Steve D. Wall

I am so happy to share the cover art for the Sound of Change!

Credit to Lance Buckley. https://www.lancebuckley.com/.

I’ve had a few people ask me about the process of creating my cover art, so I thought I would detail it here.

Something I’ve learned is that publishers and bookstores view covers as more of a marketing tool than it a representation of the story, and they’re probably right, because despite the saying, people can and do judge books by their covers.

But having said that, I still wanted to create a cover that I loved. And that’s definitely what I managed to do.

As for the actual process, there are two major considerations I had to start with: 1- How much money I was willing to spend, and 2- The style of artwork I wanted. The cost can vary wildly for a number of reasons, but regarding the style of artwork, basically, there are three major categories.

• An Illustration cover is where an artist sits down and creates the cover art by hand. It takes time and effort and is definitely the most expensive method, but your options are unlimited. These are particularly common in Fantasy and Science Fiction.
• A Photoshopped cover is where an artists takes stock photo images, manipulates them, and pieces them together to make the cover art. This is the style used for my book covers. It is less expensive, but you are constrained to what stock images are available for your artist. I would put covers that just have the title written stylistically as their cover in this category as well.
• An actual photo. Definitely the cheapest (if you own the photo), but really only makes sense as the cover of a biography or memoir or something like that.

A common piece of advice I found was to go look up covers of books I like and determine the similarities between them. Were there characters on the front? Was it a  specific scene from the story? Or were they more simple and symbolic, like a crest, coat of arms, or an important icon? Perhaps it was just a landscape terrain?

I ended up choosing a photoshopper. Partially because of cost, but also because I like cover art that is on the simpler side. If a single image can convey multiple ideas or feelings, then it’s a powerful image— one that tells a story, if you will— and I felt confident I could create something like that.

Every item on my cover is representative of something or someone in the story, some of which you can see straight off, and some you won’t notice until after you’re read it. But because of its simplicity, I feel like it allows the imagination to kind of run wild with the other areas of the story. At least, that’s the idea.

But like I said, I ultimately wanted to created a cover that I loved, and that’s the biggest piece of advice I would give to anyone trying to create a book. 😊