J.B. Sommerset

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 ...

One of the hardest things about being a writer is overcoming the need to be unique and different. We all want to be the original, be the first of a kind, the  O.G. Iceberg Slim of writing. But t he reality is simple and often hard to stomach: Every book has already been written.  You might be saying, "Well screw you, what would you know about it!".  Well, my first real disappointment in writing was this truth, I had to acknowledge that nothing I would ever write will be original. It would always resemble something I had seen or read. I fought this truth with every fiber of my being.  Queue up the wobbly montage... I was working as a dishwasher back in my hometown. It had been a long night, I worked from five to eleven, a shorter shift. But it was my second job, and my second shift that day. I was ready to finish my day and go home. I changed out of my dish scrubs, as always they were a mess, soaked through with soap, left overs, and dishwate...