Mission Ebook Cover Completed

I got my ebook cover created. It doesn't look like some cheap cover neither. I held a contest at 99designs.com as suggested a blog comment. What was cool about the experience is I held a contest and the designers submit art according to my "design brief". At first I was waiting and getting nervous because I wasn't getting very many designs but then after two days all these professional looking designs pop up. I get to give the designers feed back, like "I hate this font" or "can you make the crow's eyes blue." These designers take the feedback and make multiples of designs. I ended up with 162 designs to choose from. the last three days you pick the finalists. I picked two. Of course it was the hardest decision but I had to keep in mind my story and my characters, not just based on "how pretty" the cover was.

Here it is! The cover to my first ebook in the Sanctuary series. I awarded the finalist Soheil Toosi. I hope to work with him on my next cover. The great part is I now have the copyrights to this image. Hooray!
My protagonist, Red is a crow but not an ordinary crow. His eyes are blue and he emminates a red aura. He's torn in "Pull", (his heart and mind fight), he hurting and this cover I feel best shows this. The contrast to me is important; the extreme light and the dark because like the cover, Red has a light side and a dark side. If you look closely, there's red heart to his chest because Red has a heart even though this "stylistic", "scary", "weak" crow looks out of the ordinary; this character knows love.
As an ebook the cover must stand out among other's so the negative space around Red (the crow) and the contrast between light and dark were a must. On a tablet device, this image is detailed and will add to the reading experience. This ebook will be selling on Barnes & Noble, Amazon and the iBookstork just to mention the major retailers. The ebook will launch as soon as I'm done formatting my files and pass those retailer standards. Notification of this will be tweeted and posted here on this Blog.