Day 3 of My Anthology's Progress

Time changes suck. Pass it on. The time changing has wreaked havoc on my daily schedule. For one thing, I've only been up for four hours and I'm already exhausted. Nevertheless, I'm in my determination phase, so progress on my anthology continues.

I noted in the previous post that I re-read Whispers in the Dark yesterday, or more accurately, I read it for the first time. Well, that took most of Saturday and part of today. I did have appointments and chores to take care of in between reading, so that was a bummer.

I had two correspondences with GetCovers. The first time, they did finally ask me for the important aspects of Book 1, which were the title and author name (and genre, although I'm not sure that matters). They also asked me for at least two, with the option of four more, since I'm getting the premium package, links to stock photos I liked. What the actual F now? Do they want me to design the cover, too? The two sites presented to me were DepositPhotos and Shutterstock. 

Let me just say that DepositPhotos reeks. (And even David Gaughran recommends it!) I went there first, since I'd never before visited, but it took no time to all to determine that they offer absolutely nothing I would ever want. My default search term was "woman traveling". Seemed easy enough. I think I got a couple of women snapping a selfie in front of the Eiffel Tower and a shot of a businesswoman's leg's pulling a suitcase on wheels through an airport. Not what I had in mind...at all.

Shutterstock was better. I found about ten possibles, isolating them by the main feature I was looking for, which was a woman walking down a road, carrying a suitcase. I made note of the links I liked or sort of liked, then pulled each one up individually and made my judgement calls. I've learned enough about cover composition since my first and second horrible choices with Running From Herself to know that one can't just deem the focal point okay and say "done". The surroundings matter, perspective matters, and the color scheme matters, particularly as it relates to genre. 

A few photos I liked were deficient with regard to the model's surroundings. One had her surrounded by a harvested corn field, which was ugly, dry, and brownish. I prefer lush green, rather than "death brown", but with a stock photo site, it's difficult to find exactly what one wants.  

In the end, I provided GetCovers with three links. I hope they're good, because one of them is definitely going to be used for the cover. (I guess, what does someone expect for $35.00?)

My second email from them asked for examples of two covers I like. Now, I already did this for them last week, but fine. Since I'd deleted the images from my hard drive, I had to find them again, and again send them.

They also wanted to know the number of pages in my book and the page color (white or cream) I'd be using. No clue what the page color has to do with designing a cover, but okay. 603 pages, by the way! That's gonna be a big book!

And that's it. Perhaps today I'll get started on formatting Book 2, but it's more likely that I'll be "fixing" Find My Way Home. Plus my husband's blog management is my responsibility, and he's got several pre-written topics I'll need to post. (He doesn't exactly understand the blog concept, as much as I tried explaining it. Thus, he doesn't know that each topic requires a separate post. And he insists on a specific order, which means I'm starting at the bottom of his list and working my way up.)

My first priority, however, is lying down for a nap.