Cover story 3

Alright, so sales of The Beast have predictably slowed down. So I panicked.

I love the cover artwork that I have been using but have always felt that perhaps it would not appeal enough to older readers. After all the book does have some adult themes and is not written for children, although most teenagers would enjoy it.

Down the rabbit hole I dropped. Researching cover artists – but they all began to look the same. Checking out illustrators – wow, there are a lot of excellent artists to be found.

I looked up cover artists from some of my favourite books ( how much? Too Much £££).

Then as usual I thought to myself, “If they can do it, why can’t I?”

Then I got really lost. My son has recently completed a whole illustrated children’s book all using digital art. Surely I can manage to work out how to do just one picture. Many hours later I spat out the dummy and decided that perhaps I should draw a design on paper instead.

I was proud of my creation (see top of page) and thought that following this success I could easily transfer it into a digital image and get back to work on an amazing digital illustration. How wrong I was. All I achieved was a night of lost sleep and too much caffeine.

Back to the start. New day, new cover artists to explore. More time wasted arguing with myself over cost and quality.

I did discover somewhere along the line, that most of the cover designers I did like used the same artist on Shutterstock. I could do that. Download a few images, tweak them and make them mine. Create a new book cover. Done.

Well, it wasn’t quite that easy but I like what I have created (check it out at the bottom of the page). Let me know what you think in the comments or drop me a message at author@stevenmphillipsauthor.com