I finished up designing my own book cover, as well as using a cheap book cover designer.

This might seem pretty pointless, why become involved in book cover design and simultaneously pay someone else to do it?
Well, the fact is, I like a challenge. I also like to be busy, I like to stimulate my mental faculties. By the way, this isn’t a bad attitude to have, according to the medical profession.
Anyway, because of this I’m now in the strange position of having a book cover that I designed and a book cover that a professional book cover designer has designed.

The question is, which one to use.

I have to be careful here, it would be easy to reject my book cover design on the grounds that it can’t be any good because I’m not a professional book cover designer. Conversely, it would be easy to use the design that has been designed by the professional because he is a professional.

Here are a few thoughts.
My book cover design has a more prominent ‘main image,’ the image that mostly fills the book cover.
His book cover design has two images, there is no main image. Obviously, two images can’t be as prominent as a single image.

However, one of his single images is more original than my single image; he has merged one photograph with another photograph.
So really, the ‘competition’ is between size (my image) versus originality (his image.)

I still haven’t decided which book cover design to use. If I use my own design I’ll have the satisfaction of using something that I’ve created. It won’t cost much if I don’t use the professional book cover design because it only cost five US dollars.

If you do choose either of these two routes please keep in mind the advice (not my advice, by the way) mentioned in part 1 – that you should be prepared to pay quite a lot of money to a professional book cover designer.

In fact, I might finish up doing this myself.

Articles in the ‘My cheap book cover design for self publishing experience’ series.

My cheap book cover design for self publishing experience part 1
My cheap book cover design for self publishing experience part 2