Jeremy C Kester

Well let’s talk covers. Book covers. I love them; I hate them. Some are brilliant, others bland, others are just plain bad. It is an art-form. And one that I am ever far from mastering.

As a poor independent author, I took it upon myself to make my own covers. Let’s just say, I suck at it. Not entirely, but bear with me. I could go out and spend $300 or more to get someone else to make my cover. It would be easier, however, there is a certain amount of do-it-yourself-hootspa that drives me to say that doing it that way is an absolute non-option. So I’ve been dealing with my sucking at this art.

Now it drives me a little crazy because there is the question of what makes a good cover? It is the art? An emotion? How it fits the contents inside? I find that it is different every single time. At least for me. Sometimes I look at some covers and am amazed as to how they appear. Other times I shrug at them.

But let’s be honest, covers are what bring us to the dance. The blurb is the next hurdle. That’s another topic.

I would very much rather hire an artist to design ever cover. Like I said above, I just can’t logically justify it right now. Again, so I have been doing my own.

I have eight books out right now. That’s eight covers, each designed by me. Of them, I am happy with two. Just two. Maybe four. MAYBE. Here’s the two I like.

The other two that I am maybe OK with:

The rest, I think SUCK. I am just not happy with any of them. And that is an understatement on how I feel.

Yet it is frustrating, because I don’t have an idea as to how to fix them. At least right now.