Well, friends, I'm really excited because I'm just days away from publishing my first independent ebook for Kindle and Nook. I set sort of a breakneck schedule to get the book into the marketplace and I thought I wouldn't have time to design my own cover art. Once upon a time I was pretty good at navigating my way around Photoshop--but that was ten years ago. Technology has passed me by and today I don't have any version of Photoshop at all. Like most indie authors I'm working on a tight budget with limited resources.
How I Got Started
The first thing I wanted to do was determine what kind of artwork appeals to ebook buyers. Cover art can be magnificently crafted but unless the audience can read the title in a tiny thumbnail image it's mostly useless. I did lots of looking and I decided I wanted to model my book cover after Christopher Smith's novel
Fifth Avenue. The colors were minimal but bold, the text was clear and the image looked great in thumbnail form.
My Cover Art Conundrum
Since I didn't have Photoshop I didn't know how I was going to create a decent looking ebook cover. I immediately thought of Fiverr.com, a website where people provide services for a mere $5 price tag. I searched through the graphic artists who had experience designing ebook covers. I corresponded with a woman whose artwork I liked, explained to her what I needed, and because it was a bit more complicated than most projects she said she's have to charge me $10.
Big deal, I thought. A new Photoshop package costs over $100. But a fortuitous event happened. The artist I was corresponding with took three days to respond to me.
An Impatient Author
I didn't need my cover art immediately but I was working within a strict schedule and I didn't want to stray from it because someone didn't email me back. So I searched YouTube for ebook cover art tutorials when I remembered Gimp. Gimp is an open source (aka free!) photo manipulation application that is just as effective as Photoshop but not as user friendly. I'd downloaded it several months back and completely forgotten about it. So I fired it up one Sunday morning and played around with it, watched some YouTube tutorials and by bedtime I had my
Thrill Rides cover mock-up.
Stock Images
In the end I spent about $20 for stock images for the artwork. I think the roller coaster and the couple images both came from Dreamstime but I can't really remember. Their prices were much more reasonable than Shutterstock and iStockPhoto and they suited my needs.
Here is how the artwork looks in a large format:
And here's how it looks in thumbnail form:
I like how it's easy to read. I hope readers will respond to it favorably. And I'm especially pleased that I learned a few new photo manipulation tricks.
Image via Wikipedia
