One adventure in indie publishing was the prospect of developing cover art. Back in 2018 when I was working on this process, there was not the insane artificial intelligence text-to-image generators that have taken over in 2022. When set out, stock cover options were fairly limited and (in my opinion) stereotypes. With that in mind, I set out to create my own graphic - something that captured the themes of Houses of the Curious.
Initial Concept - Spiderfly
As readers and listeners know, the themes of Houses of Curious touch on what makes us human in the era where singularity ASI is loose and organically interacting with civilization. I tried to first sketch images of my vision of that world - something cyberpunk, but less rainy. Perhaps it was lack of skill, perhaps lack of imagination, but the digital images (bashes and sketched out) just didn’t capture the imagination. I needed something different.
After reading far too many blogs of the Best Covers of All Time, I decided to reduce my vision to something more elemental - a theme from the book. The spider web captured my imagination. Still, images of webs alone - though captivating natural geometry - didn’t quite reach the heart of themes.
I bashed images down to core elements to create hybrid pieces of spiderwebs and transistors. The ‘techno-spider web’ felt true to the theme and looked the part. I set about refining the theme.
It turns out, even what you think is a good theme has infinite variations. This is the point where an agent or publisher would help refine the cover, bring on a graphic designer, maybe even convene focus groups. But, playing my own publisher and graphic designer, it was up to me. I tumbled down the rabbit hole of color studies.
First, I came to a start red-black-white-yellow them. While I liked it, my beta reader and family support team dismissed it, going so far as to say it looked like an upscale burger chain menu. Back to the safety of my computer and color studies.
Much to my computers chagrine, my color studies added layer on layer on layer of adjustments, tweaking and bending the hues and saturation. While I didn’t actually kill my computer with heat, I say with some confidence I took years off its life. I knew just enough about graphic design to be dangerous to a processor.
Next, being the novice that I was (and still am), I fell in love with gradients. Graphic designers and artists reading this are probably rolling their eyes. Little did I know that web presses don’t get along very well with gradients. I only found this out printing my first beloved proof copy of my book. Gradients look sad. But, I’m getting ahead of myself - text studies.
Having settled on a subtle blue-green gradient and my high concept graphic, it came time to add the cover. Knowing enough to be dangerous, I knew that one shouldn’t use serif fonts (you know the fonts with little bulbs and squiggles, Times New Roman being the prime example). Armed with that dangerous knowledge, I decided that I should explore those squiggly waters.
I turned text to vectors, dabbled in kerning, and played with all dimension of my text. Whatever the product, it was mine and it remains mine today, the surviving relic of my self-cover-artistry adventure. Getting there was days in the rabbit hole. Illustrator is a vortex.
But, finally, I had arrived. Graphic, text, colors. Ready to go to press.
And meet the cruel gatekeeper of print design. I set out to use and first printed through IngramSpark having watched every indie author video on the subject. IngramSpark was the real-deal process, demanding on cut and bleed lines, gutter margins, spine width based on page length, file type, resolution - every dimension of professional print design was left in my hands.
Undeterred, I returned to my desktop and burned my processor some more, resizing huge vectors and gradients, stretching and shaping my cover text, cracking open my back cover blurb again to revisit the neurotic experience of summarizing my own work. But it was complete. A true indie author book and cover art.
EPILOGUE - THE PROFESSIONAL
After about a year, I was persuaded by a publishing consultant to revisit my cover and bring it more in-line with genre standards. Having experienced the humbling royalties of the indie experience, I was ready to test new waters. I headed to DeviantArt and met with Joe Slucher, an illustrator and concept artist whose work I found perfect for my thoughts and the themes. We worked together and he built a wonderful cover that realized that initial vision - a cyberpunk world that’s not so raining. Lord of the Rings for the singularity.