Book Covers - 20 July–18 September
After some research, I came to realize that the statement “People DO judge a book by its cover” was, in fact, true. I thought that this would be a straightforward process, but it turned out to be a lot harder than I ever expected.
For this task, I went onto Fiverr, where it seemed most of the cover designers lived. For me, the exercise was a failure, largely because I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, an essential ingredient if you are aiming at the lower end of the budget. ($20-$100).
The major challenges I found were:
1. I selected a designer based on a cover I saw in their portfolio and used this as a starting point. The designer could not seem to re-produce a similar result based on my brief.
2. There was almost no communication from the designer after providing my brief, so the first contact was the completed cover. I tried a few edits with the designer, but in all cases, the design was just too far away from where I wanted it to be.
I can’t really blame Fiverr, or the designers, as there are many happy customers with covers costing in the $20-50 range. It was more a case of inexperience on my part and an unrealistically low budget for what I was hoping to achieve.
30 July–Contracted Olenakcha - $50–Tried a few edits, but never came together into something I could use.
13 Aug–Contracted Migunatudio - $60–Not bad, actually. I tried a few edits, but it did not come near enough to what I was looking for.
15 August–Contracted Neeosalamana - $100–This time I insisted on some level of communication prior to the start of the design, but the result fell short of the genera and did not adequately fit my brief.
Book company contract
At this point, I reassessed my strategy. Through some additional research online, I discovered that the going rate for a good cover designer started at around $500. Once I understood this and raised my level of funding, I attracted a more professional level of book cover designers, people who understood the publishing business but also cared about my vision for the project. Even at $500, I was at the lower end of the professional spectrum and had to pass up some excellent contracts that would have far exceeded my budget for this project!
I eventually came across Casey Fritz, of Albatross Books co. We had a face-to-face zoom call, and within a few weeks, being a good salesperson, he had talked me into a package deal covering cover design, typesetting, proofreading, e-book conversion and a set of media marketing resources, all at a pretty reasonable price. Within a week, I received a set of 8 draft book covers, and the results immediately spoke for themselves.
10 September–Signed contract with Albatross Books co.
16 September–Received 8 draft cover designs, either of which would have worked perfectly as a professional cover for my book.
17 September–Came down to a choice between my favorite and Casey’s advice regarding the readership I wanted to target. As I already have a copy of my book , I went with Casey’s advice.
18 September–Applied some design edits till we were both happy with the final cover design.
20 October–Reviewed and changed the cover design.
Title–23 September
As I mentioned earlier, my placeholder book title was Sailing into Adulthood. A few people I trust mentioned that it might not be the best title to describe what the book was really about. Over the next few days, I did some brainstorming and finally came up with a shortlist of 3 titles:
· Beyond the lighthouse,
· Failure IS an option
· Not another day.
My eventual choice - Not another day.
The context of the title is that almost all the turning points in my life have come about when I have reached the end of my rope, when I could honestly say to myself.
“I can’t carry on like this, not another single day,”
It’s a theme that runs through the book and defines the most important turning points in the memoir.