Draft Cover

Yesterday, I got an email that my cover for First Step would be delivered within the next few days for me to review. I know from past experience that it means the draft would be behind the original email by an hour or two, and sure enough, another email popped into my inbox. I have to admit I had some trepidation. I’ve mentioned this before, which means that just like the unnecessary recap you can’t skip at the beginning of your streaming episode, I’m going to go over it again anyway. In setting up my previous two books with BookBaby, I had some specific prompts for them to use. That included the idea of an astronaut floating in space for the cover of First, as well as color schemes. For Next Time, I wanted the four trees in the picture to each portray a different season, and to include a bench on a college campus since that tied the beginning and ending of the book. This time? No clue, other than to make it look like First Step is related to First. Hence, my trepidation and almost not wanting to open the image, prepared to hate it or make a bunch of radical changes. All for naught, as they nailed it. It’s a gorgeous cover. Similar enough to First to get the connection, yet still enough elements to say this is a different tale. One of my sisters, also a writer, asked who’s publishing the book. I said I’m publishing it myself and I had BookBaby create the cover so it doesn’t look like I’m publishing it myself. It most definitely does not look like a half-ass job and is completely professional, able to sit right alongside every other book on your shelf or in the bookstore. I had a couple of minor corrections with the formatting of the description on the back, so I had to make a few notes and send back to the creative team. I’m hoping to do a cover reveal of the final version by the end of the week and everyone can see how awesome it looks.