You guessed it. That's right........YOU. You design you cover. A printing company will have a graphics designer there, but first:
Look around, the book story or click around amazon books and see what inspires you. Then get a blank piece of paper and make some test designs of what you have in mind, weather it's a boat in the water, or a man running down the street, or a graphics of someone talking with a computer in his head. Whatever. Draw it out in stick figure.
Then go to one of those photos for sale web sites. They have half a million photos you can search by title. Sea, boats, men, etc. They're only 100 bucks each. Here's the one I used and love:
http://www.123rf.com/
Then when you know what you want. Take that photo or photos and your stick figure design which will have the name of the book positioned and your name, and your tag lines, to the graphics guy. He'll input them quickly and you sit with him and you'll be surprised how fast you can see so many various of your design.
He can change your lettering to different colors, shapes, sizes, OH, you know this. And when it's perfect freeze it. Same with the back of the book with your ISBN number and your bar code. He'll know where to get and make the bar code and you can buy 10 ISBN numbers for $200. Your finished.
Go to
www.paulkyriazi.com Right there on the front page. I designed all three of those covers, by finding photos or graphics, laying it out by pencil and working with the graphics man for an hour. Then his little tweaking was done in another hour.
See that Rock Star Rising cover? It's the story about the rise and fall of a rock star, but he also drowns and a lake, and then 'rises'. So I got inspired by the Deliverance poster, found a photo of a creepy hand coming out of a lake. Then found a separate photo of an 'alligator style' guitar, and had the graphics guy put the guitar in his hand.
Then my partner said, "Have the guitar dip in the water." I said, "He can't do that." The designer said,"Yes, I can." And dipped it in the water.Then we saw various choices of title colors and sized in a flash and choose one. All this in under two hours.
Actually the longest work was me on the photo web site searching for various guitars and hands in the water. But it was fun and free.
Why give a graphics guy cart blanche, and he comes back with something you don't want and a bill for 10 hours? And then start all over again and another bill for 10 hours. I like a finished project and a bill for only two hours.
The cover of McKnight's Memory was two separate shots. One of a guy with a gun in his hand. The other of a woman that looks like the lead in our show Nancy Kwan, and we put them together.
When our narrator Frank Sinatra Jr. Saw the first cover, he said to change the gun to a CIA type pistol called a 'glock'. So our designer found a photo of one in five minutes and put it over the other gun. Can't tell the difference can you?
That's actually a scene from the story, where Nancy Kwan descends into the water on a full moon night with Robert Culp standing behind her holding a gun. Everyone thought we went out and shot it for real ourselves.
So do the cover yourself .
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