You can’t tell a book by its cover, but the cover can convince you to buy it!

You can’t tell a book by its cover, but the cover can convince you to buy it!

When you walk through a book store (You remember those, don’t your? Physical buildings with shelves of books made of paper organized by genre and author.), how do you decide what book to pick up?

Or, if you’re browsing Amazon or Barnes and Noble, once your search for genre brings up a page of books, what makes you choose to click on a given book?

Answers to those questions vary. For some, it’s the author. For others, it’s the title. But, for a WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE, it’s the BOOK COVER.

What makes a good cover? How about a GREAT cover? Or, if all the ducks line up in a row, A MEMORABLE COVER?

Browse the covers of books in your personal collection. Is there a theme? If not, what still draws you to those covers?

While I don’t have the ultimate answers to my own questions, I do have some ideas to consider if you are publishing your own book.

Design by Publisher’s Service

All self publishing entities with which I am familiar offer cover design for a fee. Fees start at $200 and range upwards of $500. Some companies offer templates where you use their layout (and their art if you wish) and drop in title, author, and other text.

I’ve never done an online search for book cover designers, but I would be SHOCKED if there weren’t dozens to hundreds of artists willing to design a cover for you… for a price.

But, what if you have your own idea?

Self Design

CreateSpace offers a blank template for covers of books published through them. The template is customized for the thickness of the spine. It’s easy to work with, IF, AND IT’S A BIG IF, you have either Photoshop or Adobe Acrobat Pro. I’ve used their template, and I cannot imagine trying to fit your idea/art/text into their template without one of those programs.

Trucated versions of the covers of my books, Traveler’s HOT L – The Time Traveler’s Resort, and RIFTS – A Science Fiction Thriller.

During the course of my high school and university teaching, I’ve had several fine artists as students. For Traveler’s HOT L, I was VERY fortunate to have Reed Steiner, now a Graphic Arts teacher, who was willing to work with Koehler Books on a cover design.

The photo that follows is one set of pencil sketches Reed submitted.

From that group, the publisher, with input from me, selected the lower right option to enhance. The next photo shows the intermediate design, also a pencil sketch.

If you compare this to the final cover, you will see how someone who knows what he’s doing (or she’s doing!), can make what I think is a memorable cover.

RIFTS cover has a similar path from a different origin. This artist is one of my students from Great Oak High. I’d seen her work when she was in my class, and I asked if she was interested in helping. She graciously accepted.

Here’s her first idea.

Very cool, but it’s not true to the story. So I sent her the following.

Check out the final cover on Amazon to see, once again, what an artist can do with minimal inspiration! I consider this my tribute cover to the sci-fi author’s and illustrators from the Golden Age of Science Fiction (1940s-1960s)—my favorite time for that genre!

Next week: “Closing” the Cover

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