Book cover reveal time!! Introducing you to my beautiful new book When Eve Walked: Poems— about womanhood and spiritual transformation! Book design by Damonza (affiliate).
Here’s the blurb:
Woman. Hidden. Rising. Risen.
In the inspirational memoir, Where The Light Lives, visionary artist Linda Cull shared her remarkable spiritual awakening journey—giving us hope and healing.
When Eve Walked continues Linda’s offering. A beautifully intimate collection inspired by her powerful spirituality. Through pain and joy, and a life lived deeply, her poems celebrate the many facets of womanhood and self-discovery. It will nourish you.
-Published by Wilara Press
Working with a book designer
If you want to self-publish a book, sell copies, and be taken seriously as an author – it’s worth paying for professional book design. Unless of course, you’re a graphic designer with book design experience!
Book design includes the book’s cover and interior layout. (A print book will require a front and back cover design.) It gives the reader a first impression of your book and is, therefore, essential.
Working with a book designer requires you to be alert and engaged – to have a strong vision for your book; plenty of patience, an eye for detail, and good communication.
Though the book designer strives to deliver quality service, they can’t be relied on for absolute accuracy. This is something you are responsible for – down to the last full stop.
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A book designer is not an editor, publisher, printer, or distributor. They are the book designer and you are the publisher; you are the overseer, manager, and director of your book.
This is one of the challenges of self-publishing. It all comes down to you, even if you employ the services of professionals. No one is going to care about your book like you do.
Therefore, as fun, as the book design process can be, it’s also another exercise in constant checking!
As the publisher, it’s essential to have a book design plan and to communicate it precisely with your book designer every step of the way so you can achieve the outcome your book deserves.
A good book designer is one that is responsive to you, the self-publisher: open to suggestions, willing to make changes, and offers good advice when asked, in a timely manner. Damonza ticked those boxes for me.
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Book design process
I submitted the When Eve Walked manuscript to Damonza about a week before COVID hit Australia – I live in Perth. It resulted in a great slowdown. I went from planning to publish on March 31, 2020, to now, September 22, 2020.
My first book Where The Light Lives—a memoir, was designed, from start to finish, in 2 weeks by Damonza so this was my expectation for the second book. This included cover design and interior layout for both a print book and an ebook.
However, the entire process for When Eve Walked took 5 months. By April, I’d accepted my new book was caught up in the COVID whirlwind, so I rolled with it as best I could, and Damonza did too.
Firstly, I submitted a detailed book design brief for Damonza’s Print and Ebook Cover and Formatting Package – book description, key elements, blurb for the back cover, examples of other covers I liked, formatting instructions, manuscript, etc.
We worked on the interior layout of the print version (PDF) for months – there were many drafts; much fussing, rearranging, checking and re-checking, and more checking. I restructured nine poems and reordered other poems.
Poetry collections are very fiddly (far more than I ever thought) as the way poems are displayed on the page matters very much – spaces, line lengths, how a poem reads over multiple pages, etc. Damonza was very patient with me as I worked through a multitude of formatting issues.
I was given two cover drafts. I disliked one and thought the other had potential – we worked with this one. I loved the flower on Eve’s head. Yet, I disliked the first and second faces Damonza chose for Eve so I found the third face myself. I had a particular idea in mind as to how she looked.
See the progression of the cover design drafts:
COVER DESIGN DRAFTS FOR WHEN EVE WALKED
BY DAMONZA
3 & 4
5 & 6
7 & 8
Final design
When the interior layout for the print book was finalised it was time to work on the ebook (EPUB and Mobi).
The ebook came to me with spacing missing (between words) – for some reason, it had not transferred. These were deliberate extra spaces I’d used throughout my manuscript to emphasise emotion and meaning. I was then required to instruct as to where all the spacing needed to go!
Once the spacing was worked out and the print cover (front and back – including the book’s blurb) was completed, the ebook cover was straightforward.
Now, emerged, I’m more than pleased with the outcome of my book When Eve Walked. It appears that all my fussing paid off. I have the quality of the book I envisaged. Thank you, Damonza!
