Hidden in the Reed's - New Cover

Good Day.

So this week's post is a slight change of pace as I have spent most of my free timely lately finalizing my novel Home in the Hidden in the Reed's series. Most notably I have been working with an illustrator at Streetlight Graphics to get the cover re-designed. Thanks again Glendon, you and your team are awesome.

Which leads me to what I wanted to discuss in today's post. Advice for anyone looking to self publish a novel and is working with a graphic artist to design your cover art. See if you've decided to self-publish you have surely realized that you have creative control over every aspect of the work, from marketing to writing and artwork.

The problem is if you are a writer you are probably not know the first thing about graphic design. As a fairly tech savvy guy I figured I could just learn what I needed and create the cover myself. Besides who knows the story and characters better than the guy who wrote it? Sadly none of my knowledge of software or familiarity and passion for the story translate into graphic art.

Writers tend to write, just like painters tend to paint. So where I may have been able to create a script that automatically converted my novel into an ebook and pdf, I cannot create a compelling cover for my own novel. So my advice is this find a passionate graphic artist or illustrator and let them make art.

This not to say that you should be completely hands off in the process. But it's more about giving your artist a direction then letting them run than trying to stay by their side for the whole race. When you try to control too much you can start to hurt more than you are helping. I simply gave a general idea of what I wanted, then a slight course correct toward the end. The end product is more than I could have hoped for.

Check out the image above and let me know what you think. The Novel will be available starting October 1st 2017.