Blog Jog Day - Deciding on a Cover

Welcome anyone who has wandered over here. I hope you will browse the archives to learn more about me:

When you go to the bookstore or you browse through the thousands of titles on Amazon and Kindle you see all of the book covers for each author's work. We all know that most authors do not do their own book covers unless they are self-publishing and even there many of the covers are done by professionals. At MuseItUp Publishing we are blessed with extraordinary award winning cover artists. So when the process of deciding on a cover began for me I though it would be easy.:)

As I said in the blurb to my blog, nothing is ever easy with me, but I keep hoping it will be. The process began when my cover artist sent me three possible covers. One is the cover I have today, actually, the first cover I ever saw and even then I did get a little jump of excitement. The next two were not what I had hoped to see and I rejected them, but I kept the first one asking for a few font changes. But still I thought the first cover too dark and intense for my story, so I asked the cover artist for a few more and suggested my own ideas. She sent me more and they didn't work. Then she worked very hard on a totally illustrated one and that didn't work either. She didn't have the secondary character, Jennifer, looking like I wanted her to look. This went back and forth like this for about two or three weeks. Finally, after much deliberating and soul searching and after my publisher and the head cover artist had discussed this with me, I had to admit that my idea was not going to be done and I had to make a decision.

I'm never good at deciding anything when there are too many choices unless one of the choices is exactly what I want. In this case, I still had reservations about the first cover, but according to everyone else on the publishing team, this was the one I should choose. I agonized over the choice. Examining it and then leaving it to go back to later. Each time I looked at it, I started to like it more. Then I sent it to a few of the people who had helped me with my book, both of my editors and the person who is doing my book trailer. All of them said they liked it. So I had to admit this was the final decision and finally picked the cover you see now!!

Everyone was so thrilled the whole cover debacle was over, and my publisher, who thank goodness knows exactly what works and doesn't work, told me next time to leave it in the hands of the cover artists. Good idea!!! I was reminded of the times when I went shopping for different items of clothing, especially over coats and I tried on one coat and really didn't like it. I didn't discard it, but it wasn't my favorite. Then I tried on many more coats which didn't excite me at all. I wound up going back to the first coat and suddenly I loved it!! That's what happened with my cover. As soon as I chose it I fell madly in love with it as others were doing!! Crazy, right?

Anyway, so glad the whole thing is over and I'm just waiting for my galleys for the final process for publication. From November to the present this has been such a long and educational process from the copy editing to picking a cover. I learned so much about my own writing and in the process I have made some great author friends from the author's loops. My admiration for writers and the job we have to do has increased since I first found out I had a contract and my manuscript was accepted at last!! I don't think I will ever have the joy I had then except of course when I got married and the birth of both of my children.:)

So until the next time, thank you to my new followers and of course, a big thank you to the people who have continued to come over here to read my ramblings.:) This is a special post for Blog Jog Day. My next guest author will be Kim Bacellia. Stop by to learn all about her and her new book, Crossed Out. 

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