A Conversation on Covers

To me, the cover is one of the most important aspects of your book. I studied Marketing in college so maybe it’s that side of me that’s so fascinated with covers and how they function, but Kristin and I figured it’d be an interesting topic to touch on this week as there’s so many considerations involved with how your book actually ends up looking.

            As you might already know if you’ve been researching publishing, the level of control and say you might have on your cover as an author will probably be determined by whether you’re traditional or self-published, so I’m going to start there before discussing some aspects of covers in general and explaining some of Kristin’s and my own experience acquiring a cover.

Traditional VS Self-Published Covers

            So, from what Kristin and I found out when we were researching the different types of publishing avenues to figure out what to do with our manuscript, there can be a lot of difference in how much say an author gets control-wise between different types.

            With regard to covers in general, we got the impression authors tend to have very little say in the final look of their book if they’re traditionally published. If your manuscript is being put out by a larger publishing company, they’ll probably have a specific marketing and artistic team to help create a certain look for your cover.

            If you’ve decided to self-publish though, you might have a ton of say in how the final cover of your book turns out, which may be a good or bad thing depending. In one sense, self-publishing gives you a lot of freedom, but it does mean you have to take care of everything, most likely with fewer resources than a larger company. Unless you or your friends have some massive artistic talent to utilize, this scenario will probably mean you need to figure out the dimensions your book cover needs to be, research and hire an artist that can fulfill the ideas you have for your cover, and then do what you need to with the finished cover to get your book ready for print.

            If that’s already sounding overwhelming, then let’s take a step back and just think about what a cover in general needs to do:

1.     Catch the Eye of a Potential Reader

First and foremost, when I think about the basic function of a cover, it needs to get your attention! Covers are the very first impression you will get with a potential reader and that must work to your advantage. There needs to be something about your book that can draw a reader into picking it up in a crowded bookstore with a hundred other books competing for their attention.

This might just be how I work, but I think for me, covers actually work in two ways: one, they’re the element of the book that initially catches my attention, but they’re also the thing that might convince me to take a chance on a book if I’m on the fence about it. I have two examples to explain, both of which actually concern two of my favorite series that I read last year:

Impulse Buy Cover Situation: Last year, I was walking through the bookstore, checking the usual sections and authors I typically look for, when I noticed a new book mixed in the Amie Kaufman section. At this point, I was unaware she had a new book out, but I’ve read quite a few of her other series and enjoyed them all, so I pulled the book out of the shelf, revealing it to be the first book in Kaufman’s newest duology, The Isles of the Gods. The cover is just plain gorgeous- it’s got a huge picture of Selly (one of the five main narrators), along with a tall-masted ship careening over a crashing wave. Obviously, the book has a very adventurous vibe, and takes place on a long sea journey.

In this particular case, it was the author’s name recognition and the fact that I had enjoyed her other books previously that did initially draw my interest, but her full name is displayed prominently on the spine of the book where it could catch my attention even tucked into the shelf. The curiosity from seeing a new book by said author got me to pull it out and look at the cover, which blew me away and really made me want to take a chance on it even though I had no prior knowledge of it.

Long Game Cover Situation: A few months before that, I had been in a bookstore and noticed the cover of a book that had caught my eye a hundred times before. Marissa Meyer’s Renegades series has this very sci-fi, art deco kind of cover popping with red, blue, white, and black showing two shadowy profiles overlooking a futuristic city. What’s really interesting about this case is looking at it this time, it clicked that I’d seen this book dozens of times and always thought it was cool. For whatever reason, I’d never ended up buying it, but I knew it had caught my attention every single time I’d gone, probably for a couple of years. In this case (which might have been helped by the fact I wasn’t looking for anything in particular), I picked it up and read what it was about to see if it was something I wanted to try.

See a pattern? I don’t know if this is how other people work, but I’ve noticed as a shopper in regard to picking out books, I go through a very specific movement in the purchasing process. (I’m having sudden flashbacks to college terminology. Please help.)

Something on the book’s cover (author’s name or art, most likely) catches my eye. I make an effort to pick the book up and check it out closer. In both cases of The Isles of the Gods and Renegades, I was intrigued by the cover enough to go to the included synopsis on the back or inside cover. Having a succinct and engaging synopsis is another very important step for your cover as this is the element that pushes a potential reader past the initial first impression the cover gives them. This for me is a make-or-break moment: if the synopsis doesn’t interest me, is written confusingly, or (true story that almost happened with Renegades, I believe) I accidentally read it wrong, the book goes back on the shelf. Luckily in the case of Renegades, I think I realized it didn’t make sense, so I went back and realized I’d muddled something up because I read it too fast, but still, the cover synopsis is key. If I like the synopsis but am still on the fence, I turn back to the cover and see if it sells me on getting it. That’s right. In my particular case, the cover is the first and last impression I take into account when deciding whether or not to try out a book.

Like I said though, with The Isles of the Gods, I basically knew nothing about the book, but the cover and synopsis swayed me. In this case though, I also knew that being familiar with Amie Kaufman and having enjoyed quite a bit of her work made this book a pretty safe gamble.

With Renegades, I really didn’t know anything about it, other than I noticed this book piqued my interest every time I saw it. I had heard of Marissa Meyer, but I had never read any of her prior work. Bit riskier, but I went for it. Both of these books ended up being some of my favorites that I read last year, and resulted in subsequent sales as I’ve bought sequel novels for series or recommended them to my friends. If you read this blog, you probably know I’ve rarely shut up about these books since reading them.

2.     Covers Need to Distinguish Your Story

A good cover needs to distinguish your story in several ways. The most obvious, as explained in point one, is your cover needs to stand out enough from other books to catch the reader’s eye, which it can do through all sorts of ways such as art, style, color choice, etc.

A cover also helps distinguish your book in a few more subtle ways that you might not have thought about. The way a cover looks hints to readers what type of genre your story is or what sort of age range it falls into. For example, I’m sure this isn’t always the case, but when I think about middle grade books, I tend to think of them as having brighter colors, maybe having a more animated-type art style, or covers with lots of little hidden elements of the books like a seek-and-find. Not gonna lie, I actually love it when covers do that because I feel like you always notice something new on it. YA still usually has bright colors, but they might be a bit more muted, maybe featuring a specific scene or character. One thing to note though is that a cover should also clearly define whether or not your book is one in a series. Books can have a lot of variation and difference in design, but if they go together, they need to be uniform enough in some aspect that you can tell. Also, just for everyone’s peace of mind as Kristin and I have both accidentally done this, if the book is in a series, please consider how large and prominent information like “Book One” or “Book Two” is displayed. It’s devastating when you get home and realize you accidentally bought B2 instead of B1.

But essentially though, if you slap a spaceship on your cover, it is pretty darn obvious you’ve got a sci-fi book. Like I said, the fact that The Isles of the Gods had a girl and a ship battling tough waves, it’s pretty clear the book is about an arduous sea adventure. Give your readers enough to clearly picture what the gist of the story will be.

3.     Provide Basic Information Succinctly

Though we typically think of the cover as the artwork, a cover is also the place for a ton of extra pieces of information as well, for the reader, publishers, and sellers. For example, covers show author, photographer, and artist information such as names, bios, and social media addresses- I’ve never really noticed this before thinking about it for this blog, but the author’s name is actually on the cover area of the book multiple times typically. They show publisher and copyright info, barcodes, ISBN and identification numbers, promotional blurbs, and the synopsis. You don’t really think about it, but a cover is actually full of information, some of which isn’t even directed at the reader.

If you’re self-publishing, you will have to acquire things like your barcodes and identification numbers- maybe we’ll do a blog touching on that later. But in terms of what the reader will be looking at, you probably want to focus mostly on the synopsis, author information, and blurbs.

·       Synopsis: This is the quick recap of your story you put on the cover to give readers a taste of what to expect. I’ve typically noticed it’s done in two ways, either you include a brief, pretty vague (don’t give the reader too much here) summary to gain reader’s interest or you can pick a quick piece of scene if there’s one that showcases the general vibe of your story. To me, using scenes like this you always pick something to hook your readers like a high-action cliffhanger or romantic scene. Either way, it must give us the gist of what to expect and it must capture our attention quickly and easily.

·       Author info: Sometimes author bios are on covers and sometimes they aren’t, but this is usually just a quick paragraph explaining who you are, what you like, or other things you’ve written. Sometimes they’re paired with a photo. Either way, this is an excellent place to put your socials, websites, etc.

·       Blurbs: Blurbs were not actually something I really thought about until Kristin and I got into talking about self-publishing. These are the little quotes you see on books where people have read it (maybe ahead of release) and given a promotional comment on it. Note: some blurbs can be paid for, though that might be an expensive path to go down if you’re self-publishing. The true issue with blurbs is that they’re very difficult to get if you’re unknown, as you really want them from prominent people in your field. Like I said, I genuinely hadn’t thought about needing or wanting something like that until I started trying to read up on things we would need promotion-wise to self-publish. I found a book at Barnes and Noble called How to Promote Your Book: A Practical Guide to Publicizing Your Own Title by Dr. Jan Yager, which I think has a lot of helpful advice specifically for book promotion if you’re looking for a place to get started. I found the section on blurbs very helpful as I’m not sure I really understood how important it can be to have a relevant recommendation printed on your book. It was only after thinking about it more in-depth that I realized I typically do look at what other people have said about a book, particularly if it’s a name I’m familiar with.

All this being said, though there are some common things your cover must do, there are literally a million different ways to go about your cover. For instance, my friends and I have had conversations about whether or not we prefer more complex covers or minimal ones, or whether or not we prefer if a character is on the front. I tend to prefer covers that feature a lot of art or a character, whereas others prefer the more minimal ones with maybe just an element or two on display. Minimal will probably be a bit more cost-effective than a full-scale scene painstakingly painted on your cover and can have just as much impact, but the elements you choose to include need to be relevant. For example, the copy of Jennifer A. Nielsen’s The False Prince I have has a broken crown on the cover or Holly Black’s The Queen of Nothing shows a serpent, a broken crown, some flowery petals with maybe some berries, and an icy backdrop- all of which are prominent symbolic elements for the final installment of the series.

If you’re self-publishing, you’re footing the bill for your cover art, whatever it may be, and can decide just how involved your cover is. As I said, with the right elements chosen and a good artist behind you, any cover can do what you need it to do. Consider your genre, age range, general vibe, relevant elements you want shown to bring those things across to a potential reader, and then decide what is feasible for you budget-wise. 

Remember: if you want a fancy cover with a bunch of cool art but cannot afford it at the moment, you can always reissue your cover later once you’ve had some success. Theoretically, you could reissue a cover whenever you wanted or you could do it for a specific purpose like a book anniversary, for example. Books change how their covers look all the time. If you can’t maybe get exactly what you want now, get something that works as effectively as you can and that you’re happy with, and then save toward another option for later.

If someone really loves your books, they might buy every cover, just cause. I literally bought a set of 10th anniversary The Heroes of Olympus by Rick Riordan (Seriously. How are those that old?) just because they’d had a cool cover redesign, featuring each character on the spine and new cover art. Now granted, that’s an extreme example, but I really like that series, it came with a bonus poster, the new art was cool, and it featured the characters super prominently. Side note: one thing I really liked about the cover reissues was that I thought it actually remedied something the original covers did. In the original series, I always thought The Mark of Athena had the coolest cover of the five books, but after seeing the reissued covers, I realized Annabeth, who the book focuses on a great deal, was never on the original cover and instead it was Percy and Jason. The reissued cover has Annabeth alone on the spine and the cover (not counting villains), which I thought was really fitting that they went back and did that since Annabeth is the core of that book. Also, she’s my favorite, but I digress.

Just saying, I’ve gone back and bought books I really like solely for the cover. If the art is cool or it’s a special edition or if I bought the books separately and got a set with mismatched covers. I know a few others that do this as well.

What should I do if I’m looking to get started on my cover?

First thing you should probably know about your cover are the dimensions you’ll need. For this, Kristin did some research online at IngramSpark, the website we’re planning to print through, to see what the options were dimension-wise for books. I’m not sure if we had to give this to the artist that ended up working on our cover or not, Kristin believes she did, but I think, at the very least, it helped us wrap our heads around what size our book needed to be.

This might not be the case if you don’t have a co-writer, but the second thing we did was have a long conversation about what we would potentially want on our cover. If you don’t have a co-writer to brainstorm with, maybe ask around to some beta readers or trusted friends. Honestly, I feel like this was actually one of the hardest things we did as co-writers as we tend to have different preferences on types of covers we like. I think we talked for at least two days to try to hammer out a basic idea of what to tell an artist once we found one. Eventually though, we got on the same page and had a basic idea of what we wanted. Ask yourself:

-Do I want a cover that’s more minimal in design or more complicated?

-If you want a character on the cover, who’s relevant? Will they be seen, shadowed, or facing away? Also, have a description of said character ready to go for an artist, but think about things beyond just their physical description- meaning what type of clothes they wear, hairstyles, posture, etc.

-What kind of scene/background do you want them in front of?

            Next, try to find an artist whose style is compatible to what you want. When we decided to start looking for a cover artist, Kristin went to Fiverr, which is a website where you can hire people for specific gigs, and went looking around for artists who do book covers. Artists typically have portfolios where you can view their previous work and styles, as well as see ratings and that sort of thing.

            I’m going to be purposefully vague as we’ve not done a finished cover reveal yet, but we picked an artist that seemed to have a wide range of styles and tended to use a lot of color, which we wanted in our cover. Kristin handled all the back and forth with arranging the cover, but essentially she explained the gist of our story, our cover idea, and sent him some setting inspiration pictures to give a basic idea of the vibe we wanted and colors.

            BE AWARE that no matter how cool a cover idea you dream up for yourself, you have to be able to explain it to an artist so they can understand what you’re asking them to do. This is way harder than it sounds, as it’s very difficult to explain something visual without, well, a visual. This is hilariously awkward, but we ended up sending our artist a literal stick figure drawing I’d made to explain our idea.

            Now, this will depend on the artist and how they do things, but each artist probably offers some kind of package- maybe with different price levels depending on how difficult the task is. I’m reluctant to say a general price as I’m sure they can be all over the map, but you’re probably safe to assume a cover will probably be at least a couple hundred dollars. Remember though, this will probably be one of your larger expenses and your cover is your first impression. Make sure it’s a good one.

Also, really read up on what your art package might include. For example, our artist started out by doing three (I think we actually only needed two) initial concept sketches for us to pick from design-wise. Then as he moved forward throughout the art process, he’d check in to update us and let us see how things were progressing. Our package came with a specific number of revisions, so for example, if there was something in the art we didn’t like, we could ask him to modify it. I believe those mainly referred to major changes to the art, so I’m not sure we actually used any of them- the only thing I remember that we asked him to change is that an early version of the cover had our MC Jade in a jacket, whereas a later might’ve had her in a tank top, so we asked him to put the jacket back on her since we figured it was a bit more in character clothes-wise.

We ended up having a really good experience cover-wise using Fiverr. Our artist did a fantastic job and once we cover release, we’ll put all his info out there for you guys to find. The only things I’ll say is remember to always be polite and courteous to anyone you’re working with and remember that a cover might be a pretty demanding task art-wise so it might take some time. Also, in the case of our artist, I think Kristin and I didn’t realize how complicated our idea might have been, but he figured it out in a masterful way.

The cover art is not yours though until the transaction is completed, which is something to keep in mind. With Fiverr, if for some reason the person you hired can’t complete the service on time or just doesn’t do it, you can cancel the order and not be at a loss money-wise if something goes wrong. But, for instance, our artist had each version of the cover watermarked until the final product when we actually purchased it, in which case he signed the ownership of the art over to us. I know this is getting a bit business-y and as a writer, you probably want to think about writing rather than this side of things, but understand that the art is not yours until the transaction is complete. Also, make sure your cover is protected once it is under your ownership through something like a trademark before you start posting and promoting your book, so no one can use your cover against your wishes.

Wow. I had way more thoughts on covers than I thought I did. I hope this has been informative on some things to consider when thinking about your book cover, especially in regard to self-published authors, and given you some insight based on the experience Kristin and I had. Let us know your preferences on cover designs- Minimal? Complex? Characters on the front or no? Or if you’re a writer, tell us about your experiences with covers or if you have any questions, we can try to answer based on what we’ve done so far.

Thanks for reading. Write on.

-Kamryn