I think one is slightly better than the other, but is harder to time.

I hired a younger artist for an initial cover design and it wasn’t great. She was paid for her time, and I learned from it, but it wouldn’t be my cover. It was fast, didn’t delay me, and it was a concept piece. That’s fine.

Now I’m aiming for two that are both like 4x the cost, way better, and take 6 months.

I don’t care about the cost. I like art and paying artists. If I hire one, there’s a small chance I don’t like it and can’t publish it via the cover. Same for the other. But unlike the first one, a failure among either of these big ones would be a setback (assuming the rest of the novel is coming along in 6 months).

So I considered hiring both, to see which one is best. My husband and operations manager was like “yeah do that, obviously.”