What Does Your Book Cover Say?

 Let's take a moment to talk about book covers. What does your book cover say to your potential readers? Remember the old adage: Don't judge a book by it's cover? Well... here's some news for you. Readers do.

Your book cover, aside from your title, is a potential reader's first glimpse into your creation. Generally, they see that cover before they ever read the blurb or an excerpt from your book. A properly designed and eye-popping cover can help with potential sales, while a poorly designed or overly-clutter cover can hurt sales.

Your cover doesn't require much text. If you're publishing in print, leave the blurb and the About the Author to the back cover. If you're doing an eBook, leave the blurb where the blurb goes and put the About the Author on the last page of your book. Those have no place on a cover.

A good cover should feature the following text: The title, the publisher (if not self-publishing), the author's name, and - if it is a part of a series - the series name and number. Out of all of these, the title and the author's name should be the most prominent text seen.

None of your text should fully cover the artwork or photography on the book cover. As far as the artwork goes, it should be fully relevant to the material included in your manuscript. There are several sites online that offer free stock photos that you may use on your covers, but remember - those stock photos are available freely to everyone. Try to keep it as original as you can. If you're handy with a camera, shooting your own cover photos can be fun, and it keeps the originality there. If you're a good artist, a nice piece of artwork that demonstrates what the book is about could be an excellent selling point. If you're handy at photo design programs, manipulating artwork or photos can aid you even more.

On that note, if you are not skilled in photo design work, it's best to leave it up to the professionals. There are many affordable book cover design experts out there that would be happy to create a winning cover for your book, but if you try to do it yourself with no skills, it will show and it will not be in your favor. For instance, cropping out different people from different images to use together on a book cover can easily go downhill. There are several things to keep in mind. Each person in those different photos likely had different lighting than the others. Some may be of different quality and might seem grainy or fuzzy when you bring them up to size. Not to mention, the more you add to your cover, the more cluttered that cover becomes.

If you're wanting to use a sexy male model on your front cover, consider visiting a model's website and purchasing an original photo. There are many models with stock photo websites who would be excited to sell you a photo - and usually at a reasonable cost. Often, you can even buy the full rights to that photo to ensure it doesn't pop up on the covers of other authors' works. When you do this, remember to keep the Model as Person in mind. Don't stretch their images and distort them. Humans and animals can be properly resized for a cover without turning them into eggheads.

A good design program that is free for those who cannot afford Photoshop is Gimp. Gimp has been around for years, and it has a learning curve that can easily be learned if you take your time and practice on a few things before actually working on your cover. I use both Photoshop and Gimp for different aspects, depending on what I need done on a cover or photo. Gimp, being free, doesn't offer some of the tools Photoshop has, but it does have other qualities that makes it worth it, and you can create a stunning cover with either one.

Keep in mind that you also don't want your cover to be boring. You want it to stand out from the masses. A naked male torso seems to be the going thing right now, but all that says is 'Hey, there's a hot guy in this book.' Surely, your book is more than just a hot guy. If you want to compete for sales, you must compete. You cannot offer the same mundane design themes that dozens of other titles in your genre are utilizing. Look at your chosen photo or artwork, and then study it. Find the photo within the photo. Maybe you have an image of a beautiful woodland landscape with a running stream and stunning flowers. You don't always need the full image. Find what stands out in your images and crop the rest out. Make the most of every inch of space you have on your cover, so that nothing is wasted. However, remember to not overwhelmingly clutter your cover. It should be seen and understood on first glance.

Also keep in mind your titles. A lot of 'smut' authors that I've seen on sites like Smashwords and Kindle have incredibly long titles. Firstly, titles that exceed more than around five to seven words are likely to cause a reader to stop reading it. Secondly, those long and senseless titles can fully destroy your cover design. The longer your title, the less room you have on your cover to make your artwork standout.

Be creative with fonts, but not too creative. Your text must be readable to the average eye, and they need to be able to read it without struggling to make out the letters. You also want to consider the colors of your design to make sure your lettering pops up from it. Lettering that blends too much with your background is lettering that disappears easily to potential readers.

If you are publishing through a small press and are allowed to design your covers through them, most small presses will provide you with a logo to include on your cover. Check with them on placement before deciding where you think it should go. In most cases, these publishers prefer their logos to be in the same spot on their titles' covers for consistency purposes. It's a rule you don't want to break without permission, else they might take away those cover design privileges from you. When laying out your text on the cover, place their info first on the spot that they prefer. Once that is done, you know what space you have left to play with.

Some authors make their names larger than the title of the book. Some make their names smaller. Some put their names at the top, while others add them to the bottom. I, personally, find that authors' names that are in larger font sizes than the titles of the books are showing off their names more than their creation. My opinion is that the title of your work should be dominant, and your name should be secondary. Everyone wants to see their name on their work and that's fine, but your name should never overshadow what you have created. Find a balance that looks right and feels right.

Like with the work inside of your book, your cover should also be shown to other people for tips and opinions before sharing it with the world. Sometimes, what we think works doesn't work to the person or people who didn't create it. Other people see the flaws in our creations that we, ourselves, do not see. Take their opinions in stride, as they are only wanting to help. Sometimes, a good cover has to be tweaked an awful lot before it is ready to be shown to your reading public. These tweaks are okay. It's like the old saying: Rome wasn't built in a day, and your cover shouldn't be either. Once you've created your cover and once you've shown it to a few people for their opinions, leave it alone for a couple of days and don't look at it. When you finally go back to it, you'll see it with fresh eyes and a fresh mind, and it might seem better - or worse - than you remember it.

Nothing worth doing is worth rushing through. Give your book cover the same love, care, and attention that you give your manuscript, utilize the advice of your colleagues, and don't be afraid to work it and then rework it. Once you've done those things, you'll be golden and you will have created a standout and marketable book cover for your manuscript.