When to make a book cover?

Greetings, fellow writers. This time I come to you with some advice (take it or leave it), about book covers and when to make them.

First off, if you are the kind of person who has someone else make the covers of your books, disregard most of this advice. If not, this one is for you, no since advising the ones who already have this one figured out. 

First of all, a cover is a lot like the novel you are working on; it needs to be revised until you feel it matches the work you created. It may go through many iterations and versions as the work evolves. I think all of my books were this way, I created a cover that changed as the novel was updated and new editions were made (some more dramatically than others). Patchwork Indigo's cover didn't change too much (it was my first). The rest, well let's just say most of them had several covers- especially Midlife Mike (it had seven different covers). 

As a general rule of thumb, I find one cover per revision is the way to go. Start with the first draft- when it is finished, make a book cover. Then repeat for each new draft you do, the cover will evolve with the story and each draft. Sometimes, I don't like the cover. So, by the third or fourth draft, I completely redo the cover. It's good to know if the cover sucks before the final print. 

Here is my latest cover for the rough draft of my next novel, Through the Eyes of Others. 

This will undoubtedly change, but in the meantime, it gives me something to work with. Sometimes I print what is known as "proof" copies so I can see what the book will actually look like before I print. This gives me a good gauge of the end product. 

In the end, the best advice I can give someone is to make the cover alongside the different drafts of the work, let it evolve with the writing so that when the text is complete, so is the cover.

One of the hardest things for me, and you might notice from the cover, is the back (dust-jacket) description, it's missing. I am still working on it. For me, this is one of the hardest things to write, I recommend getting help on it. I will have more on this in upcoming posts. 

Cheers, and keep on writing.