Cemetery Tours Redesign

Alright, folks.  I’ve mentioned before here that I’ve been considering re-designing the Cemetery Tours book covers.  As y’all know, I absolutely love the designs created by my talented friend, Ben Durham.

However, the images on these covers are stock images.  They are not ones that I own.  Yes, I paid for the right to use them, but eventually, I would have to repay.  I also couldn’t use the design for any sort of promotional products other than the covers themselves.  I love these covers, but I believe I have the talent, experience, and resources available to design book covers using only my material.  No stock covers.  Everything about the books would be 100% mine.

That being said, if you really like the old cover designs and you really want a “first edition” copy with the original covers, order them now, because beginning October 6, only the new designs will be available.

http://www.amazon.com/Jacqueline-E.-Smith/e/B00F7BPXX6/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1

As for the designs themselves, I don’t really have a lot of experience when it comes to book covers.  I did design the cover to Boy Band, but I wanted to make sure that the new covers for Cemetery Tours were as high quality as the originals.

I started out with something simple.

But clearly, I still had work to do.

The next designs were a bit more colorful.

But to me, they still looked too sloppy.  I liked the colors in the second one, but somehow, it didn’t look professional.  It looked like something I designed in photoshop class.

Eager to experiment with the color scheme, I continued on to the third design idea.

For a little while, I thought these might be the final cover designs.  I liked them so much that I even designed a cover for the third book, After Death, to be released October 6.

Alas, after a few weeks, I realized there was still something to be desired about them.  They were too “busy” as one of my Twitter friends noticed.

I decided to give it one last shot.  These are the designs.  I’m certain.

Available October 6, 2015:

And the cover design for the newest book in the Cemetery Tours series!

Let me know what you think!

Oh!  And a friendly reminder that you can still enter to #BecomeACharacter in the next installment in the Boy Band series!

https://jackiesmith114.wordpress.com/2015/06/15/becomeacharacter/

Of Design and Decimals

I’ve learned something about myself in the last week or so.  I really, really enjoy designing book covers.  I didn’t think I’d be very good at it, especially since my earliest attempts ended up looking something like this:

You get the idea. Not good, right?  I’m really thankful for my friend and cover designer, Ben.  I have to admit, these looks a lot better:

Designing the cover to Boy Band started out the same way as those early copies of Cemetery Tours.

In other words, not good.  Thanks to the advice of my friend and editor, however, I decided to go back and see if I couldn’t come up with something a little better.  I have to say, I’m pretty happy with the end result, and I hope it looks as good printed on an actual cover as it does on my computer screen.

Like I said, I ended up really, really enjoying the design process and I’m hoping it’s something I can learn more about and maybe help others with in the future.

There was one downside to the whole thing, however, and that was… Math.  In order to successfully upload the image to the designer’s website, you have to add in and extra .25 inches, then in order to create a spine you had to add and multiply all these other decimals and as you can probably tell, I barely even figured out how to get it done.  There is no way I’d actually be able to explain it.  My notebook ended up looking like this:

Don’t even bother to check my math, because I can tell you right now it’s wrong.  I’d happily lived my post-high-school life secure in my faith that I would never, ever use math in my everyday life.  Well, I guess the joke is on me.  Not only did I have to use math, I was also cruelly reminded of how much I suck at it.  Grrrrr.

On a happier note, however, my proof copies of Boy Band were approved and are on their way to me now.  I’m super excited to see them!  I just hope the cover looks okay.  If not, it might be back to the drawing board.

Before I sign off, I also wanted to show you my new, improved, and redesigned website, http://www.windtrailpublishing.com.  It looks a lot more cheerful now.

Enjoy your day, everyone!  I pray that you don’t have to do any math.