Covers
“You can’t judge a book by its cover.”
—Old saying that’s misleading, because many readers do
Your cover is vital to the success of your book, because readers scan quickly, and take more time to check out books with covers they like. Your tiny thumbnail image will be up on the Internet against thousands of others, so make it eye-catching. A lousy cover usually indicates inferior inside material, and many readers won’t bother. A great cover is a promise of better content inside. Many, many authors fail in this category, and their sales suffer as a result. The cover is the first indication of whether you’re a professional or not, and may be the only chance you get of someone taking a look. To understand what good covers look like, check out the top best-sellers in a genre, and see what they have in common. Some websites show examples of bad covers, so check those out and you’ll know what to avoid.
Traditional publishers boast of their packaging superiority because Indie books have lousy covers, and for many, that’s true— as it is with many of the traditional publishing covers. Or they’ll just use stock images over and over. One traditional writer asked a fellow writer if she liked his latest cover— and it was almost exactly the one that had been on her previous book- from the same publisher! Barry Eisler, a best-selling top-notch writer, was stuck with the most unexciting, dumb-looking, green garage door for his thriller (an absolute sales-killer), and when he protested, the publisher would do nothing to remedy the situation. He soon left that publisher, costing them millions for a bad decision.
Trade-copy paperbacks are inexpensive to publish, but hardcovers may not be worth it for most Indie writers. They’re expensive to produce, so unless you want a special edition, have legions of fans, or have a lot of extra money to burn, you may not want to bother. Few people will pay a lot for a pricey book by someone who’s not famous or pushed by a big traditional publisher. Full color print books are also expensive, and harder to create, but if you’ve got a pet project that requires it, you’ll want to spend some time planning it out.
If you cannot learn do the cover yourself (most writers cannot, as we work with words, not images) you may have to hire someone. This can get expensive, so you’ll need to carefully spend time researching costs and quality. Yes, you can get the cheap designers, but you’ll want to make sure to get something that works. Many writers who spent far too much on their covers (some thousands of dollars), got bad covers that still could have been done at a tenth of the cost. Now there are cover templates which can be had for bargain rates, and there are sites to inexpensively pay for cover art you can license to use commercially.
Some authors run A/B testing on prospective covers to see what people prefer, via their blog, website, or social media. If a number of people are strongly in favor one cover over another, the more popular is usually the one chosen by the author as a final.
First and foremost, the cover should reflect the genre and match your target audience, so that at a glance, people can guess what the book represents: horror book covers show darkness and spooky things, romance often shows two embracing people (usually with rumpled clothes), high fantasy shows someone in armor with a bladed weapon (and often a monster), Westerns show someone in a cowboy hat on a horse. You get the idea. So know the conventions of your genre, and do something that represents your content. If you don’t know, look at several dozen top-selling books in the genre you wrote in.
Second, the title and the author name should be in easily readable fonts, with the proper size and color. Many get this wrong. If you look at a thumbnail (or a full-size cover from ten feet away) and cannot discern the title or author name clearly, it doesn’t work. It may be the spacing, placement, size, background color, or font that are off, or a combination of those. Some use fonts that are just wrong, either unreadable as is or wrong for the genre. Again, examine other covers that work to see how they do it, and do something similar.
For full print covers, the spine and back cover need to be done properly. The title and author name should again be easy to read on the spine, and placed and spaced well. For the back, it takes some time to figure out the design and where things should go. You’ll want some of the following:
• Description/Tagline: a few exciting lines about the story inside that make a reader want to check it out.
• Blurb (optional): a recommendation from some other writer (or reader) that praises your work.
• Another work (optional): Sometimes you’ll have an image and short description of another one of your other books here (especially for another volume in the series).
• Short Bio (optional): Some writers put these on the cover, though I prefer them in the book interior, at the back of the book. Unless you’ve got something so spectacular, like you were a spy or astronaut, that will help sell the work on that information alone.
• Price, ISBN, and barcode: Whoever prints your book will likely request you to set aside an area to include a barcode, unless you have it set it up already. Again, compare your design with that of other successful book cover backs, and do what they do. Do you want to print your price on the cover? What about the ISBN, or will you have that just in the interior?
Once you’ve set your book up for print, you’ll want a proof copy to look over before authorizing it to be published. If you publish through a site such as Amazon, you can request a single physical copy that you should carefully go through. Verify that the cover is eye-catching and professional, and the interior is done properly. Then have another careful set of eyes look it over.
The key is that your book should at a glance look like other quality books, because readers don’t prefer ugly or amateur. At one book signing, my friend was launching his latest novel. Another writer asked about Indie versus Traditional. I said “let’s compare,” and put one of mine next to the one that was launching via a publisher. Same size, good covers, all was as it should be (and similar), the price was identical, and the interiors looked properly done. He said he couldn’t see a difference, and that’s the secret— except my friend would make a dollar for each one he sold, and my similar book would make ten dollars profit for each one I’d sold.
Advantage, Indie!
For a series, the branding should match on the covers. Go with a theme that makes them look like they belong together, for quick identification. Check out other author series to see what they have done.
Dale T. Phillips has published novels, story collections, non-fiction, and over 80 short stories. Stephen King was Dale's college writing teacher, and since then, Dale has found time to appear on stage, television, radio, in an independent feature film, and compete on Jeopardy (losing in a spectacular fashion). He's a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the Sisters in Crime. He's traveled to all 50 states, Mexico, Canada, and through Europe.
