Designing My Owen Book Covers

Over the last few months I’ve been on a bit of a journey in relation to my book covers. Let me start at the beginning…

Tax season rolled around this year and, of course, we had to submit all my book related stuff. I’ll admit that for the year 2013 I was a tad disappointed with where I came out from a net perspective. I had good sales last year with the release of Hyacinth and Crimson Dahlia. Blue Violet was free – so bringing in readers, but making me no money. But my expenses were taking too big a chunk out of my earnings.

I put on my business hat – I have to do this periodically as a self-published author. I looked at my expenses and tried to see where I could cut back to help make my bottom line look better. There were some small changes I could make. But the biggest ah-ha for me was that my book covers are approximately 1/3 of my total expenses for any given book.

Which got me to thinking… I spent 5 years as a web designer. Maybe I could do my own book covers?

I never dreamed of taking on my own book cover design for several reasons. First, it’s been about 9 years since I did any graphic design. Second, web page design is very different from book cover design. Third, all of the advice for self-published authors is spend your dollars on 2 things – editing and book covers. Fourth, it’s one more draw on my time. And so on.

In addition, I absolutely adore the book covers that Jason and Regina have done for me, which makes me very reluctant to stop going to them. And that time away from my writing thing is also a big deterrent. However, saving 1/3 of my total expenses is huge from a business standpoint.

I decided to start playing around with some book cover designs for some possible future projects as well as some past books. I wanted to both knock the rust off and determine if I could make something that looked professional enough.

Here are a few I’ve done so far…

I discovered that I LOVE doing my book covers. I access a different creative part of my brain. I find that they help me picture things more clearly for my stories in odd ways. In addition, I have full access to the graphics which allow me to do more things with my website, FB banners, etc.

It’s a bittersweet decision to make. Like I said – I adore Jason’s and Regina’s designs. But after full consideration… look for future book covers to be from Abigail Owen. We’ll see where this new dimension to my writing takes me!