SELF-PUB: Six Tips for Designing Your Book Covers

Whether you're producing an ebook or self-printing, you need to pay a lot of attention to your cover, because, despite years of advice, people DO judge the quality of the book by them. Here's a few pointers:

1. Take a look at what is out there. You should be taking a look at other books in your genre, and how they present themselves. The types of images used, the colour palates, what sort of typeface is used. You'll begin to notice a theme developing, and it may pay you to echo this in your design. It becomes like a visual shorthand for buyers. Written the next Fifty Shades of Grey? Then you might be better off being influenced by it's silver and black palate, and it's simple serif font.
   
   
2. Approaches: Design it yourself. There are a few different ways you can go about getting your cover. One is to do it all yourself. This will require a bit of creativity, and some knowledge of computers. Successful fantasy author William King has a great tutorial on his website for creating your own covers in MS Power Point. You can take your own photos or buy them off stock photography websites such as dreamtime or iStockphoto. There are places you can get free stock photography, but ensure the license you agree to includes using the image for commercial use, and get a model clearance by contacting the photographer if you need to.
   
   
3. Get a bespoke design. You can approach one of the many graphic designers making their living now from creating individual designs for the ebook market. Make sure that whatever you are getting is individual, not re-used images. Also if you're doing a trilogy or series of books, It may be productive to have them design the entire series straight away, so there is a common theme on your covers.
   
   
4. Buy a 'Premade'. For a reasonable sum, you can get a premade book cover. Often produced by designers as practice pieces, the quality can be outstanding. It may not be as targeted to your novel as a bespoke design, but for a standalone title you could do much worse. Check out these great examples.
   
   
5. Don't skimp. If you're paying for your cover, and believe in your book, then don't skimp on the design process. It will be the first part of your novel that people see, so it will be your representative in the bookselling world.
   
   
6. Keep It Simple: One image and a line of text may be better than a complicated cover with lots of elements. Your cover has got to work as well as a thumbnail on a website as it would when printed and in your hands.

Have a go, and let me know your results.

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SELF-PUB is a series of posts looking at the expanding world of self-publishing.

image: Svilen Milev http://www.sxc.hu/profile/svilen001