One Picture Sells A (Hundred) Thousand Words

  Since I’ve decided to e-publish some of my earlier stories, I need to dedicate real, focused time to that effort, without pilfering time from my writing practice.  Thus, I’m dedicating two hours every night to benchmarking the covers of other books in my genre, searching the internet for comparable images for my covers (keeping in mind  the need to keep the costs cheap/free ),  and improving my skills with InDesign. 

You might think that designing an eye-catching, professional-looking cover would be easy, but for me, that is not the case.  I’ve got a three-book series I’m planning to e-publish, so I need to find three pieces of cover art that in some way appear consistent.  I finally found a collection of images, and did purchase them and designed the covers, but after I was finished, I realized that while they looked consistent and professional (in my opinion), they did NOT look like the covers of my favorite best-selling Urban Fantasy authors.  After one day of glee at the look of my covers, I descended into a week of uncertainty, followed by a grim determination to start over, this time using the covers of my favorite authors as inspiration. 

 Handily, I have copies of all those best sellers right in my home library, so I can see the sort of thing that readers expect in Urban Fantasy.  So now, I’m older, wiser, and getting better at searching for those elusive images I need to give my cover the intriguing look that inspires readers to pick it up.  So far I’ve spent days and days without finding what I’m looking for, but my search terms are getting better.  I have no doubt that the right image is out there waiting for me (and royalty-free).