So this week has mostly involved me attempting to make book covers for the two books I have written.
I didn't know you have written two books?!
I know! It's amazing isn't it. You may think that designing book covers is just a way of putting off writing my most recent one, and you'd be only partly right. I'm being all crafty and designy (which is clearly not a word) this week because I want to get my books out onto the Amazon market before the 28th June.
Why the weirdly specific and tight deadline, Jon?
Because, dear brain, on the 28th June I've been invited to give a talk at the next YesStories!!!
No way! Where can I get tickets?
You can get tickets HERE.
What are you going to be talking about?
Well, probably my cycle across Thailand (and maybe why I keep talking to myself). But that is why I want to get my first 2 books, Sardines and Jon and Harry's Year of Microadventure, republished and shiny on Amazon just in case anyone feels generous enough to part with some of their hard earned cash. So that's why I've been redoing the covers, to make them more attractive.
So what does that involve?
Well first of all, I needed to drape white sheets all over my living room, set up the timer on the camera and don a blue morph suit.
What's that?! A Visible Pantie Line. That just will not do!
And it looks like my leg is disappearing behind my side table / plinth. Nothing for it but to strip down. Yes, that's right. Underneath the morph suit I was NECKED! So I took many, many, many more photos until I could find one where all of my gangly limbs are in the photo.
Now I had a photo all I needed was a little Photoshop jiggery-pockery hocus pocus and I could make the background disappear.
Now to put it on a background of sardines swimming the wrong way (must put in the copyright so the right people get the credit for the photo © Alterfalter | Dreamstime.com). Couple of bits of text and voila!
And that is how I make a book cover on the cheap. Maybe I should pay a professional to do it (like I've been advised by countless websites) but I just can't bring myself to pay someone to do a job that I could do in an afternoon.
You should have a go. It's actually quite fun.