If you’re like me, you’ve been waiting for this moment for weeks. Personally, I’ve been wanting to jump into a book cover reveal since I started working on the covers back in June! Can you imagine? Waiting three whole months to share with the world my visually creative skills to accompany my creative writing?
Well, thankfully for us all, the wait is finally over. I’d like to present to you…
Wait a minute. I’m not just gonna show you my book cover just like that. I have to build tension and drag it out, just like any good author does.
So before I show you my final book cover, here are the runner ups who fell just short of the finish line.
First, we have a cover design that I’ve already shared on my Facebook page almost a month ago. If you haven’t already liked that page, why not go ahead and do it. My Facebook page is mostly used for behind-the-scenes stuff.
While I really like this design, I just couldn’t see it as a book cover. To me, it works better as a poster than a book design. Although several elements of the novel are used on this cover, I just couldn’t sell myself enough on this being the cover.
Next up, we have our simple coffin cover. While it fits with the minimalist theme I created for myself, it was too plain to advance further in the competition of book covers that only I knew about. At the end of the day, it just wasn’t strong enough to be put on the cover of my novel.
Last but not least in our runner up category, we have our cabin in the woods-themed cover. I did have a hard time parting ways with this design. I liked that parts of the novel were brought to life in this design, not to mention being able to recycle the trees I made for my book trailer video. Sadly, my two finalist covers were just a little stronger than this one.
Now, onto the finalists. This cover, which also recycles the trees from my book trailer video, made it difficult to choose which design will be the face of my novel. For weeks, it was a tie between the above and below designs.
What it eventually boiled down to was how the design would look not only as an ebook version but as a print version as well. So, after a few more weeks of designing, it came down to the end: Trees vs. Inverted Cross.
At the end of the day, it wasn’t an easy decision. As difficult as it was, a decision obviously has been made. There wouldn’t be this big, drawn-out reveal if I hadn’t made a decision. To make this whole thing even sweeter I recorded myself to share the whole creation process with you.
Please note that I’m not a professional graphic designer. I did take a few graphic design classes, but that’s the extent of my education. With that being said, if I didn’t do something traditionally, that’s why.
But, since I think I’ve tortured you long enough, here is the cover for The Seventh Day.
Dreams Become Real by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)Artist: http://incompetech.com/
I decided to go with my gut and pick the cover that I initially had in my head when I started writing this novel about a year ago. Thankfully, in just a few short weeks, The Seventh Day will be available for you too!
Caitlyn Grey 