After multiple attempts at finding an agent, I sought the advice and wisdom of a published author. She offered several ideas and one that clicked with me was digital publishing.
I didn’t really know much about it when I first looked into it months ago. I’m finding the more I learn, the more I know absolutely nothing about it. Ironic how that works, isn’t it?
It didn’t take long for me to decided that self-publishing digitally had some merit, or at least in theory. In a few weeks, I will put that theory into practice and see just exactly how it goes. And be prepared because I plan to keep you posted!
One of the first things I learned was that the self-publishing author also needs to be a cover designer and writer of blurbs that will tantalize readers to want their work. Of course, you can pay someone to do those things, but wanting to keep the expenses at a minimum and with several years of graphic design experience to fall back on, I forged ahead.
For Heart of Clay, I knew I wanted a business woman and a cowboy on the cover. It needed to have a heart and beyond that, I didn’t have a clue. So being the random kind of person that I am, I decided to shoot the cover of my third book first. It went well and I was quite pleased with the results. So the colors and theme on it were carried through all three books in the Tenacity series.
A visit to the family farm provided the perfect opportunity to shoot the photo for the cover of book 2. Once I had it done, I was finally ready to work on the cover for book 1 – Heart of Clay.
First, I took the photo.
Then I added in a heart.
Then I didn’t like it being red, so I changed it to…
This purple, more stylized heart.
The next thing I fiddled with was some kind of flourish or accent. After much trial and error, I decided on this one.
The last thing I did was search for a font I liked, that went along with both the story and the design elements. I loved this one. It is called Bleeding Cowboy.
Once I had all the elements, I put the pieces together and it came out like this…
