Finding Zen: New Cover Announcement

The Shadow Phoenix series was my first ever, and because of that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. My first version of the Zen cover I did myself and… it was okay. But, I didn’t know the first thing about designing a book cover.

Zen’s first cover that I designed myself.

I quickly realized that your cover is your most important marketing tool and that not knowing what you’re doing wasn’t good. At all. So, I hired a designer. Sarah. She’s awesome and great to work with and I plan to use her again in the future. (Check out her portfolio here).

But anyway, I found Sarah in a Facebook group and loved her work, so I hired her to make me a custom cover for Zen. The problem was… I had no idea what I wanted. I didn’t give her a lot of direction and even when it didn’t come out quite like I envisioned, I wasn’t sure what to tell her to get it to where I wanted it to be. So I left it and had her do the rest of the series covers in the same design.

There was just something I didn’t love, even if I had no idea what I wanted and couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

Finding Zen’s second cover. Much more professional.

So, I started collecting covers. Anytime I would see a cover I liked, I saved it to a folder so I could get a sense of what it was I was looking for. And I started playing in Photoshop, learning new techniques. I designed a bunch of covers for fun for my friend, and fellow author, Melony Ann.

And suddenly I realized what was missing. The covers weren’t rock star-y enough. They were good, professional covers. But they didn’t give off that dark vibe I realized I wanted. So, I started messing around and spent hours in Photoshop until I had something that I liked.

Zen’s third (and final?) cover.

So, what do you think? Which cover do you prefer? Leave me a comment and let me know!