A Time For Everything

The parts are in motion for getting my publishing journey off the ground, and so far, so good, really. I have covers for book one and book three. The cover for book two is giving me fits because I have no idea what I want it to look like, what aspects of the book I want represented.

So I've spent a lot of time searching stock photo sites for ideas, using various search terms. Ugh. It's tedious and it makes me sleepy, which is not a good thing in the middle of the day.

I have basic graphic skills. Covers one and three were super simple. I found images that worked as they were and conveyed the tone of the book pretty well. All that was really needed was title and author and series name. Text isn't difficult. Basic effects aren't hard.

I printed the covers and showed a couple of my chapter mates at my meeting. The one thing they all said was to make my name larger. Size is easy.

One friend, who admits she is super picky and a cover whore, thought it looked too homemade. Another friend who actually makes all her own covers didn't necessarily agree. Not that she strongly disagreed either, but she wasn't as horrified by the prospect. We pulled up Amazon and looked at books in the same genre to see what they looked like. Some looked like they could have been homemade, but it's super hard to tell, because a third friend published three books with a specific e-publisher, and her covers for those three books are awful. So...yeah.

The whole conversation begs the question: How much do I care?

Looking objectively as I can at cover one, it is rather simplistic. Is it too simplistic?

When looking on Amazon, there were a few other covers that were also on the basic side, so okay. But now I'm thinking it needs a little something more. And I have a couple of ideas as to what that 'more' could be. Back to the drawing board.

Book three's cover is simple as well, but the cute factor and the title font/effects counterbalances it. I think so anyway, and I love it so much I can hardly wait to write the book.

Now that I've pondered things for a couple of more days, I've realized most books are gonna require multiple images, cropped and layered and other things...things I don't want to mess with or just don't know how to do. So...

Adding cover artist research to the list of things to do.

How much of a factor is the cover for you? Does a good title make a difference if the cover is less than optimal?