A Cover Story

The absolutely wonderful Glendon at Streetlight Graphics did the covers for my Fire Born series. He's designed two already and I hope he'll continue for the remaining three. Not only did he do the covers, he did the map and the formatting. In essence, I handed him my Word doc and he gave me back a completed book in multiple ebook and print file formats (optimized by vendor).

Going into the Great Cover Artist Hunt, I knew I wanted an illustrated cover. Matter of fact, I knew exactly what I wanted on the cover--her hand holding the snowglobe nation with just a hint of her unusual face. I also know that being that particular about a vision can often lead to disappointment.

It didn't.

I love working with Glendon. I found his company, Streetlight Graphics, through a Google search. Yes, I reviewed hundreds of potential artists' sites before contacting Streetlight Graphics. It's a case of being 85% sold purely based on their website. Their site isn't particularly whizbang. It's actually quite a simple site while being very informative, which told me they understood the value of restraint in design and respected the self-publishing author. Once I contacted them, Glendon closed the deal with his personable professionalism.

Glendon sent me a worksheet to complete that asked for everything from title, tagline, back copy, comparables, likes and dislikes, etc. From there, it was a matter of approving initial concept sketches (which he nailed out of the gate, btw), then minor tweaks. I had no changes to the spine and back cover design for the print version.

Same story for the second cover, which I'll reveal...after I write the book. (DOH!)

Yeah, if you need a one-stop-shop that does amazing work, I highly recommend Streetlight Graphics.