Create a Book Cover for Music of Sacred Lakes, a Literary Supernatural Novel by Laura K. Cowan

Entertainment & The Arts

Laura K. Cowan, The Dreaming Novelist, writes imaginative and compassionate novels that explore the possibilities of the world and the human condition through the connections between the spiritual and natural worlds and the fantastic and mundane. Her debut novel The Little Seer spent its launch week at #2 and #5 on the Kindle Bestseller List for free titles in Christian Suspense and Occult/Supernatural, and was hailed by reviewers and readers as “riveting,” “moving and lyrical.” Laura’s second novel, a redemptive ghost story titled Music of Sacred Lakes, and her first short story collection, The Thin Places: Supernatural Tales of the Unseen, will be available soon. Laura lives in Michigan with her husband and daughter. You can find her on Twitter and LinkedIn, or connect with her at laurakcowan[at]gmail.com or on her website LauraKCowan.com.

I would like a book cover designed for my second novel, a crossover literary mainstream novel titled Music of Sacred Lakes, which is a spiritually oriented supernatural story of rediscovering man's place of belonging in the world. The feel of this cover should be sophisticated and literary-leaning, and resemble covers of similar authors in the magical realism / literary fantasy / metaphysical fiction genres such as Italo Calvino, Margaret Atwood, Alice Hoffman, or Paulo Coelho. Illustrations, photography, etc. are all fine. Anything from a vintage postcard of a Lake Michigan lighthouse (Little Traverse Light in Harbor Springs Michigan is featured in the book) to an image of a young girl in a green dress emerging from Lake Michigan at night underneath the Northern Lights (must have an open horizon of the lake, no land in the distance, this lake is 80 miles across and very similar to the ocean), a view looking out over Lake Michigan from a sandy beach with birch trees in the foreground, or a historic 1800s farm with a barn on a fieldstone foundation would be great, but I'm open to many ways of doing this. If you can design a cover that looks as upmarket as possible using standard print on demand quality cover and pages, I would very much appreciate it. The interior is black and white on cream paper, and I would like a cover that looks good matte. Also, I will be taking the front cover and turning it into an e-book cover and a square avatar for other applications, so a cover that allows me to shift the elements slightly and come up with something multipurpose would be helpful. Eye-catching designs that would stand out in a list of books online will be preferred. Thanks! Cover and Interior Requirements: 5"x8” Novel 262 cream-colored pages, matte cover .655-inch spine with .125” bleed on all sides, 2500 pixels long minimum, 300 ppi. Images may be CMYK or RGB color. All images should be sized at 100%, flattened to one layer and placed in the cover document at a minimum resolution of 300 DPI. Please leave room for the ISBN (no white box, Amazon will be adding their own so just leave this area open) on the bottom right of the back cover. Please include the author's website http://www.LauraKCowan.com on the bottom left of the back cover. Back cover blurb and author bio are below, and I have included an author photo to place on the back cover. I will need the .psd Photoshop file for the full cover and jpgs/pdfs for the front cover and the full cover would also be appreciated. Thanks! Peter Sanskevicz doesn’t belong. He doesn’t want the sixth-generation family farm his great great-grandfather unwittingly stole from its Odawa owners, and can’t continue his jobs serving “fudgies,” tourists in Northern Michigan who seem more at home than he is. He can’t take charge of things or do anything but make a mess. Then, Peter accidentally kills a girl. Seeing his life is at risk, his friend takes him to his uncle, a pipe carrier of the Odawa tribe, who tells him he must live by the shores of Lake Michigan until the lake speaks to him. Peter lives and loves and rages by the shores of the great lake, haunted by its rich beauty, by strange images and sounds that pursue him through his waking and sleeping hours, and by the spirit of the dead girl, who seems to be trying to help him. One day, he finally finds an inner silence. And then, he hears what the lake has to say to him. A story about reconnecting with the source of your life and your joy, Music of Sacred Lakes gives voice to the spirit of the land and lakes that gave birth to us all. (You could use the first or last sentence of the blurb as a pull-out quote.) Laura K. Cowan, The Dreaming Novelist, writes imaginative novels that explore the possibilities of the human condition through the connections between the spiritual and natural worlds. Her debut novel The Little Seer spent its launch week at #2 and #5 on the Kindle Bestseller List for free titles in Christian Suspense and Occult/Supernatural, and was hailed by reviewers as “riveting,” “moving and lyrical.” Her first short story collection The Thin Places: Supernatural Tales of the Unseen will be available soon. Connect with Laura on her website http://www.laurakcowan.com, on Twitter (@laurakcowan) or on Facebook.

If you want an idea of the kinds of covers I would like, check out my previous contest for The Little Seer book cover and the designs submitted by Sherwin Soy and A&DD. Also, I love the covers of Matt Bell's The House Upon The Dirt Between The Lake and the Woods http://www.mdbell.com/inthehouse/ , The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey and Dog Boy by Eva Hornung http://thebookshark.com/book-cover-art/ .

Every design category has flexible pricing for all budgets. Book cover starts at €269.