What Makes a Good Book Cover?

One of the most important things an indie author can do is to design an attractive book cover. A reader often decides if he or she is interested in buying a book within a few seconds. The first thing that attracts their attention is the cover. The next thing is the title and then the back cover copy if it is a paperback book. If it’s an eBook, the reader will look at the book description on the site selling it.

Now days the cover must look nice for a paperback book, and it must also translate well as a small photo, both in color and black-and-white for its digital release.  If it has too much going on in the picture or too many words, it will not show well in the small photo shown on sites like Amazon.

Some authors design their own book covers using sites such as Createspace, which has design tools for making your own cover. Unfortunately, sometimes when an author makes his or her own cover, it doesn’t look professional.

The cover needs to let the reader know what kind of book it is and be artistically appealing.

For my book Star Rider on the Razor’s Edge, I searched online to find book cover designers. Then I looked at each designer’s covers until I found one that I liked. I decided to go with one of the designers on Deranged Doctor Design.  Their prices are reasonable and you don’t pay them until “you love” the cover they design for you.  You start by giving them a description of the characters and book.

Here is the first cover draft they made for my book.   I liked the photo of the woman looking directly at the reader.  Studies have shown that people spend more time looking at faces than objects.  I also thought the blue color was nice. But also I found obvious problems with this draft.

First of all, the title was incorrect: The book is Star Rider not Star Raider.  Another problem was it looked like a romance rather than a science fiction book.  A third problem was the author’s name was hard to read and I didn’t like the color pink for the title.

I went to Amazon and looked through book covers and sent several to Deranged Doctor Design to show examples of science fiction covers I liked. I told them the cover needed a spaceship and an outer space scene.

They worked on it and sent me draft two.  They added the spaceship, changed the color of the title from pink to red.  I liked the changes, but still wasn’t sure if the color of the title was right. I also wanted the hero to have longer hair and I didn’t want him to be wearing a white undershirt.

As part of my process, I showed the cover to some friends and family to get their opinion.  One of the things my brother noticed was that putting “Star Rider Series” on the cover repeated the words Star Rider.  I decided it would be better to delete that it was part of a series. The men also didn’t like the pink title cover even when it was darker.

Here is draft three. The designer made an attempt to do what I asked and made the man’s shirt black and his hair longer.  Unfortunately, I didn’t like how his hair looked and thought the title was too dark. I also had viewers comment that the woman’s four fingers on the back of his neck looked strange. Overall, however, the cover was getting much closer to what I wanted.

For draft four they changed the man’s hair back to how it was originally, took out the woman’s fingers, changed the title to a variegated lighter blue.  The author’s name was also variegated.  I accepted this copy.

 Later however, I noticed that the title seemed distorted when it was shrunk to a smaller size.  I also checked how it looked in black-and-white as many readers would see it on digital readers. It looked distorted that way as well. To accommodate this anomaly, the designer changed the variegated letters for the final version when they created the back cover.

In conclusion, be sure to ask other people’s opinion of the cover.  Does it grab their attention and entice them in?  Look at the image both large and small to see if it looks good both ways.  Find a designer you can afford and who is willing to make the changes you want.  Look at other covers they’ve designed.  Look at covers in your genre, both online and in bookstores.  Creating a good cover is a key element in marketing your book.

Here is the final version of the front and back cover. Deranged Doctor Design did a great job of designing an appealing cover that catches the eye.

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