Last time around, I had a terrible time/did a terrible job looking for potential cover images for my book in advance. I approached the issue all wrong (thinking about what I thought would represent my story, instead of understanding that the purpose of a book cover is to catch the eye of a reader in the appropriate genre). I also didn’t have a great place to start looking.
But thanks to a comment by Andrea Pearson on the Six Figure Authors podcast, I found a book cover marketplace Facebook group filled with cover artists and frequent links to premades or the artists’ own pages. Now, instead of not being able to find anything, I am overwhelmed with options.
The trick has been narrowing that list down to examples that fit within my genre. I know that the covers I look at now will not be available when I finish my book (and I’m not bold enough to go out and buy the cover now and then make sure that my book matches – I think that requires more skill than I have developed so far), but I at least want to get an idea of the tone and styles out there and hopefully settle on one.
I haven’t found anything “perfect” yet, but that’s probably a good thing, since I wouldn’t want that perfect cover to already be available and get taken before I can buy it. At least I have a great direction to start.