FORMATTING/BOOKCOVER QUESTION

I was looking at Lulu earlier, and they have resources for formatting covers as well as http://us.fotolia.com/Info/HowToBuy a link to a place that has images for sale.

I can't imagine why it would matter which you should do first. Maybe someone more enlightened will have a good reason.

Can you not have the formatting and the covers done at the same time? Like others, I can't really imagine why it would matter which one you do first.

Or just hire out the covers and do the formatting yourself in the meantime. It's really not that difficult. I couldn't imagine paying someone to do it for me.

And yes, if you have no design/art experience (or software), definitely hire the covers out. You can probably dig up a designer here, and there are some designers that offer unique pre-made covers (that they'll add your name and title to) for very reasonable prices.

For a full cover the artist will need to know the spine width, and that depends on the formatting.

Ohhh well if formatting = typesetting in this case, then yeah, get that out of the way. I was imagining formatting for an ebook.