Aussie Lovers of Crime/Mystery/Thriller/Suspense discussion

I don't know if anyone has posted about this yet, but I want to let people know about the the graphic design website 99Designs.com. I don't know these people, and have no stake in the company, but they just did a great job for me, and I want to get the word out to other authors who might need their services.

I'm getting ready to self-publish my suspense novel, In the Country of the Blind. As I'm sure is true for all of you out there with a manuscript, it's my baby, a lot of hopes are pinned on it, and from the beginning of this endeavor, I didn't want to self-publish unless I was going to be able to do it right. I made up a budget and ran a Kickstarter campaign to raise the money. The campaign met its goal, and now I'm off and running. It has been a wonderful process so far, although with a steep learning curve and some mistakes along the way. I'll be blogging about the whole process when the book is finally out, but right now I just want to talk about the cover design experience. First, take a look at the GREAT COVER I got through 99Designs.

I was first using the cover design services at Createspace, but was really unhappy with what they were coming up with. I felt that for the amount of money they were charging, they were not offering many first drafts, and very little in the way of revision possibilities. Then, the options they came up with on their first drafts looked very amateurish. I decided to try 99Designs because I had already used them, on the advice of a friend, to design the logo for the imprint that I have created to publish my book. I was thrilled with the logo, and you can CHECK IT OUT HERE.

99Designs is simply an online platform to launch a contest. Designers compete for a prize by submitting designs to you. To use 99Designs to design your book cover, or anything else, you first choose which prize package you want to offer. For book covers the levels are $299 for bronze, $499 for silver, $799 for gold, or $1,199 for platinum. The higher the reward level, the more designers your contest will attract. Next, you write your design brief, describing everything that you want in your cover. You can give as much or as little detail as you want, and you can upload images as examples, and also specific images that you want used, if you have any. If you want, You can take a look at the DESIGN BRIEF I wrote for my book cover.

Once your contest goes live, designers all over the world start submitting designs, and you have four days to interact with them, giving them notes for revisions, getting rid of the ones that are way off target. At the end of the four days, the contest locks, and you then have three days to pick up to six finalists. Once they are chosen, they have three days to continue to work with you to try to win the prize. Check out the site for more details on how everything works, and you can see how many designs I had to choose from here. Keep in mind that there were even more designs than you'll see on my contest site, because there were several that I eliminated.

A few recommendations and observations if you do use 99Designs.

1. MOST IMPORTANT: Clear the decks when your contest is running. The more you interact with the designers who are submitting, the more revisions you will get, clearly. You can get an amazing amount of work out of these people without giving them any money yet. But also, other designers will see that you are running a proactive, dynamic campaign, and will be more likely to jump in.

2. Make your contest blind. That way good designers will know that they won't be copied as they submit ideas to you and work with you during the revision process.

3. Guarantee your prize. This takes away your option to withdraw after the initial four day phase and get your money back, but it also attracts more designers.

4. Write a good design brief, but also, try to keep it just that . . . brief. If it is too long and too detailed, designers may be put off at how much they have to read as they are cruising the site looking at what contests they want to jump in on.

5. Interact with support at 99Designs to get their input and advice. I called them a few times and found them very responsive and very helpful.

I hope this information is useful, and good luck to all of you who are thinking of diving in to the self-publishing pool. I say "Come on in. The water's fine."

Thanks for that helpful information for the authors out there Matthew.