Work progressed very well on my Bible study, Acts Of Faith. I wrote it in a little over a month in June-July this year. I found a couple of beta readers, got some comments, did several rounds of edits, and wrapped it up early this month—sandwiched in between getting Documenting America: Making The Constitution into print.

This week, on Wednesday, I called it a wrap and began working on publication files. Then Wednesday night I thought of one more thing I wanted in the Introduction. I did that Thursday morning, yesterday, and called it a wrap again. I went back to building publication files. By the end of the day I had the print edition files complete, all except for the cover.

I had done the cover on Tuesday-Wednesday. Or rather, let me say I did a cover on Tuesday-Wednesday. You can see it here. It’s awful. My thoughts as I began pulling it together were:

• Since it’s quite possible I’ll prepare more of my Bible studies for publication, it would be nice, with this first one, to create some sort of graphical branding. I looked at a couple of printed Bible studies we have here at the house, and at some other books that are parts of series, and though the colored band with the words “A Bible Study” in the band would work, preferably across the top.
• I thought maybe the other words on the cover, the title, subtitle, and my name could also be in bands. So I put them in the same color bands of the same style.
• Then I played with the background color and texture and came up with something.
• Then I thought, how about putting some of the names of those covered in the book on the cover, somewhat randomly, as if in a “cloud”. I did that, finding a font I liked. I decided to make each one a little bit more or less opaque and putting them on top of each other. I liked that effect.

Then I looked at it all, and it was terrible, as you can see from image of it I put in above. Bad colors. Bad contrast of graphical images. A couple of friends whose advice I trust agreed with my assessment. Alas, I don’t know how to make it better.

I had played with a cover earlier, which I posted here. That was just a trial, to have something to show. However, it’s probably better than what I came up with this week. I like the cloud effect of the names on gray, so I clipped that out of the new cover and pasted it in the old in the space reserved for a graphic. You can see how those two work together. I think I like this a little better, but I’m still not sure it’s what I want.

Sigh. I may just go with a generic black cover with white or yellow lettering, no graphic, and not worry about whether it looks good or not. Just so long as it doesn’t look awful. Or, maybe I’ll have to just find a professional and turn it over to them. I’ve contacted one, and am waiting on hearing back.