Since I’m both cheap and somewhat skilled in graphic design,
it comes as no surprise that I design my own book covers. I wish I made enough
money from book royalties to justify paying a professional cover artist to
design my covers, but I don’t. Instead, I fiddle around for several hours in
Photoshop Elements until I have something I would be proud to display on a
bookshelf. I’m lucky that I have the skills to do this (hooray for taking art
classes throughout high school and college!) because as we all know, most
writers don’t. They don’t really have a choice but to hire someone to do their
cover art or purchase premade covers (which may be an option for me in the
future too, if I don’t think I have the skills to pull off a certain cover).
Anyway, lucky me for being so darn talented at things and stuff.
So, since I’m not paying anyone to do my cover for me, I
have to spend several hours doing it myself. This post illustrates just how I
go about that.
