Creating a Cover-Finding the Right Mood

So I'm at the stage where I needed to get a cover created for my new novel "Tracking a Shadow". I didn't want to be cheap but couldn't afford to spend a ton of money on the cover. I solicited ideas on how to find someone to create a cover. I received ideas to use sites like Fiverr.com which is very inexpensive, all the way up to expensive services costing $500 or more. One of my Circle friends on Google Plus mentioned Elance.com where you put in bids for various types of work, giving a description of what you are looking for and a price range of what you are willing to pay. Within a very short time, no more than a day I had offers from 18 or so people with various skill ranges offering to create my cover, all of them providing examples of covers they had created through the years. Weeding through the offers, some I tossed out right away, narrowing it down to 4-5 choices. Using Elance's messaging functions I interviewed each of them until I found the person with the talent and style I was looking for. No more than a day later I had 9 cover mock ups from her to go over.

That was when the internal struggle began. You see I'm not a visual person myself per say. The cover isn't what I look for in a book. It's the description of the book, the synopsis and genre that will sell me on a book. But everyone agrees the cover is the first thing you see and you if you grab them with it, they won't explore further. So even though I had an idea of how I envisioned the cover I needed to reach out to my peers in the social world to get opinions if what I had envisioned jumped out at them. So I posted on Google Plus and Facebook for feedback from those who cared to comment and to my the beta readers who had read the novel. Of the original 9 covers there were three that most liked the best. Of those I had my designer do another batch with some modifications which she had back to me quickly, 9 more variations to ponder. The reactions I had to those were very positive and nearly all liked the same one, which coincided with one of the two I liked. Now to decide which one to be the final one?

The cover final choices came down to one major difference, either the woman was standing looking pretty and sultry, the shadowy man behind her with a knife, or she was huddled on the floor in fear the same shadowy man behind her. Some of my peers thought the pretty sultry style looked too romantic and would give the wrong impression of what the story was about. The huddled woman gave more of a mystery feel to it. For me it was a toss up but I went with my gut and choose the sultry look with the stalking man behind her. I'd lived with this novel for nearly a year and I wanted to have the balance of sexy and scary on the cover, as that is the mood I believe comes across in the book. Either would have been very good and I wished I could have two covers, one front and one on the back, but one is all they give you. It was a matter of finding the right mood and hopefully I did. Time will tell.