An eBook cover evolves

Since I have been talking about the goals I have for possibly publishing some of my fiction as eBooks, I thought I'd write a bit about the process of creating the covers. When I first learned that I'd either have to pay someone to create a digital cover or do it myself, I was not thrilled. Like eek.

Then as I began working with it, I discovered it is very satisfying to figure out what images would work. Having created them, I know these characters better than any graphic artist. Plus the probability is I won't be making much if any money doing this; so I'd like to keep my costs minimal.

When I began working on digitals, I came up with the size I would need to approximate a paperback cover for ratio. I began many of them rather simplistically with iconic type images. I'd let them sit and then as ideas came to me. I'd add something, and if it didn't work, go back to the original idea. The surprise has been that in doing them it has helped me with the editing jobs as in personalizing these people, I think it's yielded better dialogue and given me more feel for the characters.

In the past, when I wrote a fiction story, to be honest, I never visualized the people I created. I'd write physical descriptions of them but never, in my imagination went there to see what that would mean. I don't imagine what characters, in books that I read, look like either. They are mostly dreamlike for how they appear to me. I also never imagine them as being played by any movie star.

Which left me with an issue. How do I then create faces for them? I definitely didn't want to use celebrity types as I wanted these characters to seem like real people even as such stories are not really like real life (we hope). I also didn't want to go for the photographic reality thing. I wanted the images to be painterly and done with digital tools.

The process I used to begin simply was iconic, looking at the meaning behind the story, then add this or that as more came to me. The examples below are from one of my stories which is about the trip West on the Oregon Trail. It's one I had thought might work to be published on paper but it doesn't really fit a genre and basically, at 140,000 words, is too long.

Average length from an unpublished author, if they submit to a publishing house that takes queries, is supposed to run from 70-100,000 words with ideal at 80-90,000. This particular story is one where over ten years ago I worked with a professional consulting writer who taught me a lot about writing (it was not cheap but well worth it) and helped me get rid of the excess verbiage. I don't see it being able to be shorter than it is and still tell its story.

The other two historically based stories (one of which is a sequel to this one) both came in at around 120,000 (still too long to attract a publisher) but they at least didn't have descriptions of the trip west with which to add to their length. My goals with the wagon train story was that it be both a love story and of the trip West.

Where length matters to a publishing house, online I don't think it will make any difference. Still this particular one is not one I plan to put out as an eBook just yet as I still hope someday to see it and the one following it to be in book form (but not going to use Lulu as I have no interest of trying as an individual to get books into bookstores).

The question might be asked then why do a cover for this one. It's because it felt like the cover became a part of its completion and they all deserved to be completed. Remember stories like these are like a person's children in a lot of ways. It also presented a challenge to me given it was the first story I ever wrote down and it has some character issues that I felt would make it difficult to do but that made me want to do it all the more.

In wanting it to illustrate the idea of the trip West, to attract a possible reader's attention who was only going to give it two seconds, the cover had an obvious possible iconic subject that would do the job-- Conestoga wagon.


I could have used just the wheels from such a wagon. I have two of them here at the farm probably from the family that homesteaded this property, but wheels suggest it's over. Wagon is better. Wagon might have been enough actually -- except.

I began to wonder if I could create the girl, a character I first created in my imagination when I was probably her age (17) and who I have written and edited over many times until I'd be her grandmother if not her great grandmother. So I played around with it. I had nothing to lose as I still could have gone back to just the wagon-- what I love about digital.

I really liked her face once it came into being. She had the strength and beauty that I felt my character had to have. She looked real to me (in painterly form at least) For awhile I thought maybe that would be enough-- until the challenge kept growing in my mind. What would the hero look like? He was a more complex problem.

This guy really is my major interest in the story although it's the story of both people as they follow the Oregon Trail, deal with the problems along the way, and possibly fall in love. He had to be young (21 or 22) and boys that age often don't look strong enough. My character had gone through a lot by this age, was toughened by that.


My first attempt got me the pose and general face but not quite right. This guy looked a little like a ne-er-do-well. That would never do. My young hero has to have a rough edge, strong, but not look like a bum even to me.

Finally I got to a face that looked as I imagined he might have. The first attempt though had his eyes looking forward or down, which made sense since he's bringing oxen up to hitch into a team. You know with a small figure like his, it's not easy to show the eyes at all and yet I kept thinking his eyes need to change. If he looks down, he looks submissive, not involved. What does he want? Can I show that in such a small image?


Where I really wanted the covers to also say something about the issues in the story, he should be looking toward her as she's staring off to something beyond the horizon. Once he did that, with almost a yearning expression, it did say something about the dynamics between these characters. The last one is the one I will use (unless I come up with something better) if this story becomes an eBook.


There would then, of course, be a title and my name; but I plan to keep the originals of them all as they are more like digital paintings without the necessary information.

Anyway editing these stories, writing some brief synopses of what the stories are about, is what I have been doing as all thirteen now have a cover. By the end of the summer, I'll have the stories where I want them and then hopefully I will have figured out whether creating eBooks is what I want for them and how I can get them seen by readers.

Update: After a helpful comment from one of the readers of this blog, I looked again at my hero's shirt and tie. Where I want to leave the shirt part way open-- this is a hot trip after all *wink* ,( there are some elements to the story which suggest an open shirt is a good hint to the plot) but the tie was obviously a problem. For cattlemen or on a trip like this working with livestock, dealing with the weather, and a lot of dust, a scarf is a serious part of the outfit, but I had it tied wrong leading to the feeling my reader suggested about the hero... He would have also had a hat but I'll keep thinking about that one as would he have to wear it all the time? I like his hair pretty much as it is. Maybe the hat is hanging down his back from a cord. Anyway on the open shirt, you do have to keep in mind-- this is a romance ;).