Covers are so important. And really there is a lot more that goes into one than you might realize to make it look professional. Unless you have a background in art, graphic design, or other related skills you really should do yourself a favor and hire someone. Trust me, your story is worth it.
Sell More Books With These Critical Cover Rules
Almost every author that reaches out to me wants to sell more books, so you’re not alone. But surprisingly, aside from doing no marketing, the number one hurdle is often the book cover design.
Unfortunately this is a much more common problem for indie authors because we’re left to our own devices, we don’t have a publishing house making expert recommendations to a team of in-house professional designers.
But indie authors don’t get a free pass, if you want to sell more books you need to take a hard look at your book cover, and determine whether it’s supporting your book marketing in all the right ways.
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I see a lot of book covers during my day job and I can tell with one look who created their own book cover. It makes a huge difference in getting your potential audience to look at your book. So when I found this post by K.S. Brooks at Indies Unlimited I knew I found a kindred spirit. My personal pet peeve is #3 because very long titles make it very difficult to create sponsorship posts that look nice. What are your hints for good book covers?
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Top Five Ways to Have an Awful Book Cover
by K.S. Brooks
I’m constantly looking at book covers as part of my “job” here at Indies Unlimited. On top of that, I run into authors posting their covers in groups all the time, asking for input. So I see a LOT of covers. And most of them all have the same issues.
What I find most ironic is that the same people keep posting book covers with the same problems. I don’t get that. Please allow me to make something perfectly clear. And I’m not just making this up to be difficult or bossy or right. I’m speaking from experience. I used to provide my own cover art to my small Indie publisher – and because of that, I’ve taken some lumps. But I’ve also learned some important things about book covers. I share this knowledge freely, to help my fellow Indie authors. Book covers are important. We all want to make a good first impression. Book sales count on it.
But I’ve noticed that a lot of people don’t want to listen to my advice, but, silly me, I keep giving it in hopes that I can help someone, maybe… someday. What would happen if I started advising them to do the exact OPPOSITE of what should be done? Do you think maybe THEN they’d do the opposite just out of spite and end up with a decent cover? How about we give it a try? With that in mind, here are my top five tips for better book covers.
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We have talked about how important having a good cover is, after all it is what your story is first judged by. But did you know that just having your cover redesigned professionally can do wonders for sales? Jane Friedman explains.
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Book Cover Redesign as Marketing Tool
Posted on June 23, 2016 by Alexander von Ness
Getting professional help is always a good option
Today’s guest post is from graphic designer Alexander von Ness (@AlexandervonNes), founder of Nessgraphica and Bookcoverpedia.
Authors may spend a fortune on book editing, but leave very little for the cover design—thus forgetting that the cover is the reader’s first impression of the book.
If you are a well-known author, your books may sell themselves because readers trust the story or the content, but if you are new, then you need to make a statement with the first thing a reader sees: the book cover design. And if your existing book cover design isn’t currently making a good impression, you may want to consider a professional redesign.
Last year, I had almost the same amount of work with redesigns of already-published books as with new books. Even a simple redesign of a book cover can create miracles marketing-wise. Some authors have even requested redesigns of over ten books after seeing how much a book cover redesign can increase sales. A professional book cover design isn’t just a sign of good content but appreciation of your own hard work.
In the next few examples of real book cover redesigns, I offer a short explanation of the challenges and goals I had in redesigning each cover.
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Don’t you always like to peek and see what other people are doing? At the Design Observer Group they have their 2015 cover winners. I have to admit that my favorite is “Between You & Me Confessions of a Comma Queen” because it is clever, has great design, but also really conveys what the story is about. Which is your favorite?
If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.
Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.
A great cover is like a great outfit for your book. And like a great outfit, the cover should look good close up as well as far away. It is also the first thing a potential reader will judge you on. In a sea of titles, a quality cover will stand out and speak to your reader about the wonderful story within. At Digital Book World, Catherine Dunn shares her tips for self-publishing authors on how to have a great cover.
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How to Prepare for Self-Publishing: Cover Design
By Catherine Dunn
Getting professional help is always a good option
Good cover design is the single most obvious way of making sure your book stands out on the shelf and looks professional.
Do Your Research
Look at your competition, both in hard copy and online. What looks professional and what looks bad? Why? Make your own list of some pitfalls to avoid and features that you like.
Think About the Ebook Version
It’s important to remember that something that works well in hard copy might not look so good as a thumbnail. A great design, though, should work in both formats.
A detailed background and delicate colors can get swallowed up at thumbnail size. That doesn’t mean you can’t use them at all, but you need to make sure that the overall design still works on a small scale.
What Type of Book Is It?
One piece of advice that I’ve heard over and over again is to make sure your cover design correctly conveys the genre of your book. You might not want your work to be pigeonholed, and you probably want it to look different from the competition, but you need to put those feelings to one side. Readers use some basic visual cues to decide whether they think they’ll enjoy your book or not. Embrace a healthy dash of cliché. If you’ve written a romance, the cover needs to say “Romance” loud and clear so that your intended readership will pick it up and have a look at the blurb.
This aspect of cover design has a big impact on completion rates. If people think they’re getting a cozy mystery and it turns out to be gory dystopian sci-fi, they’ll put the book down without reaching the end. They might only read the first chapter. If you’re publishing an ebook, this kind of thing can be tracked, and makes your book look poor when it might be a fantastic dystopian sci-fi novel! You might even get bad reviews if the content doesn’t match readers’ expectations.
If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.
by K.S. Brooks
