My First Attempt at a Book Cover

At long last, I’ve finally attempted to create a working cover for my novel, “The Teacher and the Tree Man,” which I plan to release before the year is out. To do this, I read Jason Matthews’ excellent, “How to Make, Market and Sell Ebooks All for Free” and followed his instructions which were really rather simple.

The big hold-up has been actually getting a photo that would work. I followed Jason’s advice and looked for public domain images of forests on the Internet but I couldn’t find the right type of forest, which has to look like Western Washington where the novel is (mostly) set. And, I had the idea that because of the title (which came to me very late in the process—well after I’d completed the book!), I should have the title showing the two characters interacting, or, at least, attempting to interact. Now, if I lived in Western Washington, I could have taken this photo years ago, but I currently live in Japan and due to rising airplane ticket costs, flying home just for this photo wasn’t really feasible. Fortunately, our family visited there for the first time in three years and my wife used the “art” setting on her digital camera to take several shots of, yes, me, “talking” to the tree man.

The next step was downloading Picasa 3, a free image editing software that was very easy to use (and when I had questions, I just consulted the Internet to figure them out). My biggest challenge is finding colors that are clear on the multi-colored background and I hope those of you who are more professional or skilled at this sort of thing may give me your honest feedback about whether it works or not. Like I said, this is a first try, took about an hour to do (maybe less?) and I just want to get it out there.

Last, you’ll notice that it says between the title and my name “books 1-4.” This is because I am selling the book in a rather unique way. It is a long story–about 220,000 words, at last check. But it is broken into 4 “books,” each 20 chapters long and between 70-80,000 words. Thus, I am going to sell it in three ways: you can buy all four (books 1-4) for $4.99, you can buy books 1-2 for $2.99 and books 3-4 for $2.99; or you can buy each book individually for $1.99 each. Up to you. I will say that while each book does have a semi-sense of closure it’s clear when you reach the ends of books 1-3 that the story will continue. Still, I figure this is the best way to put this story out there since I am a first-time novelist and since many people may be reluctant to spend $5 (the cost of a cup of Starbucks, people!) for a book that, if it was a printed copy, would likely be around 1,000 pages. I love giving people choices, so this seemed like the best way to go (and I actually exchanged emails with Jason Matthews who supported the idea).

Okay, look at the cover, let me know what you think and thanks in advance!