Cover art can often be problematic. If you're already a good artist, you are golden. Most of us aren't that fortunate. I started my freshman year in college thinking I would be an art major and within a week I was a photography major. But I don't know how often a photo is really useful as artwork. Altho I don't see me changing the cover of Bad Apple anytime soon (ever) and I did that photo.
I've been struggling with Sweeps for...from the beginning. I still don't think that's the right title for it but I never come up with something better. Since it's been selling a little bit at Amazon this month, I'll stick with Sweeps. But the cover doesn't really do it justice. I considered hiring a designer but I never got a clear sense of what he intended for the quite substantial amount of money he wanted. Then I learned that HP Mallory bought the cover art and used Photoshop to tinker it together. I decided to search the stock image sites again, this time looking for vector art instead of photography. I found her image so I knew I was on the right track. I found an image I thought I could work with.
There were a couple issues with this image I liked well enough. Since it was intended for Valentine's Day, it was loaded with hearts. That didn't help me. If I wanted to stay with Sweeps and the soap opera inflection, I needed to get rid of the hearts, the box of candy and find a free broom. I would like to change the skin tone but every time I changed it, everything else also got dulled down/a pink cast over it. Someday I'll go back and try to figure that out but I have too much to do to be hung up on something that won't bother anyone else.
Yes, it would have been nice to have a guy in the image, too. I couldn't find that. I don't think I can learn how to do vector art, nor am I artistically inclined enough to come up with the right ideas. So you make do.
This is the image I'm uploading to Amazon today.
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