While it is one hundred per cent worth the investment to pay a professional to do your cover art for a full length book, especially one that is going to be printed and distributed through bookshops, I knew it would be more cost-effective to create my own for the short stories that I release between the larger volumes. My drawing skills levelled off at around age twelve but fortunately for me and anyone else in this position, there are plenty of tools available to help!
I chose to use the company Bookbrush to create the covers for my short stories, and it took some trial and error – it was an investment of time, but worth it. I now know how to set up both an ebook and paperback cover (planning ahead for any future calamity that means I have to do this myself!) and have learned all sorts of things about typography, scale, sizing and composition that I would never have paid attention to before. In the process I have gained yet more respect for people who do this every day!
Here are my early attempts, in which my lessons are clear…
For this cover, I used a free template background, and added a photo of my own of an illustrated letter ‘M’. I trialled this in various places but ultimately decided that it didn’t have any sense of fun, and the little red flowers at the bottom made me think of poppies – and therefore war!
This cover is an improvement, and links to the main series by way of the beach (Merryshields Book 1 is subtitled The Island In The Attic). However, that beach doesn’t feature in any of the short stories and therefore would be irrelevant to any reader just arriving at the series. The only fun element comes from knowing why there is a beach there, so that element is lost on any new readers. I did like the idea of the characters writing all over the front of a journal in their own styles…
I took a backwards step here. Although I still loved the idea of a journal being written all over, the journal cover I chose was too dark and – again – the fun was missing! Back to the drawing board…
Almost the final cover! I loved the colours on this (fun at last!) and I loved the different styles of scribbles by my kid characters. I just needed one final shuffle of composition, and to change the numbering system so that it would be more clear in a thumbnail – after all, the short stories are currently only available on Kindle, and it’s a fact that most people will look books up online – making thumbnail-accessible covers is more important than ever.
