Guest Post: Cover Artist Dara England

Hello all. When Kimber invited me to do a guest blog today I immediately knew what I wanted to talk about. So many people—especially Facebook friends—message me with questions about cover art and how someone interested in it can get into designing book covers. So that’s what I’m going to talk about today. Book cover design.

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First off I should say that I don’t have an artistic bone in my body when it comes to things like painting or drawing. But that’s what’s so fun about photo manipulation. It gives those of us who aren’t great at other mediums a go at expressing our artistic side in a different way.
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Here’s how to get started. Or rather, how I got started; there’s not really any one right way to do it.
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1. I downloaded a free program I’d heard about called GIMP (you can find it with a quick Google).
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2. I went to Dreamstime  and  iStockPhoto and purchased some nice royalty free images (high resolution, 300 dpi).
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3. I spent a few months playing with GIMP and learning how to use it (there are helpful tutorials on the GIMP website).
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4. I started emailing various e-publishers and small presses I knew of, sending them sample covers I’d worked up and asking for work. Surprisingly, a lot of them said ‘yes ‘.
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From there on out, word spread until I started having publishers and authors emailing me, offering work. Facebook is a great help with that and I recommend it as an awesome way to meet people in the publishing industry. I’d say 90 % of the projects I take on these days come to me via people I’ve networked with on FB.
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So get out there and start designing! : )
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--Dara E.
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Want to know more about my work? Visit my design site at: My Cover Art or drop by my author site at: Carol Green