Tag Archives: cover art

Jan 18 2014

What Does a Good Cover Do?

Cover designed by Melissa Stevens at http://www.theillustratedauthor.net

What a good book cover should do depends on your primary objective. For example,

  • If your main goal is to interest relevant readers in your book, then the cover is effective if it attracts your target audience.
  • If your main goal is to create fashion for your book, then the cover is effective if readers appreciate its style.
  • If your main goal is to please your family, then your cover should be geared to them.

I will focus on cover design geared toward attracting the target audience. This is what most authors and publishers strive to achieve.

The Importance of Cover Design

100% of readers see your book’s cover before they open the book. Some won’t open the book unless it looks inviting.

There are several ways that an effective cover may help to inspire interest or deter sales:

  • Customers see thumbnails in search results. Most covers have just a few seconds to catch the shopper’s attention and appeal to the shopper’s interests.
  • People see your cover in your various marketing endeavors. Your cover is a big part of your branding process.
  • Your cover makes the first impression on a buyer. You only get one chance to make a good first impression.
  • Books are read on airplanes, in trains, on park benches, and left on coffee tables. The cover is a marketing opportunity.
  • A readers will set the book down periodically. A good cover helps to renew interest in the story.

Designing the Cover

Focus on attracting the target audience:

  • It’s not just to grab attention. It needs to appeal to the specific target audience.
  • It needs to clearly signify the genre and content. Three seconds or no deal.
  • The cover must look professional. Buyers expect it to reflect the quality of the content.
  • The text must be easy to read. Key words should be especially clear.
  • The colors need to work well together.

How to Do It

Here are some tips:

  • Research and study the covers of top-selling books similar to yours, especially those which aren’t selling because of the author’s or publisher’s name recognition. This is what your target audience is accustomed to seeing. When they see covers like these, they ‘know’ (in three seconds) that these books are a good fit.
  • The main image (and cover as a whole) must attract the target audience and signify the genre and content. This image can make or break the sale. If your book has highly marketable content, it’s well worth the extra time or reasonable expense to find the ‘right’ image.
  • Don’t make the cover too busy. One central image sends a quicker, clearer signal.
  • Placing the main image according to the rule of thirds may attract more interest than placing it in the center of the front cover.
  • Many top covers follow the three-color rule: 60% primary, 30% secondary, 10% accent. Study color coordination (there are many free online resources) to find colors that work well together. If designing a paperback cover, note that colors often print much darker than they appear on the screen.
  • Select a font that fits the cover, genre, and content well. The font style plays a more pivotal role than most people realize. Buyers themselves often pass up a book based on font without even realizing it.
  • Get feedback from your target audience. This may also help you create a little buzz for your book.

When your cover is finished, remember your main objective. What matters most is whether or not it will attract the target audience.

Example

Look at the thumbnail that I included with this post. It’s for Cursive Handwriting Practice Workbook for Teens by Julie Harper; the cover was designed by Melissa Stevens (www.theillustratedauthor.net).

I’ll admit that when I first saw this book, I wondered if the artist and author had taken a risk with this cover. Then I realized that I’m not in the target audience. I think the art does appeal to teens. Especially, if you consider what typical educational resources look like, this might be a ‘cool’ alternative. The cursive element might be a little subtle: You see this with the first word in the title, a few words of the title written in cursive, and less obvious in the background. Most handwriting workbooks emphasize the handwriting element with a few very large handwritten letters or words. This cover went against the grain, which generally can be a risk. But the most important thing is if the book appeals to the specific target audience. This book does a good job of saying, effectively, “If you’re looking for a handwriting workbook that isn’t geared toward small children, check me out.”

Let me emphasize that this cover wasn’t designed (that’s my impression) to go against the grain. It was designed to attract the specific target audience. Focus on this element of cover design. It might also break a couple of the ‘rules’ of cover design. Remember, what matters most is how the cover appeals to the target audience and signifies the proper genre and content. Everything else is just a guideline.

Publishing Resources

I started this blog to provide free help with writing, publishing, and marketing. You can find many free articles on publishing and marketing by clicking one of the following links:

Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

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Oct 8 2013

Cover Reveal for Spooky Word Scrambles

Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000443_00051]

In the past, I’ve always designed my own covers, and I’ve enjoyed doing so. But I’ve seen so many awesome covers here at WordPress, I wanted to have one like those on my new book, too. That’s a great thing about interacting with other authors here at WordPress: I think we all find a little motivation and some ideas toward improvement.

This cover is far better than I could have done myself. For one, if I have to put a person on my cover, I’m hopeless (a stick figure probably isn’t the way to go). There are some cool effects here that I wouldn’t have thought to try to do, and wouldn’t have been able to pull off if I had. If you hire a cover designer, (at a minimum) you definitely want the result to include features that you couldn’t have done by yourself.

Melissa Stevens at www.theillustratedauthor.net, designed this cover. She has some cool horror covers on her website, and she also designed a cool spooky cursive workbook cover for a friend, July Harper (you can see all of Melissa’s covers by clicking Gallery on her website). So I knew that she would be a good fit to design a spooky, Halloween-themed cover for my book. Melissa also provided several illustrations that were used to decorate the interior (like the one shown below). Even if word scrambles don’t interest you, you might check out the interior in a week or so on Amazon, if you’re curious about how the interior is decorated.

My word scramble books don’t sell as well as many of my other books, but I still feel very good about this cover. I’m very glad to have it on my book. (Of course, my coauthor actually did most of the work on what I just called “my” book.)

We’ve been working on this spooky word scrambles book for a year and several months now. We wanted to release in time for Halloween last year, but when that didn’t happen, we decided to put extra time into it. It’s barely coming out in time for Halloween this year. It should be out later this week. Although the title is Spooky Word Scrambles, many of the puzzles relate to Halloween. I think a cool feature of our word scramble books is the Hints section (separate from the Answers section). Have you ever been stuck on a word jumble, and wanted just a little help without getting the full answer? The hints section gives the first letter of the answer, which helps with this.

Target audience: I mention this frequently in my marketing posts. The focus of my blog is to help authors with self-publishing ideas. The audience for my blog isn’t word scramble lovers. Okay, maybe a couple of you do like puzzles, but definitely, if I’m trying to sell word scrambles, I have a target audience mismatch. I preach all the time that this is a huge problem.

However, I didn’t do this cover reveal to try to sell word scramble books (but I’d also be a fool to beg you to please not buy it). Rather, I thought that my experience of hiring a cover designer may be relevant, and I want to use this cover to make a few points about cover design, which I shall do now.

Cover design:

  • Three colors is a good rule of thumb, often in the ration 6:3:1. This cover follows this fairly well, with a primary green, secondary purple, and accent black. The other colors, used just a little, complement the main three, and at least a fourth color is usually inevitable when using a person or picture on the cover.
  • Text should be interesting, fit the theme, and be highly readable. If you really want to be a picky cover critic, you could complain about readability in the title, but then you’d be awful silly in this case: Since it’s a word scramble book, if you can’t figure out the title, this book probably isn’t for you. 🙂 For most other books, I’d be more cautious before staggering the letters like this. I like the way the author names stand out in the cauldron, and I like the style of this font for the theme, too.
  • There is a danger of making a cover too busy. There are a few things going on here. The biggest question to ask is whether or not it’s distracting. The bats kind of just seem like shadows in the background, so may not distract too much. The bubbles serve a purpose by holding the title letters.
  • The biggest problem is that I have a dozen (or so) word scramble books, but the covers aren’t remotely uniform. It’s not really a series, so to speak, but it would be nice if I had had the foresight to make them fit together in some way. I guess the only solution is to go back in time and hire a cover designer sooner. 🙂 (I guess I could have them redesigned, but then a few customers might accidentally buy the same book again, so I think I’ll just focus on the new covers.)

However, even if you’re not in the target audience, your opinion would be valued. Feel free to disagree with my comments above. Obviously, I’m partial toward this cover; you’re more likely to be objective than I am. If there is anything about the cover that you like or dislike, please share it; I will be grateful for honest feedback.

Here is a sample puzzle, in case you want to enjoy a fun word puzzle while you’re here. As in the book, every word scramble on a page fits a specific theme. So if you’re stuck on a puzzle, knowing that all of the words are related in some way may be helpful.

  • P A C E
  • G S A F N
  • D O B O L
  • K A T E S
  • N O C T U
  • T A Y B T
  • M A P R E V I
  • A L C A R D U

You can find the answers at the very end of the post (below the picture).

Happy Halloween. 🙂

If you haven’t already heard about Read Tuesday, you should check it out.

It’s going to be HUGE!

Give the gift of reading this holiday season.

Chris McMullen, author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers, Vol. 1 (formatting/publishing) and Vol. 2 (packaging/marketing)

Halloween Scrambles Title Page

cape, fangs, blood, stake, count, batty, vampire, Dracula