Now that my husband is getting close to having the words done for the novel, we are starting to think of how to get it edited and find a cover design. We do not know of any graphic designers, so we are going to have to rely on friends of friends or doing something through the internet. Since this is his first novel, we don't have a lot of money to spend, so we want to try to find the best cover for the best price. I know people say "Don't judge a book by its cover", but people totally do. Even I do. I find myself on Amazon looking at all the free books (because I'm cheap right now, and I'll download a free ebook or go to the library - then if I find a book I like, I'll go back and buy it...), and I don't really even slow down unless the cover or title is appealing to me. So a good, engaging cover is very important.
With that said, I have heard of a website called Design Crowd and apparently graphic designers will bid on doing your design. You give them a project and some ideas you had, and they will draw their vision and hope you pick their design. I've never done this before, but it seems pretty awesome. It's a way to connect with a lot of graphic designers in which we do not have access to. We'll also be reaching out to friends to see if anyone knows any good graphic designers who are willing to do a book cover for a decent price. What I'm really hoping for here, is to find the gem of an artist who is just starting out - so we'll get an awesome cover but for a low price because the person is just starting out. But I don't know if we'll get that lucky. But what I liked about Design Crowd is there are people all over the world bidding on these jobs. A colleague of mine had a bid and chose someone from Cambodia! How awesome is that? The money that he makes is going to go pretty far in Cambodia. And she would have never had the chance to see his designs without this website. So I think it's a neat idea, and we'll definitely check it out. If anyone has any suggestions or recommendations, we'll gladly accept!
We also have to figure out how to get it edited. I will obviously read through it and try to flesh out the bad grammer or typos before it goes to anyone. But we'll really need someone to edit it more for content. I'm not an editor so I don't know how a book should be put together, like the percentage of each piece of the story. I can tell when a story isn't moving, but I don't think I can give advice on how to make it better, or what pieces to take out or how to build a character better. Editing I think is going to be one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle. I see all the time where people give a book a low rating solely on the fact that it wasn't edited. I feel like poor editing is definitely jarring, but to give a book 1 star when you say it was a good read is just ridiculous. I would say a book should lose 1 star from your rating for poor editing, but not drop the whole rating to 1 star. But since people are like that, you have to pay for the editing. I have no idea where to go for editing. If there are any independent authors out there who read this, do you have any recommendations on editing?
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