The old saying “never judge a book by its cover’ is probably one of the least followed pieces of advice ever.
Writing a book takes not only time but passion. You have to have some kind of deep desire of wanting to see your writing actually make its way from your computer to an actual book. Hours and hours of research, writing, reading, and editing goes into making a book a reality. But some authors will wrap hundreds of hours of their work inside of a cover that was not thought out and quickly made.
I’m an advent reader with metric crap ton of books that fill my house but I’m sure I’ve passed on twice as many books simply because the cover did not draw or keep my attention. So in the midst of writing my own book, I struggled with what to do for the cover. I knew I couldn’t make it myself and I didn’t know too many artist that were good with photoshop and had experience in book cover design. That was until I found upwork.com.
Upwork is place where you can hire freelancers to complete a creative job for you. So I posted an ad looking for a graphic designer. After a day or two, I had over 30 proposals from various artist and graphic designers. They all had very good work but nobody’s style stood out to me that could really represent what this book was about. That was until I came across Kenny’s proposal. Before I even clicked on his portfolio, the last lines of his proposal instantly caught me.
Hello,
My name is Kenny N. I am very interested in this project. For one thing, I enjoy good poems and the themes you’ve describes are things that I very much understand. And If you would have me, I’d be more than happy to work for you. If you find a better artist, which you very well may, I would still like to talk to you about your book, because it sounds good
Cheers, Kenny N.
Here was an artist that took genuine interest in my work and wanted to know more about it despite if he got the job or not. So I decided to click on portfolio and check out his work…
His style was exactly what I was looking for! There was absolutely no doubt that this was the artist meant to draw the cover for my book. However, little did I know, this meeting was forewritten. Kenny’s wife is the one who originally found my proposal and encouraged him to reach out and bid on it. I’m extremely grateful that she did. I got in contact with Kenny and we were able to work out the details. I sent him an electronic copy of the book and simply told him to have at it. And have at it, he did.
After anxiously waiting for a week, Kenny sent me 5 different mockups. And each one was pure fire. I could easily see each one of them being my cover but it was the first one that he drew that instantly stood out. Now this is where it gets crazy. Shortly after my dad died, I took picture that became somewhat of a self fulfilling prophecy in my life (can’t give too much of the details away yet). Now I did NOT tell Kenny about this picture. To be honest, I had forgot that the picture existed. But somehow he recreated this photo with his own twist to it.
So let us see this cover!!!
Chill!!! Be patient. So the cover is due to be ready October 1st and I can’t wait to reveal it! The cover reveal will be one of the last steps before I actually publish the book. I still have a lot of work to do when it comes to actually launching and marketing this book. In the meantime, head over to Kenny’s website and check out his work. That way you can get a feel of what this cover may look like.
