We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Carrie Peters a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Carrie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

At the time, I was determined to be a rom com writer. I took online classes, won some contests, met a lot of great people. When you enter contests, you only have to have 3 chapters, and boy was I a whiz at writing 3 chapters. Turns out to write an entire book, you also have to have a plot. And I simply cannot plot. I took plotting classes, bought plotting books, watched videos on how to plot. Nothing. I took several intense one-on-one plotting classes, and the teachers mostly just gave up on me. =) Finally, I said Carrie, this is not going to be your new career, better try to find another.

As I was finishing one of the classes, I showed the class one of the covers I’d made for my “book” if I ever finished it. And one of the ladies in class asked me to design one for her book. And another did as well. Then a third. And this is how my book cover design business, Cheeky Covers, got it’s start. From rom com author failure, to book cover designer!

Now the classes I take are on Photoshop techniques, always trying to up my game. I have customers from all over the world and I work with almost all genres. One week I could be doing a thriller and next week might be steamy romance. I love the variety and meeting new people. This job is (most of the time) a blast!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’ve always been creative. I think it comes from years of being forced to take craft classes. =) I can macrame, make jewelry, paint a little, even make candles. When I design book covers for customers I still am making something, except in this case it’s taking a bunch of photographs and mixing them together in a pleasing manner that also tells what the book is about.

The customer usually comes with an idea in mind of what they’d like, and I do my best to make that happen, and I’ll also throw in a few ideas that I think might work. Trying to make a cover that will “pop” in the small size they show on Amazon is always the biggest challenge.

For myself, I always start with test covers. A smaller size cover with a variety of images that the customer can then choose which they like best, or none at all. Then we go to the next round. Eventually it gets narrowed down to one particular cover, and that’s when I buy the real stock photos and start layering in the specials effects if needed. Then we decide on the font to be used.

Fonts for thrillers are completely different from what is used for romance, which is completely different from sci fi. Knowing when to use a heavy font versus a swirly font can make or break the cover.

And finally, we’ll add special effects. Sometimes filters, sometimes a glow is called for. .Something that just makes it pop off the page.

One thing I’ve worked very hard on for this job is learning Photoshop. I’ve taken a huge variety of classes from different instructors and just try to keep learning more for every cover I do. That’s something I’m very proud of, the learning and effort to make every cover look it’s best.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Word of mouth. If you do a great job with the covers and give them what they want, or better than they thought they wanted, they will tell other people. They might write your name in their book or link to your website from theirs and give you credit. If they are in author groups, someone might ask them “Who did your cover?”

I try to go above and beyond, trying to keep a happy attitude even if things are getting tough and it feels like no progress is being made. Eventually you’ll have a breakthrough and the author will be so grateful you stuck with them until they got their dream vision. Word of mouth is one of the highest compliments I feel I can get.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

In my other job, as a restaurant manager, I got told by the boss we were getting close to shutting down. Not enough business coming in the doors. I’d been working there most of my adult life, loved the job and people. So I took a facebook marketing course. Paid for it with my own money, watched the first few episodes and then started implementing it while the boss was on vacation. This was in July. By Christmas we’d had to hire more people, because business was so good. New Year’s Eve was the biggest one we’d ever had. We were invincible.

Then COVID hit, and everyone had to close. When we did, the staff of course went to find other jobs. Myself and another waitress who’d been there almost as long as I stayed and took take out orders. I kept with the Facebook marketing and advertised when we did Easter bundles – big aluminum pans of food enough for 3-4 people. We served hundreds. I kept with the advertising with the other bundles we did, then at Thanksgiving time I started advertising small caterings, brought to you. It was another hit. Small businesses that had worked together for the entire time and knew the people they worked with, could now have their own party.

I advertised more when we were finally able to open for lunches. I still advertise to this day. And do you know how much I spend? One dollar a day for the restaurant and another for the catering business. And it has turned our business completely around. And I still have my fun job. =)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cheekycovers.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CheekyCovers