What a week it has been! If you caught last week’s blog, you’ll know I mentioned a major issue I was having with my book cover. It’s one of those things every author dreads, and I realized I would have to source a completely new one. And I have! Whispers from the Machine officially has a new look. But boy, what a journey it was to get here. It has only been a week since the last update, but it honestly feels so much longer.
Technical Troubles and Quality Concerns over the Old Book Cover
Let’s start with the root of the issue. The old book cover had a size error. If I’m being honest, and let’s just skip over the frustration for a second, it actually turned out not to be a terminal issue, but by the time I realized that, it was too late. I had already committed to the change.
I initially tried to resolve the technical side myself using Photopea, but it quickly fell outside my skill set to do it well. My biggest worry was that the book cover is so critical to a book’s success; any risk of a quality issue or a “DIY” look would potentially have quite big impacts on it being picked up by anyone. I also had a minor worry that despite asking for the original art to not use AI, it may have anyway. I ran it through some AI checkers which were inconclusive but did flag it as a solid ‘maybe.’ That was the final straw.
Diving into a 99designs Contest for a new Book Cover
So, what did I do? Well, as I mentioned last week, I decided to try out 99designs by running a design contest. I had never done one before, and man, it was stressful for no real reason.
If you haven’t used the site before, it is basically a platform where you can find designers or post a design brief and ask people to compete for the chance to win the contract. My stress point number one, and maybe the biggest one, was that I felt bad that people would do designs for my book cover and potentially not win. Essentially, they would be doing work for nothing.
Reflecting on that, a few designers actually pointed out to me that this is why they personally won’t participate in contests. Again, I felt bad. But then I realized: as a writer, I also put a lot of work into things that likely will have no payout. In fact, I have sunk significant money into my projects knowing they will likely be a lost investment. Of course, that is different because I’m working for myself rather than being asked to do a specific task by someone else, but I tried to use that logic to dampen my internal conflict about the process.
Managing the Book Cover Design Influx
Okay, so I launched the contest. I wrote the brief, added some of my own sketches, and clicked go. Then came stress point two: would I even get any engagement? Would I end up wasting more time without a finished book cover?
No. No, I did not need to stress about that. In fact, I needed to stress for the exact opposite reason: way too many submissions!
It was great. So many amazing designers sunk time into the competition. The site estimated that, at best, I would receive 60 designs. I thought that was way too many to handle, and I also doubted it would even happen. By the end of the seven-day period, I had 180 designs. 180! That’s nuts. Okay, yes, a chunk of those were re-works and minor variations, but it was still amazing to see all the different directions people took the brief for my book cover.
Feedback and Final Selection of the Book Cover
The process is structured so that designers have four days to submit, during which time I provide feedback. Which I did, maybe too much! I felt I should be as engaged as they were, so I tried to review and provide detailed feedback to every single designer. This, of course, led to more designs and more engagement.
By the end of those four days, I had over 100 unique designs and had to create a shortlist. I did my own beta team market research and whittled it down to five designers. Then we went to the final round: another four days to refine the designs and pick a winner.
The final five designs were all amazing. It was super tough to choose, and I wanted to avoid my own personal biases. I again went to the Beta team for feedback, but I also used PickFu for some independent market research. I surveyed over 50 avid sci-fi readers to see which version they would actually click on.
We Have a Wining Book Cover!
The market research had it super close for all the book cover finalists, but “Design B” won out. Ahmed Raza did an amazing job bringing the vision to life.
A note on the design: While the original concept leaned into purples and blues, I decided to consider the wider series rather than just book one. Moving forward, I plan to use a distinct color shift between each book in the series to keep them cohesive yet unique. This influenced the shift to the vibrant green for book one and the official introduction of the “Green God” theme on this book cover.
I have a few minor tweaks to finish up with Ahmed, then it’s on to test prints and physical checks. I’m very happy to have it finalized at last. It was an unexpected and unwanted complication at the end of the process, but the new book cover is great, and I’m very excited to be moving forward again.
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