpenOffice has a one-click converter for the inside of the books and I already discussed in a previous post how I use PhotoShop to convert my covers to pdf.

The upload was simple. They do ask some questions along the way that go toward building your profile. All pretty simple. I liked the fact that I got to pick the pages that went into the widget and did not have to choose pages that were all right together. They also provide you with a marketing checklist and suggest that you follow at least some of the listed suggestions to create a base level of presence on the Internet. I've done a few though not all.

All-in-all I'm intrigued by this little tool they call a book-widget. I'm going to create them for the other books I've written as well as for a couple I've published for others and we'll see where we go with it. In the meantime, make sure you click on that "Read Free Sample". At the very least, it will automatically post something about my book on Twitter :)

To Self-Publish Or Not....

The decision to self-publish did not come without extreme thought and research. As an author, I believe one immediately thinks of big named publisher backing. However, as I began to research I learned that new authors have about a 5% chance of finding an agent and a 1% chance that agent will even sell their book. Even soliciting publishers like Tate Publishing, an Oklahoma based Christian operation that just happened to have an ad on my blog as I was writing this, make it clear that they only accept about 3 percent of all manuscripts received. Granted, their reasoning is valid in their desire to provide their authors with a quality product, hence not taking on more than they can handle. Still, it can be dashing to know you will undoubtedly be met with rejection after rejection.

Now, I was the kid who desired beautiful pictures and set out with my crayons to produce such only to get impatient and scribble to get it finished. Fortunately they turned out quite artsy, but I never learned patience! That being said, I chose to self-publish. I did not, however, choose to be out a lot of money upfront. I was amazed at how much many of the self-publishing companies wanted to charge! Yikes!!! Again, my research led me to a solution in Amazon.com's CreateSpace Print On Demand publishing. For me, it was/is perfect.

I've now published 3 books of my own through them, have published 3 books for other authors using their service, and have 2 books for others in the proof process, as well as 6 in the formatting process. Using CreateSpace also offered immediate access to Amazon.com's sales channel. It seemed like a win-win to me and I've been extremely pleased.

Although I've opted for the ProPlan with each book ($39.00 which allows the author to keep a larger share of the royalties from the book), I have been able to get my proofs for under $10.00 each and that includes the shipping. Then I decide how many books to order or whether I want to offer them via the internet only and have no out of pocket cost at all.

Once I took the plunge with the first book, thanks to the gentle promptings of my wonderful writing partner Patrick Sipperly, I realized this was the way for me. I also realized there were others in my same shoes that may or may not have the desire to tackle the formatting, cover design, and other aspects of self-publishing. CreateSpace offers a service to those individuals that runs, on special, over $750.00 leading me to create my own publishing company to offer the same services at a noticeably reduced cost. I don't mind steering interested authors who desire to do it themselves in the right direction (www.WritersShelfLife@gmail.com) or I can help with my TreasureLine Publishing and services offered at www.OneStopPublisher.com.

I love what I do and feel so blessed to be living my dream. Part of that dream is helping others with the same dream so I hope you'll write to me and let me know if I can help or visit my One Stop Publisher if you have an interest.

Beginning To Write

I have begun to write my first novel. Well, that's not exactly true. I actually have about 17 in various stages. This one, however, will be the first one published and I'm very excited about it. I hope you will follow along with me on the journey through the writing process, publishing, book marketing...all of it. The book is titled A Marriage of Necessity and you may preview the cover and read a sample on the Preview Page of my author website (http://www.lindaboulanger.com/).

While you're there you might notice I have a couple more books out there. My first book, Time Out On A Roller Coaster, is a collection of fun and light short stories that I wrote with my dear friend Patrick Sipperly. It was my first-born as far as published books goes and I will share some of the ups and downs of that process as well.

How Sadie Learned To SMILE is my first children's book, illustrated by friend and awesome author Christina Janzen. Chris and I have another children's book in the works called Pistachio (he's a snowman). It's a lighthearted story of finding a way to keep those we love near and dear to our hearts.

Okay! Think that's enough for my first post to give you an idea of what I'll be doing here. I hope you'll either leave comments or email me (WritersShelfLife@gmail.com) to let me know a bit about you!