Hi, everyone. We're glad you're here. This is the Three Lesbians and a Pen podcast. Get ready to have your world rocked. As we dive into the wild and sometimes wacky world of self-publishing. We are three fabulous bestselling authors. I'm your host, Kimberly Todd with my best friends.

K. C. Luck

and Jamey Moody. 

Join us as we discuss the joys of writing, challenges of self-publishing, and anything else that tickles our fancy. 

Hey there and welcome to episode 41 of the Three Lesbians and a Pen podcast. I'm Kimberly Todd, and I'm here with my fabulous friends, KC Luck and Jamey Moody. Today we're talking about How to Find a Great Cover Designer. But before we start, how was your week? 

My week was good, actually. I had a really fun time this last weekend when we had a community garage sale. So I don't know about you two, but I love looking for treasures at yard sales and garage sales and book sales. So it was really fun.

There were about 50 in the big community park where I live, and it was great, except for the fact that it poured down rain. I know. Oh. It was like, it's been nice for the last two months on weekends, you know? And then of course we have a garage sale and it's just like pouring down and like 59 degrees. It was so cold.

Ooh, that's a lot of stuff to go through.

Yeah. It was fun. And then, also been working on Darkness seven. So that's in the works for those who are interested in the Darkness series that is underway. So that's exciting. And I have some pretty good plot lines this time already mapped out. ' cause I'm a big, you know, plotter as we know.

Yeah.

As we know.

And so that's underway. And also by the time this comes out, you'll all know my book is released. It actually came out today of the day. We're recording the podcast. And by then it'll be old news. I'm sure it'll be number one and all this other good stuff will have happened it. 

Right.

Put it out there. That's how do it. 

Put it in the universe.

Exactly. So that's what's going on with me. 

Well, since our last podcast, two very exciting things have happened to me. The first one was the, author event that I had told some of y'all about. It was such a great time. It was in Oklahoma City. I got to meet one of my long time, ARC readers. Yeah, in person. Shout out Tina.

And, she ended up hanging around for, most of the signing. I got to, sit with a fellow author that I had met in Denver a couple of years ago. Robin Clairvaux. I think y'all know who she is, which was great. She was a lot of fun and several, bookstagrammers were there, which was kind of exciting.

Sterling Sapphic Reads, Tacie Cherry is one of 'em and, she's got some things in the work, but it was just great to connect with them and actually meet them in person and then meet the readers and sign a few books and the bookstore wants some of my books. So that was exciting and it was just a really good time.

Nice.

So, Yeah, it worked out really well. But the most exciting thing that happened to me since we've recorded last is author Kimberly A. Todd, came to Texas and if you know listeners, I live in Texas. And Kimberly and I happened to be pretty good friends and we were able to meet and actually hug each other.

Oh, that's nice.

It was so fun. 

It was. 

We ate at a little diner and they almost ran us off.

We closed down the diner. 

Yeah. The selfies you sent me were awesome. 

Yeah, we didn't realize the diner closed in between lunch and dinner. So when they ran us off, here's the fun part, we went to Starbucks and neither one of us drink coffee. But it was great. They've got these summer breeze lemonades, so, we each got one of those and kept visiting. It was really fun. So it was really nice to see Kimberly.

Same here.

Yeah. So. that's my big news.

Yeah, that was fun. And we tried to meet a few times. It just never worked out, but this time it did. So it was really good to see each other. So I finally finished doing my research for my book that I'm working on. And I don't know about you guys, but I sat down all ready to write and twice this has happened to me.

I go and I know what I'm writing. I know what's gonna happen, and I write like 200 words, and then I'm like, oh, I need to empty the dishwasher. Then. I come back and I'm like another 520 something words, and I'm like, yeah, maybe I should figure out what I'm gonna make for dinner tonight. Does that ever happen to you? 

Yeah, nothing gets laundry done faster than having a deadline, that's for sure. So. 

I'll tell you, Kimberly, I think I shared this with you. On Mondays I don't work and so it's like, all right, I could get up and, you know, get the business part of this author stuff done and get all these words in, and this past Monday. I sat there and got hooked on something, on TV for a little bit, and I already had the scene in my head and knew what I was gonna write.

It wasn't a matter of having to think about what I was gonna write. I had it, ready to go, and, I ended up doing this and that, met some friends, I didn't get to my computer to start writing till like eight o'clock that night. But then finally when I finally sat down, it came out. But yeah, it happens. It's like, okay, what do I do now? You know?

I know what I'm doing when we are done recording the podcast today, that's for sure. But on the trip to Texas, we missed our connection because of weather, and we landed in Dallas at 1 p.m., and our connection the next one they booked us on, 11:30 PM. So we were stuck in the airport that long.

Yeah, big storms.

But there was a silver lining. We met another podcaster while we were there.

Oh, cool.

Yeah. Her name is Lex and she does a health and fitness podcast and she's so sweet and she was stuck there trying to go see her grandmother. So we talked to her for a while. It was really fun. That was it for this week for me. Did we have any texts?

We had one text, back when we were talking about Backlists from CeeJay. They know a friend who hypes it on social media, including next in the series, on a sale sort of thing. So I have seen that before. I often do the last Darkness, like the most recent Darkness, I'll put the first one on sale to try to get people to pick up the series and read it. So, yep, that's definitely true for backlist promotion.

Yeah, currently I've got book three with the editor, and I'm writing book four, I'm sure before book four comes out, I probably will do that book one, you know, something like 99 cents or free to start the read through hopefully. So yeah, it's a tactic.

Any emails?

Nope, no emails. I mean, you know, Cheryl and I emailed back and forth about the, softball stuff there but no new ones as far as, our topics go. How about Instagram?

Okay for Insta. Jules did want to write back in and say about the Trope Episode that she doesn't love all tropes and she wants everyone to know that there are some that she won't read. And, things like age gap she'll read and it doesn't influence her how many years there are between the age gap. That doesn't matter to her. She'll still read it. 

And then we have a new listener who wrote in, and they also were talking about the trope episode that they love them and there's some that they will read and some that they won't. But the cool thing is they pointed out, Jae's Fiction Book Bingo has helped them to find a lot of books, both old and new, and they also, found out about our podcast through Discord. So that's exciting. 

Oh, cool. 

Yay. 

That is cool. 

Yeah. 

I know, I love Jae's Sapphic Book Bingo out of the blue, she puts it out on a Thursday and we're recording this on a Friday. She did a micro trope this week of only one bed. And I have a couple, probably more than a couple of books like that. So obviously that is one of my favorite tropes. So, one of my books was in it, Until We Weren't a Story of Destiny and Faith. So anyway, I love those. 

So today we're talking about how to find a great cover designer. 

One of the easiest ways is if there's a cover you like, ask the author who did it

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Because they're usually willing to help out their cover creator.

Yeah, that's totally true. I would say 99% of authors, if you reach out to them via their website, you'll usually find a contact page or an email, and if you reach out to them and let them know how much you'll enjoy their book and how much you like their cover, then they will usually give you the illustrator's name. There's no reason why they wouldn't.

Yeah, and that's actually good for you because it's a safety check. You know that they've already been working with a fellow author, and so their work ethic is probably good.

And then I had something that we've talked about before that if there's a genre that you work in and that you like, go to Amazon and look at different covers. So if it's romance, look at romance covers. And then, especially for indie authors, you can do the look inside feature and they will list on those first few pages of the book who their, designer is. So then you could reach out to the designer directly yourself if you wanted to do it that way as well.

It has surprised me though, Kimberly. I do the same thing. I'll do the look inside On my copyright page, I always put my editor's name and my cover creator's name. And some of them haven't done it, so it just surprised me. So that's when you just reach out to the author, email them and say, Hey, I liked your cover, you wanna share, or can you tell me? 

Mm-hmm. 

Definitely. Another way to do it is to look at competitions, so like the Tee Corinne is a big one that GCLS puts out. And if you look at the most recent list of finalists, you can see some really good covers. And then of course you can go look up who the illustrator is and usually they say, actually in the listing who the actual designer was. ' cause it's actually for the designer, not the author. So that's one way to do it. 

Right. 

Then there's All Covers.com, which has a cover of the month challenge or competition for people. Not necessarily sapphic but all kinds of authors can put in their books and have that be an option to look through as well.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, just a, word on the Tee Corinne that you were talking about. It's fun because they let everybody vote on that, and you start out with, golly, how many, 20, 30 covers something like that. Then you start voting and they narrow it down. It kinda surprised me, but wow, are covers subjective. Because the five books, I think we got to do five that I ranked to get into the finalists. Not one of them made it.

Aw.

Isn't that strange? You would think they would. 

Mm-hmm.

You'd think one of them would. But there's just such a wide variety of covers on that Tee Corinne this time, so...

Yeah. I find that in general too, when you see, IHS does a poll about what book you think is the best about something. Everyone that I always think it's gonna be, it never is. You know what I mean?

It's just so subjective. You've got to keep that in mind. Talking about polls, I saw one on Facebook, I think it was last week, and I don't remember exactly who put it out there, but they'd done a poll on covers and they said, they had several choices on there. Do you like the illustrated, do you like covers with people? I can't remember all the different ones.

But three stood out to me the illustrated covers and the covers with pictures tied. And they were talking about romance, they were about the same percentage, but the covers that won this particular poll were covers that didn't have people or were not illustrated. They must just have like, some kind of scene on them or something like that.

That's awesome. 

It really surprised me because, how do you tell it's a romance? There's ways so... 

Yeah, you put a big heart on the cover like I did with my most recent one.

That could be one way. I did a little poll. it was probably around last year, about this time, of my newsletter subscribers. I was like, well, because I had changed from doing, covers with people on them to the, illustrated covers. I had several people write me back though, and say they did not care for the illustrated covers, and they wouldn't read the books. And I found that sad because they're missing out on some great books just because of a cover. 

I'm not a big fan of them either. And there's some, not to put anybody down who do cover design that don't even have a face. Have you noticed that? 

Oh yeah. Some are like that. 

Not even a face on there and I'm like, Hmm, that's an interesting choice. But, obviously they do quite well. They're on the top 100, so not everybody agrees with me, but I just find that interesting choice.

Well, I think maybe they're letting the reader, 'cause I do this on, my characters, I don't describe my characters really well in the books because I want the reader to, get to use their own imagination. So maybe that's what they're doing, with those, face covers. 

It's artistic preference, right. 

Yeah. 

Yeah 

Something like that. 

Yeah. 

Another place that you could try, if you're looking for a cover designer is places like the Alliance of Independent Authors have a list that you can check out and those are usually vetted or someone has looked into them prior to being on the list. Also, the Author's Guild, and one of my favorites Joanna Penn at The Creative Pen. She has so many great valuable tools, especially looking for a cover designer.

And Kindlepreneur also has some great resources. They don't necessarily list individual designers, but they give you lots of information about how to pick one, areas you might look for one, et cetera. So actually, that's a great resource for anything when it comes to publishing.

Yeah, and Kindlepreneuer has a deal going on right now. I don't know if it'll still be going by the time this podcast comes out, but they have a deal going with 100 covers. If you go to 100 covers.com, I think they have all kinds of covers and they'll set you up with a creator, but they've got a deal for like half price and they have different packages and things like that. So, 100 covers is an option. 

There's also The Write Gal W-R-I-T-E. And she does covers. I was trying to think of some that we could send our listeners to if they're looking, she does covers and editing and you can get different packages on that. There's also, The Book Cover Designer, if you just look that up on the internet because there's pre-made covers that might actually work for you.

Shockingly enough, and I still can't believe this, on Book Brush, Kimberly and I use Book Brush, KC uses, Canva. But they have on Book Brush pre-made covers that you can look through and use if you want. I found the perfect image and cover to match one of my books, and I ended up using that cover.

And you don't have to buy it, it's just a background cover that they've got pre-made. It's a community template is what they call it. But I was able to put my own text and things like that on it. It matched the book perfectly. I couldn't believe it when I just happened to glance through those. This was back when I was making my own covers with people on them. So there's places, you could find pre-made covers and sometimes they'll work and that they're not as expensive.

And then also, I just thought of this, when you're working with a cover designer, one of the things to keep in mind too when you're giving 'em information about the cover is if you're gonna do a series, sometimes you can get them to give you a bundle price, for three because they've already got the look and feel of the series and it's much simpler for them to just pop in, a new title or whatever. So just keep that in mind when you are searching for a cover designer.

Yeah, definitely agree with you on that one. And also jumping back to, Jamey, I have a couple to recommend actually, May Dawney is who I've worked with and she does a lot, May Dawney Designs. She's helped me with some. I've never had her actually create one altogether for me. But when I've come across something that's difficult, like in my Ruby series where the characters are neon on the front, she did all that for me. So I totally recommend using someone like her. 

And the other one is Ann McMahon. Ann McMahon is a great cover designer. does sapphic books and from what I hear, I she's actually pretty reasonable. So give that a look as well. She does stuff other than just By Waters.

Hmm.

Oh, she does. Yeah. She's got some great covers. They're just so, creative. But I've gotta shout out my cover designer right now, the one I'm using. Anita Hallam. We started working together, last year, and she did illustrated covers for me. But for this current series that we're working on, they're not as illustrated as the others are, and I've just had a lot of compliments on both kinds.You have to reach out to her individually, but you can find her on social media. She's excellent and easy to work with. 

And then, this is a weird one, I don't know. If you guys have used them, but I have seen on, social media and other places that some people use Fiverr and Upwork, but I don't have any experience with that. So I don't know if it's a good experience or something that's a little bit hairy, you know, like a little scary to do, so.

I did use Fiverr. Not necessarily on any of my KC Luck covers. I do have another pen name that I wrote in the past. I don't keep it up now and used a Fiverr cover designer and they were fine and it was really reasonable. But definitely read the reviews. You need someone with like 500 reviews before you start messing around with Fiverr people because sometimes, you'll pay a lot of money and it'll be crap.

Yeah.

Yeah, you don't wanna do that. I used to make my own covers and it was before the illustrated became so popular and trendy and I'm surprised at how much I enjoyed doing that. But I just caution you to be careful, you want it to look professional. And Kimberly, you were saying about the series thing. I had my first series recovered, and that's what I did. I reached out to, a cover designer on Instagram. That's another place you can find her. And I told her what I wanted and she did those three covers and I got a deal for all three at one time. So, Yeah, it was great.

One thing that I try to do and I think is important is if, a cover designer is using a piece of art, you need to make sure that you have the rights to use that art. And I always ask them to give me backup. So in case you're ever questioned about the artwork, you can show that you paid for usage of it, you know, if it's not free with free rights or whatever.

Mm-hmm. Definitely wanna make sure you have that. And you also wanna make sure you pick one that's unique. 

Yeah. 

Oh true.

Oh, so Storm in Her Heart. This is horrible. Actually. I designed that cover myself and found what I thought was the perfect graphic for the woman who is walking through the snow. ' cause Storm in Her Heart takes place in a blizzard. And then someone commented on one of my posts about the book and the comment was a picture of the same woman walking through some other environment. So.

Really? 

So I said, well, that's what happens when you use stock photos. But, there's a way to check. You can go ahead and take that picture and load it into Google and say, Google, where else does this picture appear? And I did that and it was kind of embarrassing. There was quite a few hits, but apparently it's a very popular picture. But yeah, do that with your cover and make sure that it's not being used by everybody.

Yeah, it happens. So it's kind of like the same thing with a title. You might wanna Google or put your title of your book in Amazon to see how many other book’s titles come up like that. I don't do it, but I've heard you should do that.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So, I mean, it can happen.

And I don't know about you guys, but when you work with a cover designer, a lot of times you wanna get the font and the colors that they used and some of the background, maybe a background or two that they've used so that you can put it in your social media. And so that's also something you wanna think about when you're working with them to tell them upfront, look, I'm looking to get these things at the end as part of the cover as well.

Mm-hmm. And you can also, talk to them. You might just want them to do the ebook. Right now what I do is I have Anita do the ebook and then I do the print book. But she would be happy to do it, for me too. But, it may be more expensive so make sure you talk to them about that.

Mm-hmm. And in the package, you can sometimes get the ebook cover, the wraparound paperback cover, and also audiobook covers. That's something to keep in mind as well. 

These cover designers, they're just so, pleasant to work with. I used, Kath Grace Designs to do, the Sloan Sister Series and man, she got those spot on, on what I saw in my head, but she's so busy. That's why I had to go to someone else because sometimes the really good ones will get busy. But every cover designer I have worked with have been willing to, get what's in your head down on the cover and make adjustments if you need to.

Yeah. If you can brief them with your thoughts, that's more important than just saying, oh, just show me what you can come up with. That is not a good way to brief a cover designer, especially if you have only three rounds with them, because...

For sure. 

I usually have an idea in my head what I want on the cover. Do y'all usually do that too? I mean...

Somewhat.

I do. Yeah. 

Yeah. I usually have it in mind.

So we've been talking about finding a good book cover designer, but let's mention real quickly why we're talking about it. It's because covers make or break your book. It is almost literally the thing people look at first. They will see the cover and they'll be like, Hmm, this looks interesting. And click on it and read more about it. So it needs to be spot on, good, high quality. And that's why choosing a designer rather than just throwing something up there yourself is really worth the money.

So you bring up money. Should we talk about money? How much it's gonna cost ya? 

You get a cover on Fiverr from anywhere from $10 to $400.

And those pre-made covers, they'll have the price of it on there.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Around a hundred, I think is the average for pre-made.

And like I said, May Dawney, when I've used her, I think her cover is around $300, but I think that's for ebook, wraparound and audiobook. 

That's what I pay for mine, $300. But mine include all versions. 

 Yeah. I don't think I've paid over 300. 

Yeah. 

So I just thought we should throw that out there. 

Yeah, don't pay much more than that. You Don't need to spend a thousand dollars on the cover. 

Yeah. No.

Well, I think that's it for this week. Next week we're gonna be talking about Canva and Book Brush. Do we have a question of the week?

We do if you use Canva or Book Brush, either one, they're pretty similar. What is your favorite feature? I would love to know that. I have my own personal preferences, so let's find out what you like to use as well.

That's it for this week. Thanks for listening.

Thanks everyone and talk to you in two weeks.

This won't come out till July the 11th, but I would just like to wish everyone a Happy 4th of July. Thanks for listening. 

Thanks for listening. If you'd like to reach out to us, you can contact us by email at contact@threelesbiansandapen.com with the number three spelled out or on Instagram, Facebook and X at Three Lesbians and a Pen using the number three. And finally on our website, at threelesbiansandapen.com, we look forward to hearing from you, see you next week.