It just sucks that wine, books and beds are judged by their covers. We just don't know until we get into it. All the blood sweat and tears that go into getting the content right, and it comes down to the cover! On the other hand, the cover is fun, and no doubt you'll think up dozens of ideas as you create your content. Rough draft your ideas and keep a file on your cover ideas.

When it comes time to come up with a cover design, you'll first need to know the book specification: height, width, depth. (You can't design the spine without knowing how thick it is, based on the weight of the paper you use, multiplied by total pages.)

A Google search will bring up countless book cover designers, and one option that will get you many mock-ups at a reasonable rate is 99designs.com. Blog the results of your cover design inquiry, and let your audience decide which is best.

And keep in mind, since you may be printing a minimum of say 1000 copies, there is nothing to keep you from having four different covers (250 copies of each cover) in the one run. The cost may be some mere 25 cents a copy more, but you can test various covers for which is best.