Outside My Comfort Zone by Lynne Garner

Before I begin I'll admit I feel a bit of a fraud as I've still not managed to publish a book on Kindle. This time last month I was all set to launch my new book. However things never go to plan and I am in the process of totally re-structuring the book before it goes to my proofreader. In the middle of restructuring the book I remembered I had two magazines features to write, some one-to-one coaching to do and a front cover to design.

Obviously when having a book traditionally published the publisher or packagers take care of cover design. I may get a chance to see a few mock-ups, perhaps ever say which cover I prefer but I've never had to design one. I have taught kitchen and produce design but with cover design I was working outside of my comfort zone. I therefore started where I would suggest my student's start, by researching covers with similar titles. I'll be honest that wasn't much help. They either looked dated, I knew there was no way I could achieve a similar result or I just didn't like them. Noticing some covers featured picture book characters I had a go at drawing my own. The following is one of the results of this experiment. The problem was as soon as I'd pressed save I knew I wouldn't be using them.

I researched further and noticed a few covers comprised just of words, so I gave this a try. The sample below is perhaps the best of a bad bunch:

I then remembered some photographs I'd taken years ago for another project, which never came to fruition. So I searched my archived files and there they were, photographs of a pad and pencil. In Photoshop I started to add text and a thin black border (as suggested on the Kindle forum). I began to like what I saw, but it wasn't quite there. Although I'm getting to grips with Photoshop everything I know has come from reading 'The Missing Manual' or by accident. It was by accident I discovered how to twist the text. I was getting:

But I decided I needed to take some new shots, this time with different coloured backgrounds and a small rubber duck (something that features in the book). Soon I was uploading a new set of images and 'playing' with fonts and layout. I ended up with four slightly different layouts . The sample below I think is the possible cover for my new book:

I'm more than aware that by the time my book is published on Kindle I could have had a complete change of heart and spent another day trying to create a front cover. However I now feel I'm one step nearer to my goal of becoming a published Kindle author and actually found I have enjoyed the experience of working outside my comfort zone. And you never know by the time it comes for me to blog here again my book will be up and with fingers crossed selling.