My Book is Finally Out - Used DS to Make the Cover
maraich
Posts: 494
It's been a long time in the writing/editing/reediting/formatting/rendering/etc., but I finally have my first book out at Amazon in both Kindle and Trade Paperback format. Over the time I was working on the book I made a cover, and then another, and then yet another. Those of you who are familiar with my art will probably recognize the characters, as I've rendered them in one for or another for about ten years. Yikes!
So, without further ado, here is the final front cover for "Exile's Redemption":
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Congrats on your book! Hope it sells like the proverbial hotcakes.
WOOT!! Going to go over to Amazon and grab it. The front cover looks wonderful maraich. Congratulations!!! :coolsmile:
LOVE LOVE the cover! I already picked up the kindle ebook - now I wanna get the physical book. :D :D
Thank you all so much. I hope you enjoy the story and the characters.
Oh, I almost forgot, I have a couple of web pages people might be interested in. One is a book review blog, and I'm extremely good about posting reviews at least once a week. The other is my author page and I'm still working out the kinks on it, but once I get things totally set up I'll blog about what I learned about editing, formatting for ebooks, and formatting for print books - and of course doing book covers..
Wild Hunt Reviews: http://www.wildhuntreviews.com
Lee Dunning.com: http://www.leedunning.com
Just placed my order, and look forward to reading it. :coolsmile:
Congrats. I'll get the kindle edition for my tablet! YAY! :-)
Gratz! Love the cover work!
Wow... very impressed... its great to see people achieve their dreams. I love the cover... now for the usual DAZ question... what hair is that??
Great cover! Wish you all the best with your book. :)
maraich, I'm excited for you!! Congrats on the book, and the cover looks delicious.
LOL - I was afraid someone would ask that question. Well, there's good news and there's bad news. The bad news is that the skull cap and ponytail decoration are from hair sets that don't seem to be available any longer. Idler168 had a character and hair set for David called Original Head MT for David that I used for W'rath's pulled back hair. The ponytail holder/decoration came from a ponytail set by Traveler over at RDNA for the Oktopussi outfit. The outfit is still there, but I don't find the hair, or even Traveler for that matter. Fortunately, you should be able to find alternatives for those two items. For example, Mistress Hair by Darkworld Designs is available here at DAZ and should work for a tall ponytail clip.
As for the good news, assuming you don't mind doing some easy work in Photoshop or Gimp, you should be able to make some decent looking hair using three collections I picked up at Renderosity. CWRW puts out Mane n' Tail packs and they are packed full of psd layered hair pieces intended for use on horse tails and manes. I use them to make hair for people. In this render Raven's hair is completely postworked in PS using CWRW's sets. W'rath's ponytail is a horse tail.
In order to work most easily with rendered figures and PSD hair pieces, I render the characters on separate layers as PINGS. Then in PS I can position them on top of the rendered background and put in the hair in front or in back of the figures as needed. Being able to move the figures around as needed is important when working on a book cover. The version you do for the Kindle edition is a different set of dimensions from what you need for the print book cover. You have to be able to shift and resize things. I didn't know this going into the cover phase of my project, I was just lucky that I work in layers anyway.
Thanks for asking! I hope that helps you out.
Thank you everyone for all the nice well wishes and comments.
Miss B and Sir RAMWolff, thank you so much - I appreciate the support. If you like what you read, I'd ask one more favor, and that is to leave a review at Amazon, Goodreads, or wherever you like to post. Again, thank you - I feel like a proud parent showing off their new baby. P
Book ordered, now for it to reach France so I can actually read it.... (I got the paperback version, I spend too much time looking at a screen already so I avoid e-books ;))
Trav's still at RDNA maraich. They've just gone through a whole site, store and forums update, so he hasn't been spending much time on the forums, except behind the scenes, as it were. :coolsmile:
Oh and thanks for the tidbit about Laurie's Mane 'N Tail packs, as I have them. Now to go find where on my external hard drive they're hiding as I don't have the Mil Horse reinstalled on this newish laptop. Hmmmmm . . . . . .
Congrats! I am so very happy for you! I know I've showed it to a couple people I know do a lot of reading and am gonna pick it up myself once I get paid :) Can't wait to get a chance to take a look at it! :) I am really excited to get to read it. If it's anything like your artwork I am sure it will be awesome! :)
That was my initial thought as well. In fact, I was going to post in the Window Seat on your forum about it, or have you done that already Anne?
wow, that is so awesome! congratulations! it's a great cover and i hope it's just the first of many books for you!
Wow! I wasn't expecting so many people to pick up physical copies of the book - thanks, Leana. I hope the mailman is swift and kind to your shipment. I'm glad that traditional print is alive and well.
And now I'm especially glad the person in charge of eyeballing my print layout design was so darn fussy. I started out thinking I'd use Word for my print layout, but my friend who is obsessed with text and layout hounded me to learn InDesign and do it properly. Thanks to him the print version came out quite nice. The ebook version looks quite good too, but in the end it turned out to be easier for me than the print version. Knowing basic html and css really came in handy for that.
Thanks for dropping by, Ann! You brighten every doorway you enter. I appreciate you showing my book around. Word of mouth is the best way for indie authors to get noticed.
Jade Monkey, thank you so much for the kinds words. There will be two additional books for certain, with the possibility of up to five. In addition, I have a couple of other stories in different genres I've been working on that I may submit through traditional channels for publication.
That was my initial thought as well. In fact, I was going to post in the Window Seat on your forum about it, or have you done that already Anne?
No I haven't yet as I've been running around today but if Maraich would like she is more then welcome to put something there :) Or I will in the coming days when I get a moment :)
No I haven't yet as I've been running around today but if Maraich would like she is more then welcome to put something there :) Or I will in the coming days when I get a moment :)
Well I'm a step ahead of you, as I just posted about it, and linked to this thread so folks can see her wonderful artwork. :coolsmile:
I'm grabbing the print version also when I get paid in a couple of days. :D As much as I love the convenience of ebooks, I still love the physical ones more.
Oh yeah, all you grabbing it....don't forget to read the "acknowledgements" *preen preen cough cough* :D :D
bah.. well I found your website and the link there goes to the kindle version, I couldn't find the print version via google or amazon. Halp! I wanna buy it but I don't have a kindle and I prefer real books anyway.
Of course now I find it after I post about it.. /sigh
http://www.amazon.com/Exiles-Redemption-Chronicles-Shadow-Volume/dp/1500513318/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406539850&sr=8-1&keywords=Exile's+Redemption
LOL :D Always happens that way. Usually the print version is underneath the kindle version - but I think Lee was a bit worried about posting the link in case she fell foul of the TOS of the forum. :D
I ordered the print version today so hopefully it'll make it's way across the seas in the next week or so. :D
Sorry about the confusion, Fisty. I'm glad you figured it out. And thank you!
Jaki is right, I read the TOS and it sounded like any link that lead to an offsite vendor would trigger the release of the hounds, so refrained from adding direct links to my book.
Congratulations on the release of your book! The cover art is excellent. :)
~ROFL~ Well now it's not going to be much of a surprise . . . is it? :coolsmirk:
Got it last night, can't wait to read it! :-)
Thanks! It's actually the third cover I did. Jaki had to suffer through all of my angst and doubt as I made one, and then a few months later I'd tell her how I hated the last one and now had done another one. Rinse repeat.