Let me first say that I didn’t plan this. Not any of it–not the fact that today’s “Wednesday” post is late, nor what has turned out to be a month of cover-related posts (oops! sorry about that).
To be fair, earlier in the month I was talking about creating a wraparound cover for The Carousel Capers (find the latest post in that saga here). Meanwhile, behind the scenes, I’ve been hard at work on an entirely different cover–the cover for the first novel in The Alchemical Tales series, Beauty and the Alchemist.
And my post is a day late because I wanted to share that cover . . . but I totally burned myself out trying to make it “perfect” first.
>>Warning! This post turned out very long. 🙂 The cover is at the bottom of the page if you want to scroll past my angst first! Okay, back to the story:
There is no such thing as perfect.
That’s my new mantra.
There’s no such thing as perfect. There’s no such thing as perfect . . .
Let me explain by starting at the beginning. My m.o. when it comes to cover creation is to start a new file in Canva and gather all the elements I want to include. Then I’ll make a first draft and let it sit for a day or two. Then another draft and a break, and then another–you get the idea. 🙂 This worked just fine for Carousel. The problem is, when I arrived at my fourth draft for Beauty and it looked pretty good, I . . . didn’t stop.
You’ve probably heard that “perfect is the enemy of good,” right? That was my entire day yesterday. I opened up my cover file, ready to share it here and on social media, and was struck by doubt. I started tinkering with it, adding elements that weren’t there before. I just wasn’t happy with it and I couldn’t say why. I made six new drafts yesterday alone. And when I had my (very patient, long-suffering) boyfriend share them with his coworkers to get a vote on which draft was best, they all voted for the first draft.
Talk about a blow to the heart. What about my hours of poring through Canva? What about the new potion bottle that I’d added and loved? What about the color changes? What about, what about, what about. I had my answer in a unanimous vote, but I still couldn’t take it.
The thing I find hard about covers is that, contrary to my idealized picture of artists creating art for art’s sake, authors are specifically told that this is not for you. It is for the readers. This isn’t the kind of art where you let your heart speak and the sincerity of it is beautiful. This is the kind of art that is made to be judged. (“Don’t judge a book by its cover”–ha!) So I ended up in a loop: I wanted the cover to be reflective of my story–to include the right elements, to create the right theme and feeling, etc. But, I also wanted the cover to fit in with its genre, to draw readers in, and to do so with minimal confusion. I have sat in webinars where the speaker describes testing out different covers for the same book–covers with minimal differences: say, a red title instead of a white one, or a person’s shadow instead of an empty road–and seeing actual differences in revenue depending on which cover was in use.
Now, the scientist in me would like to point out that that wasn’t a very controlled study, and the comparisons weren’t totally fair because some of the covers were literally hard to read. But still, it makes sense, right? We do judge books by covers. Covers tell us not only what to expect from the story, but also how professional–or unprofessional–the author and the publisher might be. The cover is the first way that the author (and publisher) establish credibility.
And my story, as a blending of two genres, is already hovering on the distant edge of credible.
At least, that’s how the little voice inside my head feels. I put an incredible amount of stress on myself over this. And in the end, I just couldn’t see my way to getting it done “on time”–on, might I add, the schedule I had created for myself. (Jeez, anxiety is so weird sometimes, isn’t it? 😉 )
So here I am, the morning after, feeling a little more sane–especially since I just got to write it all out. (Thanks for bearing with me!) And while writing, I’ve realized that part of the point of writing a cross-genre story is to create a new standard for credibility.
And I did end up using that first draft! . . . With a few improvements. 😀 I didn’t get it perfect.
But I do love it, and it does reflect my story. 🙂
