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Before we left the States, I put all the finishing details on my next book. Including sending out a survey to see which book cover option you guys liked best for RVing Across America!
I had hired two designers, got back 6 custom designs, and chose my top two. I wanted to hear which design was the crowd favorite before I took the time to go over final edits with the designer on little things like fonts and the back cover.
We got 1,000 responses and the results looked…well they looked like a Pepsi logo.
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There was one clear winner—and it was my favorite design of the two too! I was ready to put the final touches on it and move forward.
But Heath had a weird feeling about it.
Something just felt off to him about the “custom artwork” I commissioned from this artist.
So he did an image search on Google and found this:
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The same design. Slightly manipulated. For sale. From another artist.
My custom illustration was decidedly NOT custom.
I could not use a design that I didn’t actually own the copyright for, so I messaged the artist, told him that he stole someone else’s work, and set out to get a completely new book design.
Yes, I could’ve gone with the runner up book cover from the poll, which I liked, but I wasn’t in love with it. And I was a little more wary about using a design from someone I didn’t know now that I had seen firsthand someone blatantly ripping off someone else’s work.
This all happened at 5 PM last Friday BTW, giving me very little time to get a new designer and a new book cover design before we left the country.
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We reached out to a couple of people on Friday night. Our friend Lee, who has designed a few of our RVE Summit t-shirts, took on the project with an impressively fast turnaround.
SO.
I am super grateful that you guys voted for a book cover for this book.
I’m just not using either of them 😅
The final book cover is:
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100% custom and unique to this book!
Plus he even added in a little RV—which I know a lot of people wanted to see on the cover!
I’m so happy with how it turned out and it feels really good to know there’s no chance that I might get sued by someone for taking their design. 🙈
With a final cover design and the book all finished, I’m excited to close my laptop and spend some time playing on the beach and exploring Italy with the family!
You can preorder RVing Across America—new cover and all!—on Amazon now 🙂
—Heath & Alyssa
PS Just the ebook is available for preorder right now, but the book will be available in paperback when it officially comes out on May 24th 🙂
