5 Things You Need for a Great Book Cover (And 5 Things You Don't)

with guest Rogenna Brewer.


In 2013 I dusted off my interior design diploma to venture into the art of book cover design…

My budget going into self-publishing from traditional publishing was a big fat zero. But I’m a DIY kind of gal and learned cover design and formatting and then bartered for editing. I enjoyed making covers so much that stock sites soon became my #1 form of writing procrastination.

Once I discovered there was a market for premade book covers I put ten up for sale. Within a week I’d sold two and doubled my investment. Within a month I had my first custom client. Four years later custom cover work keeps me very busy. 

Thank you, Seekers, for inviting me to share some of the things I’ve learned along the way. But before I get into that checklist of 5 THINGS YOU NEED FOR A GREAT BOOK COVER (AND 5 THINGS YOU DON’T), let’s start with a visual of my very first book cover, it’s evolution and where it went wrong…

[Please forgive the pixelation in the first two images, as I no longer have the originals.]

In One Night in Reno, a single mom on the run is stranded in Reno when a Navy SEAL comes to her rescue. It’s a sweet short story with a marriage of convenience and no sex. If I were writing and publishing it today I’d rethink that title. And maybe I’ll do that in the future or change the story in some other way, but for now, it is what it is…

My vision for the cover was a stranded heroine by the side of the road (and if I could work in the kid and the puppy, even better).  But I couldn’t find a stock image to match my vision and I wasn’t able to manipulate images at the time. So I settled for the hitchhiker that became the first cover. 

The clunky border and my amateur attempt weren't even the worst of it. This cover actually sold well, but to readers looking for something a lot sexier. I didn’t take too many hits in the reviews, but one gentleman did call me out on the cover…

Cover #1 failed because the image and title didn’t fit the targeted genre. 

Back to the drawing board…

This time I included the couple, the kid, the pup and the city of Reno. The gentleman who called me out even changed his review to credit this new cover as a better representation of the story. But sales came to a screeching halt. Aside from the awkward title and mash-up of images, something else was lacking.

Cover #2 failed because a romance cover, no matter the subgenre, needs…well, a romantic image. 

That’s not to say headless couples won’t work, they absolutely do with the right body language.  So do those with heads and kids and puppies and landscapes and objects. But the image or combination of images has to evoke some sort of emotion that connects with the reader.

And for readers of military subgenres, the hero is that all-important emotional connection. Once again my cover stood out as different and not in a good way.  

By the time I got around to cover #3 I was working in Photoshop and had learned a thing or two about making book covers. But I still didn’t know enough and was trying too hard to make the text stand out in thumbnail.

Cover #3 (along with advertising) got sales moving again. It hit my target audience of military romance readers. But it didn’t quite fit my story and my personal fail here was the typography.

I was still trying to figure out my brand when I came up with the cover that’s been on One Night in Reno since 2014. In looking at it now I’d tweak a couple things, but I have no plans to change it anytime soon. The beach background might seem at odds with the title, but it works for the story. 

Cover #4 is the right romantic image because it gives clues to the story. This cover lets the reader know that it’s a romance, probably a sweet romance and a serious one at that.  

[Okay, I couldn’t resist making those needed tweaks. Here’s the before and after.]

Whether you make your own covers or hire a cover designer, there are 5 things you need to keep in mind so that you don’t have to go through the trial and error of getting it right…

Your cover has one job and that is to sell your book. In order to do that job, it needs to make an emotional impact in the blink of an eye.  

#1 – You need a great Image(s): 

You need to start with an image that reflects your story. But you don’t need that image (or images) to be a catch-all for the characters and setting or an exact scene from your book. 

There are limitations to using stock images, so unless you can afford a cover shoot you may have to settle for something slightly different that what you imagined. Trust your designer and keep an open mind when searching for images yourself. There are plenty of professional photographers contributing to stock sites where you can find affordable royalty free images that will be good enough for a great cover. Rely on your designer and photo manipulation to makeover an image so that it’s uniquely yours.

Tip: When using people on your cover look for characters that are engaged in their surroundings or looking at each other and not directly into the camera. 

#2 – You need to know your Genre: 

You need to know your genre conventions and stick to them. Except when you don’t. 

Your cover needs to let readers know where it belongs and what it’s about. Don’t worry that it looks like other books in your genre. It’s better to fit in than to stand out. You’d know the difference between a science fiction cover and a romance cover, right? Well, within those two genres there are multiple subgenres and reader expectations. 

Study the covers within your genre. Check out the subcategory bestseller lists on Amazon and notice the similarities between covers within a category. You want to copy that look. But take note of the ones that stand out. It’s usually an exceptional cover or an exceptional story.

Know when to stand out. 

Right now on amazon’s military bestseller list, for example, 14 of the Top 20 covers are bare-chested men. The rest are sexy couples and one bare-chested hero with a baby. The hero / baby cover gets kudos for being “the same, but different.” But they all still follow the norm set by reader expectations. 

If you want your books to sell it’s risky to go against what the reader wants, but there are times when you might want to do just that. I deliberately went against convention in branding my SEAL It With A Kiss trilogy in order to target a more general contemporary bestseller audience. 

#3 – You need a great Title:

You need a great title or you don’t.  

A great title is all you need to sell a plain book cover. The problem is most of us will never come up with a title that exceptional. So we need a great cover to tell the story that the title doesn’t. The typography needs to work with the image, not against it. A kaleidoscope of colors and tricks and crazy fonts won’t make a title more readable. Subtle spacing and shading is all that’s needed to do that job. Look at the books on your shelf and on the more traditional bestseller lists. 

Keeping typography simple is key. 


It’s great when a title is readable in thumbnail, but it doesn’t have to be, and shouldn’t be at the expense of the cover image. There are clickable text links that are readable with the thumbnail. It’s better to have a cover that attracts the eye and gets enlarged with a click than one that’s overwhelmed by text. 

Tip: Use keywords to create your title, subtitle, series title and taglines.

I used to hate it when my publisher would ditch my clever, well thought out titles to use a generic version of…

The SEAL’s [fill in the blank]

Until I realized their keyword loaded titling approach was kind of perfect. It tells the reader exactly what the book is about…a Navy SEAL, and what military genre reader doesn’t love a good Navy SEAL story. 

So figure out the keywords for your subcategory and don’t be afraid to use them in the title and repeat them in the subtitle/series title and tagline.

When are looking for a specific type of book or an author or a title they use the search engine. And when it comes to search engines keywords are king.

#4 – You need your covers to work for your Brand. 

You need your covers to work for you and your brand. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel with every book cover.

You don’t have to be a household name to be a brand. As an author, your books are your product and your name is your brand. You want to keep your brand consistent even if your name isn’t recognizable yet–especially if it’s not recognizable.

Start with a good titling font for your name and use it across your social media headers, your web banner and on your book covers. Some authors even design their own logo or have a logo designed for them.

Branding, on the other hand, takes on the much broader scope of promotion with a distinctive design in mind. For me, with my military background and Navy SEAL heroes, that means nautical and ocean blue themes. 

Take a moment to think about your branding. Are you being consistent? And if you haven’t branded yourself yet, what themes come to mind that will tie it all together?

Your covers should be a recognizable part of your brand. You can do that by having at least one or two consistent design elements, like the font, size and/or placement of your name, carry over through all your covers. Each series can have its own look/feel and still encompass your overall brand. 

Tip: In traditional publishing, if your name appeared above and/or bigger than the title you knew you’d arrived. 

Brand-Name authors don’t need great covers to sell their books. But they deserve great covers and so do the rest of us. 

#5 – You need a great Designer. 

You need a great designer or you don’t, it’s up to you.  Just don’t settle for less than the best cover for your book. 

[Some covers from my portfolio that you might recognize.]

Covers by Rogenna

Thanks again for inviting me. I’ll be here all day to answer any questions you may have about cover design. But let's go back to branding for a moment… 

How are you branding yourself as an author?  

If you're a reader, what's your favorite type of cover?

Leave a comment today for an opportunity to win a $10.00 Amazon gift card so you can buy MORE books. Winner announced in the Seekerville Weekend Edition!

Rogenna Brewer is a Navy Vet who got her start as a romance novelist writing long letters to her deployed husband. She's a bestselling author of contemporary fiction featuring strong military characters and is a member of RWAs prestigious Honor Roll.

Secrets of an Indie Author Cover Designer

with guest blogger, Lacy Williams.

 Hi, Seekerville!

A huge thanks to Tina and the ladies for hosting me, I’ve always had fun when I visit here.

One thing you might be surprised to know: in addition to being an author, I am also a freelance cover designer.

Some of my covers:

I loved the post you had back in July with one of the Love Inspired cover designers (http://seekerville.blogspot.com/2014/07/inside-cover-design-with-love-inspired.html ) and I thought it might be fun to show the difference in how one indie author/freelancer does it.

The biggest difference: I use stock art, not models at a live shoot. Although I’d love to, when I grow up…

It’s really important to understand copyright for photos, the difference between commercial and personal use, and licensing on the different stock art websites. That’s a whole ’nother post for another time. I will leave you with this sage advice: Read. The. Fine. Print.

Finding the right piece of stock art is one of the longer parts of the process. Not only does it have to be the right price for my budget, it also has to have a certain feel depending on what book the cover represents.

(Before I started creating cover art myself, I used to make funny faces at the cover art questionnaire for my traditional publisher, especially the question where it asks, “what is the mood for this cover?” and gloss over it quickly with some unhelpful statement, like inspirational, sweetly romantic. No longer. Now they get detailed information. Because there is a difference between, “they’re probably arguing, so sparks flying” and “she’s secretly in love with him”.)

I will spend hours browsing for the right stock photo to use as the backbone for my cover. Last year I stuck to sites like www.istockphoto.com and www.shutterstock.com but when iStock changed its plans and got pricey, I had to go elsewhere (hey, I have a budget and so do my clients!). This year, I found www.depositphotos.com, they have a great selection of photos and very reasonable prices.

Once I’ve found the exact right photo for the cover, say, this one…

 

…I create a new image file in Photoshop Elements and drop the stock art in. Don’t they just look lovely? This is actually a great image because it doesn’t need any tweaking before I get going on the cover. But sometimes the couple is right but the background is wrong. Or she’s supposed to have brown hair instead of blonde. In that case, I’ll spend time fixing what’s wrong. I can erase the background and drag a new one in, if needed. I can use the Color Replacement Tool to change the color of her hair (or dress, or his shirt). When you’re using stock photos, sometimes you have to accept something in the photo that doesn’t completely fit the story exactly… or find a better photo to work with. Because I don’t have models and because I don’t get to choose the clothes that these people are wearing, I’m more limited in what the final cover design will look like. However, you can always use a well-placed title to hide something you don’t like in the photo… :)

This photo is really great, and I’m going to use it as-is. Next, I need to have some idea where the different pieces of the cover will go (title, author name). This is a branded cover for Inspy Kisses, an author co-op that I belong to, so there is a flash line with our logo across the upper one-third of this cover.

 

It’s also part of our branded look to have the title in the upper part of the cover and the author names at the bottom.

 

Okay, the top half looks great, but those author names are impossible to read. What’s a girl to do? There are several tricks out there, like using a solid-colored box to highlight the names (or sometimes the title, if there isn’t a clear space on the cover for it). However, we used a Gradient on the first two covers in this series, so that’s what I’m going to use here. A Gradient is a way to fade something on the cover. It can add transparency if you’re folding two photos together, but in this case I’m going to use it as a solid color. I also use a small white gradient to made the blue sky behind the title disappear a little, so the title is more visible.

 

It’s looking pretty good, here! We’ve got a romantic couple, all our author names and a title.

But wait. This is a Christmas collection, so maybe we want to go even more wintery. I know! Let’s add an effect to get snow on the cover.

Um… but I don’t know how to make snow. I’ve never done it before.

Okay, I’m going to let you in one my Super-Secret, never-before-shared cover creator tip: YouTube. Don’t laugh! It’s a treasure trove of tutorials. Within a couple of seconds I have found two videos that look really promising, and I follow the instructions and voila:

 

This is actually just a picture of the Layer that has my snow. When all the other layers (titles and pictures) are visible, you get the full effect, but this is the snow by itself.

Now, just to add to the fun: That big, red gradient looks so… Plain. I use some special paintbrushes to create some snowflakes

 

and we’re there! Here is the finished product:

 

This is the final cover for our USA Today bestselling anthology, Mistletoe Kisses. We actually used this cover in a 3D boxed set cover, but I prefer the full-on cover shot myself.

Creating covers isn’t usually a step-by-step process for me (other than I have to find the stock art first!). Sometimes it gets circular. For instance, I flip-flop the placements of the title and author name. I go searching for fonts because what I have isn’t working. I try a different background.

And sometimes, I spend three hours working on a cover, and the author hates it.

But this is a process that I really enjoy. It uses a different creative part of my brain than writing or editing a book. For my own books, I’ll often create a cover while I’m still writing the book. Having the visual part of the book is a motivator for me and spikes creativity as I write.

So here’s a question for discussion. I recently stumbled onto a Facebook discussion where people were almost getting into fisticuffs over the answer: Do you love/hate covers with cutoff heads (borrowing my friend Regina’s cover as an example)?

 

Or prefer covers with the full hero/heroine on display?


 

 A Cowboy for Christmas 

 After an accident leaves her injured, Daisy Richards stays secluded at her family’s Wyoming ranch to avoid the town’s gawking stares. Yet handsome cowboy newcomer Ricky White insists she can do anything she dreams—ride a horse, decorate a Christmas tree…even steal a man’s heart.

Once a reckless cad, Ricky is to blame for what happened to Daisy. Now reformed, he wants to make amends by setting things right for his boss’s beautiful daughter in time for the holidays. But Daisy doesn’t know Ricky’s responsible for her predicament. When the truth is revealed, will he lose the greatest gift he’s ever received—her trust?

 Comment today for a chance to win a $10 Amazon gift card stocking stuffer. Winner announced in the Weekend Edition. And we're throwing in a print copy of A Cowboy for Christmas as well. Merry Christmas!

 

Lacy Williams (www.lacywilliams.net) is a USA Today bestselling author of 19 books and novellas. Her December 2014 release, A Cowboy for Christmas tells the story of one cowboy’s quest for redemption—and how it leads him to fall for the woman he handicapped. If you’d like to get a free ebook, sign up for Lacy’s newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/Tk-rn . Lacy is also the Managing Editor for Redbud Press, a new inspirational romance publisher. Find out more at www.redbudpress.com


 

Inside Cover Design with Love Inspired Art Director Tania Pery!

What does an average day look like for an Art Director at Harlequin, and more specifically a Love Inspired Art Director? Well, the great thing is, there isn’t an average day-and that’s what I love about it!

I do, however, have a few core elements woven into my day-to-day responsibilities. These are meetings, research, creative, approvals, managing suppliers such as photographers, illustrators and retouchers, and deadlines.

Hey wait! Maybe you want to hear more about my background; how I got into design, where I studied, how long I’ve been working in the industry…. Nah, on second thought, I’ll spare you and skip ahead to the glamorous part.  

Creating The Cover (the creative)

Perhaps it’s just my nature, but I think most everything is better explained with visual accompaniment. So, I will use a cover I art directed, His Montana Sweetheart by Ruth Logan, to illustrate each step in the creative process.

Laying the groundwork.

Meeting with the vision team for the creative brief is the first step. This team includes dedicated editors, a savvy marketer, and me, a passionate Art Director (AD). 

The editor prepares an art fact sheet (AFS) for each story and leads us through character descriptions, key themes and hooks and ultimately how they are individually unique.  Collaboratively, we determine the most relevant and saleable direction for the cover art; which elements will work best visually to tell the story and capture the audience. For example, do we depict a scene of a family in a small-town, a cowboy hero, an adorable set of twins…?  Our authors also do an incredibly fabulous job outlining some pivotal scenes in the book that we draw a wealth of inspiration from.

Here is an example of one page of an AFS (typically 4-5 pages in total) with a few key points I highlighted during the brief.

After the briefing, it’s cover concept time!

Research & Creating Concepts.

I’m off to create concepts and develop the look and feel for each of the book covers. My process starts with image research. I’m very excited at this point because it’s one of my favorite aspects about my job. I can spend hours, days, weeks on this without even noticing the time pass.  I scour magazines, the online world, stock photo sites, my environment… You name it and I’m there, on the hunt for poses, styling, scenery, lighting, mood and anything that inspires me. 

Once my time-management skills get the better of me and I’m able to convince myself to move on, I create a rough sketch/concept on the computer and attach my inspiration and reference images. It looks like this:

Now it’s time to get approvals and make sure the vision team is on board with the direction. Once I get the go ahead, I’m off to create the final cover art.

Working with Suppliers.

Creating the final cover art for a Love Inspired book works a bit differently from our other product lines. I commission the art out directly to amazingly talented photo illustrators who are also accomplished photographers. Some are based here in Toronto and others are in and around the New York area.

We discuss in detail the concept brief including content, styling, wardrobe, casting models, mood and any other important details that need to come across in the cover art.

Speaking of wardrobe and styling, I often get lots of questions on this and so, here’s the quick lowdown. We have a wardrobe stylist for each cover. He/She rents items outlined in the creative brief in sizes specific to the models cast for the role. They pull everything from clothing, shoes, socks, hair clips, blankets, jewelry and the list goes on. This is awesome as it ensures we have the most current and up to date styles reflected on our covers. Besides a couple dated wedding dresses (I’m talking like from 1995 era-ish), a wig and some jewelry here and there, we sadly don’t keep a wardrobe room in the Harlequin headquarters. I think if we did, it would take up the whole 6 floors of our Toronto office!

Back to creating the final art.

I use the direct to artist approach because of the more heavily photo-illustrated art style of Love Inspired covers. To achieve a believable scene where the people are integrated seamlessly into the background, all the elements must work together, most importantly lighting and perspective. The illustrator will first create the background in order to nail down these elements, then shoot the models accordingly, and finally add them into the scene.  The background is often a compilation of several purchased stock images and/or images they have personally shot which is how we are able to get such diverse covers each and every month.

We work very closely together throughout the entire process, which typically takes about 3 to 4 weeks. They send me sketches of their work in progress for feedback to ensure the art is taking the right path. I like to say this is where they work their magic and bring the vision to life. I am so often blown away by the great detail, care and beauty of the final product. Truly amazing, amazing work.

This series of images shows the process in a nutshell. First, choosing a pose from the photo shoot (one shoot captures on average 500-600 frames!). Next, selecting stock images for the background and lastly illustrating the final cover:

Once the final art is complete and approved, I lay out the full cover (front, back and spine). It is then passed to the production department who readies the files for print. Here is what a final cover file looks like.

Credits: Artwork by Blake Morrow ,Twitter & Instagram @shootblake

I hope you enjoyed this quick glimpse into the making of a Love Inspired cover. His Montana Sweetheart is available now!!!! So be sure to pick up your copy in-store or online!

Ruthy here!!! I love this inside look at how our covers come together, and honestly, I wouldn't have believed that it was possible to make such lifelike covers by bleeding technological wonders together! I'm crazy impressed!!!!!

Hey, I had Tim Horton's bring breakfast along and the staff at Tim Horton's is building coffees and latte's for you, too! Leave a comment and I'm going to toss your name into the NEWEST cat dish for a chance to win copies of His Montana Sweetheart or (if you've already gotten His Montana Sweetheart, thank you!!!!) I'll send out some copies of Carolyne Aarsen's "Her Montana Twins" the next book in our Big Sky Centennial series!

OH MY STARS!!!! HOW STINKIN' CUTE ARE THESE BABIES???????? ♥♥♥♥♥

And here's a great shot (via debut Love Inspired Suspense author Mary Curry!!!!) of the elevator wrap they have in San Antonio right now!!!!!

YAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!!!