Man I hate it when this happens.

For the past few weeks I’ve been trollin’ around stock photo sites trying to pick a cover image for my upcoming novella release. (Eee! It’s getting closer! CLOSER! Soon I’ll be doing reveals!) It’s been tough. At first I thought I found the perfect image somewhere. The models, with some hair color tweakin’, more or less looked exactly like my MCs! Yay! But there were some…erm…~issuess~ with covering certain body parts up so Amazon and other retailers would not throw a fit over it. Then there was the other issue: “Oh, God, how am I going to find matching images for the sequels?” There was a whole shoot with these same models, but they were either butt-ass naked (which is actually what I DON’T want. Yeah, I had to take my temperature too!) or at an unworkable angle for a book cover. Finally, after seeing my graphic designer/editor-at-large/best-friend-forever came up with via a prototype…no, this original image HAS to happen! It just has to! And it will happen! As soon as I buy the rights! 😛

Phew. Yes, that’s been one of my biggest points of stress recently. The other is trying to come up with a series name to list on Amazon and other retailers so they’ll show up nicely on search results. I have at least two more similar stories featuring the same characters planned (one of which I am in the midst of writing now) and have never considered naming them as a series until now. It wouldn’t be something special or even “official”, really. But at this rate it’ll probably get named after a very specific flower.

Bah. Rambling! I’m sure most of you other writers know how it is. So tell me, especially you self-publishers, how did you go about picking the “perfect” cover image? And those who went trade, how did you find the cover making process? Did you get to have a lot of input let alone the final ok?