More on Covers

It took a couple of tries, but I finally got Ingramspark to accept the paperback cover for Revenge Served Hot. While my formatter did the majority of the work, I needed to add the company logo and the bar code to the cover. And therein lies the problem. I spent a couple of hours figuring things out with JPGs and PDFs I could have spent writing.

It's a catch-22. Do you spend the time learning new things? Or would you be better off writing?

That's a question every indie writer needs to figure out for themselves. Most of the time, the money I spend on covers and my cover artists' time is worth the time I save in not creating the covers from scratch.

But on the other hand, I want to develop that skill set so I know what to ask for from my cover artists. So cover time is actually time I'd spend watching TV.

For example, I sprint in the evenings with a friend until 11 pm. Then I watch Colbert or Family Feud until bedtime because these days, I need the laughs. So I can listen to monologues or trivia questions while fooling around with PAINT.

The other problem is I usually don't understand stuff unless I am doing it myself. That hint of tactile learning in me is one reason I was able to homeschool Genius Kid who is 100% a tactile learner. So spending the couple of hours learning how to do paperback covers has been super beneficial for reasons that have nothing to do with time constraints.

Next week, I'll do an entire paperback cover from scratch. I'll let you know how long that takes and show you the results.