This Crazy Writing Life: On Defining a Book By Its Cover—Part Two

By Steven Womack

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Hard to believe this is already the ninth installment of This Crazy Writing Life. Thanks for hanging with me on this, and I hope you’re getting something out of my <sometimes> seemingly random observations on the world of writing and publishing.

Last month, we talked about book covers—what a book cover is supposed to accomplish, how it works, and the challenges to getting the kind of cover that will serve the book the best. This month, I’m going to briefly discuss the different types of book covers. This won’t take long, so let’s dive in.

EBook covers are the simplest and quickest covers to create. They’re only one panel (no back cover or flaps), and you’ve got a little wiggle room. No need to sweat hitting the dimensions exactly (but don’t ignore them either). For Kindle eBook covers, you should shoot for a 1.6:1 aspect ratio, which is a complicated way of saying the height of your cover should be 1.6 times the width.

Kindle also specifies that the ideal dimensions for an eBook cover are 2560 pixels in height and a width of 1600 pixels. That gives you the best quality, especially if you’re reading on a high-resolution device. The cover image has to be less than 50 megabytes, and it should be either in a .tiff or .jpeg format. When you upload the image, don’t compress it.

Now if that sounds a little complicated, let’s compare this with a print book cover. Print book covers have a minimum of three different components: a front cover, a back cover, and a spine. This is it for a mass market or trade paperback edition. So how to you create this?

First, you have to know the trim size of your print book. And with modern, print-on-demand technology, you’ve got more choices than ever before. Just noodle around on the IngramSpark or KDP websites (start with the FAQ pages) and you’ll see some of your options. Or visit your local bookstore and marvel at the array of sizes books come in today.

After you get the trim size, then you have to decide on what kind of paper you want your book printed on. As I observed in an earlier installment of This Crazy Writing Life, my personal opinion for a simple novel is to stay away from white paper, which comes in 50- and 70- pound weights. But if you’re printing a book with illustrations, especially color, then you pretty much have to go with white.

Why is this critical? Different papers have different weights and take up different amounts of space. A 300-page book printed on 50-pound Crème is going to be thicker than the same number of pages printed on 38-pound Groundwood.

Oh, and did I mention you have to actually have the book typeset before you start work on the cover? Why is that?

Because the thickness of the book will determine the dimensions of the spine. And that depends on the number of pages in the book and the type of paper you choose.

There are a couple of other considerations that don’t directly affect the size of your cover. A paperback print-on-demand book from Ingram can have either a matte cover or a high gloss cover. Some specialty printers that have come into existence to serve the indie pub community (Book Vault, for instance, which I’ll talk about in a later column) can do even higher-end options like embossed covers, gold leaf lettering, and spray-on marbling. Pretty heady, exotic stuff…

If you’re going for a hardcover, the process gets even more complicated because you now have flap copy.

If this sounds a little overwhelming, just remember: once you have all this data (trim sizes, page count, etc.), then the book manufacturers can feed this into their program and spit out a template. A good cover designer is going to be able to walk you through this without too much agony.

So there’s enough to get you started. Both IngramSpark and KDP have lots and lots of information that’s easily accessible. And like every other task in modern life, you can always search YouTube...

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I wrote last month about how essential a good, inspired, effective cover was to marketing your book. Lots of really good books get passed over because their covers aren’t eye-catching enough, or don’t accomplish what a cover is supposed to do.

Sometimes, though, it works the other way around. As I mentioned in previous columns, my inbox gets inundated several times a day with email pushes marketing books, primarily indie-pubbed books. BookBub, FreeBooksy, BargainBooksy, EReader News, Robin Reads, Hello Books… I get daily visits from them all. And I actually read the emails and scrub down through the book offerings, not because I have time to read all this stuff (who would?) but because I like to just keep an eye on what’s out there. As I’ve also mentioned, even though your crazy Aunt Agnes’s Chihuahua has more graphic design talent in his back paw then I have in my whole brain, I can still tell when a cover works and when it doesn’t.

So imagine my delight when one of these push emails landed in my inbox last week and there’s a cover that quite literally left me speechless. It was gorgeous, beautifully rendered, the colors jumping off the page. It was an homage to those great classic hardboiled paperbacks of the Fifties and Sixties. Square-jawed handsome men in the background, a teary-eyed woman in the foreground, and the front end of a Sixties-era Cadillac off to the side, against a fire-engine red color scheme with brilliant yellow type.

The cover just worked…

Needless to say, though I’m saying it anyway, I downloaded the book immediately. It was an indie-pubbed book, the author’s debut novel. I Googled him and found his website, then wrote him a nice note and told him how much I loved the cover—the blurb on the cover was equally effective—and how much I was looking forward to reading his book.

And by the way, would you be willing to share the name of your cover designer?

The author wrote me back, was happy to share his designer’s name with me. He found him on Fivrr.com and his rates start at twenty bucks for an eBook cover!

As Bill Murray said in Ghostbusters, Holy Mother Pus Bucket…

Then I sat down to read the book. Now you may have already noticed I haven’t mentioned the title of the novel or the author’s name or even the broad brushstroke plot. There’s a reason for that. I’m too nice a guy to slam another writer’s work, except under the cloak of anonymity (for the unfortunate author, not me). 

But this novel was one of the worst things I’ve ever read in my life. Literally, by the second page I’m shaking my head and asking myself Did I just read that? If KDP offered a purple-ink option, this guy should’ve taken it. Purple prose so overwritten that it dripped off the page. Clearly, this writer never met an adjective or an adverb he didn’t fall in love with. Clichés that were literally on par with heaving bosoms and throbbing…

Whatevers.

I went into the kitchen and read an excerpt to my wife, who broke out laughing. This literally could have been a winning submission for the Bulwer-Lytton contest, except it was a whole damn book.

Which just goes to show, you can have the best cover in the world, the best marketing plans, the best intentions. But if your book sucks, it ain’t gonna work. Rule #1: Write—At The Very Least—A Passably Good Book.

What the hell, I found a good cover designer, though.

See you next month.

This Crazy Writing Life: On Defining a Book By Its Cover

By Steven Womack

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We left off last month’s column with an exploration of the technical aspects (and challenges) of formatting the interior of print books. This month, let’s talk about the exterior of the book—the cover.

Before we get started, though, one quick sidebar. In late September, I drove back from St. Petersburg Beach, Florida (just about 48 hours ahead of Hurricane Helene) after attending the annual conference of Novelists, Inc. Novelists, Inc. may not be as well known as some of the other major writers professional associations like the Mystery Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, or SFWA—Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America—but since it was started in late 1980s by a group of disgruntled romance writers, it’s emerged as one of the most powerful trade associations out there. It’s the only writers’ organization I know of outside of the Writers Guild of America that requires you to actually be a professional writer to join. To gain admittance to NINC, you have to have published at least two novels in popular genres like romance or mystery, and you have to have earned a minimum amount of money from those two books (the exact requirements are outlined on the website at www.ninc.com).

Readers and fans, editors and agents are not eligible to join NINC. The founders of the organization decided that NINC would never offer prizes or awards (like the MWA and RWA) because this fostered a sense of competition that was contrary to the organization’s purpose of encouraging and lifting up all writers in the struggle to survive in this crazy business. And business is the focus of the conference as well as the organization; you’ll rarely see a NINC panel on how to write sparkling dialogue. But you will see panels on understanding the intricacies of subrights licenses and contracts or the technical aspects of independent audiobook production.

Sponsors pay big bucks to have a presence at the NINC conference (in the spirit of complete transparency, I’m a former president of the organization and a current Board member). The reason I bring this up is that as a result, some of the most cutting-edge aspects of indie publishing show up at this conference. Every time I go, I learn something new. Last year, the big topic of discussion was the use of A.I. generated voices in audiobook narration. This year, there seems to be a big movement toward indie authors selling books directly from their websites. The One Big Thing I learned is that taking a simple, static author website and turning it into a true e-commerce platform is something I’m just not quite ready for.

In future columns, I’ll share some of the things I’ve learned from these conferences. As independent publishing continues to grow from an isolated few stubborn writers trying to survive into a cultural and business movement that has totally remade publishing, dozens of other companies have sprouted up as well to serve this market.

As I’ve said more than once lately, it’s a whole new world out there.

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I was curious as to where the phrase/cliché Don’t judge a book by its cover came from, so I Googled it. Turns out George Eliot first coined that turn-of-phrase in her 1860 novel, The Mill on the Floss.

Gotta confess, I missed that one.

But I’ve heard the adage all my life, which is a metaphorical phrase telling us that outward appearances can be deceiving, that we should never judge anyone or anything by its external looks.

Sounds good on the surface; only problem is it’s hogwash. 

We judge everything by its external appearance. A car may be the most dependable, rugged, efficient vehicle ever made, but if it makes you look like a complete yutz driving it, you’re not going to buy one (are you listening, Walter White, cruising along in your Pontiac Aztec?)

You may meet someone at a party who would be the kindest, most loving, passionate and dependable life partner you could ever wish for, but if their hair is greasy and dirty, they smell bad, snot’s running out of their nose, and they have huge pit stains, you’re probably gonna take a pass.

It’s the same with book covers. The indie pubbing world is full of stories of books that didn’t sell for squat, so the authors yanked the books down, changed the cover, put the book back up without changing a word and now it sells like crazy. You may have written a classic, a prize-winner, a book that will last through the ages, but if your cover turns everyone off, then the book’s going to be a loser.

I’m speaking for myself now, but I’ll bet a lot of you are in the same boat. I’m not a graphic artist, and when it comes to good cover design, I wouldn’t know it if it ran up behind me and bit me on the butt. Truth is, I’m not even qualified to write about book covers from an artist’s point-of-view. I have absolutely no talent as a graphic designer. So, I’m writing this from the perspective of an indie-pubber who has to deal with the fact that he’s not even capable of telling good design from bad.

Maybe I’m being a little hard on myself here. Truth is, I’ve been around book covers my whole life, and while I have no talent as a designer, I am a sophisticated and experienced consumer of books. I know when a book cover design doesn’t work for me. And when I run across a brilliant book cover, it moves me on a visceral level.

I’m not overstating here: your book cover is the first and one of the most important marketing tools you have.

So how do you deploy this tool to make your book as marketable as possible?

First, it’s got to convey a certain amount of information. The title of the book—and subtitle, if it’s got one—and the author’s name should be prominent, along with any other information that will help sell the book (as in “New York Times Bestselling Author”). I have actually seen book covers where the author’s name was hard to read. When that happens, someone needs an intervention.

Second, the design/artwork should stand out visually. Whether on a jam-packed bookstore shelf or a crowded Amazon web page, there should be something that grabs your eye as you scan from Point A to Point B. I realize that’s a nebulous, unfocused notion. If I could actually define in solid terms what “stand out visually” means, then I’d be a famous well-paid cover artist and not the word-shoveling literary coal miner that I am. The best I can do is echo Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who—in attempting to define obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio—famously wrote I know it when I see it.

Third, your cover design must reflect and communicate the book’s genre and tone. If you’ve written a light-hearted cozy mystery where the protagonist’s cute but feisty cat solves the murder based on a plot point that’s a recipe for cream cheese blintzes, then a dark, brooding, heavily shadowed cover with a pair of threatening, glowing eyes coming out of the mist is not going to help you. Conversely, you’re not going to sell a graphic, disturbing serial killer suspense novel with a bright, cheery cover of pinks and blues, cartoon characters and fonts with extra curlicues and other cutesy elements.

This requires you to learn and study the conventions of your genre, to research what works and what doesn’t work, and to learn the expectations of your audience.

Stuff you should already be doing anyway…

One of the best examples of dynamite book covers out there today are the books published by Hard Case Crime. Hard Case Crime publishes crime fiction that echoes back to the paperback pulp fiction era of the 1940s through the late 1060s, when writers like Mickey Spillane, Cornell Woolrich, and Robert Bloch were flourishing. They’re bringing back and revitalizing the old hard-boiled school with contemporary writers like Stephen King, Lawrence Block, and Max Allan Collins, as well as republishing long-dead writers like Donald Westlake and Woolrich. And their books all feature covers that are homages to those great mass-market paperback pulp fiction covers.

While I admittedly am not a designer myself, I do find that there are certain things I react positively to and others that turn me off. I subscribe to a lot of book promotions websites: BookBub, Free Booksy, Robinreads, etc. So I get way too many push emails every day, and most of them are for indie-pubbed books. I’ve noticed in the last couple of years that more and more book covers depend on stock photos for their visuals, especially in genres like romance. I get that original art costs a fortune, but there’s something about a generic stock photo on a book cover that screams self-published, and I find that a turn-off. You can start with stock photography if you want, but with programs like Canva and Book Brush out there, in my view one should at least put a little effort into manipulating and adapting the image to make it more unique.

The bottom line for most writers—myself included—is that the best way to land that beautiful book cover is to find a cover artist you trust and whose work you admire. Only problem is, they can be hard to find and kind of expensive. It’s a challenge to find that sweet spot between “I love your stuff” and “oh, I can afford that.” I worked with a designer for several years when I repubbed the out-of-print novels in my Music City Murders series. Dawn Charles did a fabulous job for me, was great to work with, with very reasonable fees. Unfortunately, she passed away a few years ago. But go to my Amazon page and you’ll see what I’m talking about; it’s an object lesson in how to create a brand.

And I mentioned earlier, companies are popping up everywhere to help indie pubbers get the help they need. One that’s been around over a decade is Reedsy, which is a company that’s an online employment agency for publishing freelancers of all types; editors, designers, formatters, etc. They’re great to work with and a good place to start.

We’ll continue this discussion next month. Thanks again for hanging with This Crazy Writing Life.