There was a time when all I wanted was to have a choice. I even prayed for situations where options would be narrowed down by me. But for a long time that just wasn’t the case…at least not in the way I wanted it to be. I had to take what I could get. That was the case for me when it came time to decide what college I would go to and later what jobs I would take – not necessarily the ones I wanted, just the ones that didn’t reject me.
Then, after many years, I finally got an opportunity to choose only to find out it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. Choosing is hard because so many variables, scenarios run through my mind: how do I make the right choice? how do I know I’ve made the right choice? what if I make the wrong choice?
That’s the situation I find myself in now as I hire people to help me bring my book to life or to print. Hiring a book cover illustrator/designer has been an especially challenging task. You know what they say, you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, but from what I’ve read regarding book covers, people do in fact judge books by their covers.
I must admit, when I decided to self-publish my book, the cover was the least of my concerns. I don’t think I’ve ever judged a book by its cover. Whenever I go shopping for a book, or get it from the library, I’ve usually already heard of the book. Even when I go up and down the book aisles, I’m usually looking for a familiar author or title, that’s what draws me in, not the cover itself. But nowadays many people are browsing online, so perhaps that’s what makes the difference.
Anyway, that’s where we are now, and so now I’m kinda obsessed with getting the perfect cover. I want a book that’s pretty enough to leave on your coffee table. Even though most fiction books don’t end up there, I want mine to be different – move over Tom Ford! Although my book will be much smaller than his, so actually it can just sit nicely on top…maybe at an angle for more interest. I want my cover to have a bit of mystery as the story inside does.
In choosing someone to take on this project, there has been so much to consider: their artistry, their fee, their turnaround time, and lastly their attitude. You may have noticed that I left off experience. That was no accident. Experience doesn’t mean that much to me…professional experience that is. I mean you can’t be like I want to design your cover and have nothing to show, but I don’t care about your GPA, where you’ve worked, who you’ve worked for as long as you have a portfolio of work , it could be from your Instagram, and I’ll consider it.
The hard part is having to turn people down or in essence reject them. I’m all too familiar with rejection and I hate how that feels, so it’s difficult to inflict that on someone else. And for all I know, these people may not even care, but it’s my own personal pain that makes that so hard for me.
I almost feel like I should have commissioned the cover art first before the editing. I mean it’s such a long process. Or I could have done those simultaneously.
But before I get too hard on myself, I have to give myself some grace – I’m literally learning this as I go.
At the same time, I also feel I need to pick up the pace. I feel like I could have had my book published by now. And I have other stories in my mind that I want to tell. That I need to start working on before they leave me.
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