Late last Year I published this interview over on BubbleCow:
Dear Readers,
When asked to write a guest blog post on “5
top tips to making your cover look professional” I was both thrilled and
humbled to share my knowledge. Ok, truthfully I felt a bit smug. I thought, I
can do this, I know this stuff. Easy-freaking-peasy.
I cracked my knuckles and prepared to type up my 5 Top Tip Manifesto.
Tip
One: Hire a Professional.
Tip Two… ah.
And there I got a bit stuck. I went and
made a coffee. Played on Facebook and Pinterest for a while and then came back
to the manifesto.
Tip Two…tip two.
You see, despite knowing in my heart Tip
One trumped all other tips, I also knew that being a one-tip-wonder would not
be accepted as gospel and that people would consider me biased. So I thought
about my process and what I’ve learned, and I’ve broken it down into four
parts:
Tip
Two: Research.
Find as many books cover images as you can
that: A) have been published within the last 5 years and B) are alike your
novel in these aspects: genre, audience age group, audience gender.
The covers must be similar to your book so it’s no good gathering ‘How-to’ guides
if you’ve written a futuristic Raymond Chandaler-esque zombie series for young
adults.
Divide the images into 2 groups: Covers you
love vs. Covers you hate.
Then pick out the key elements in common
from each group. Some things to consider with be: colour schemes, typefaces,
photo image versus illustration. What type of imagery dominates? Landscapes?
Single character or groups?
At the end of this you should have a clear
idea of you want and what you don’t want appearing on your cover and at the
same time you’ve just analysed all the current trends in cover design. It’s not
just about you after all, but what a stack of advertising professionals have
devised will appeal to that particular audience. Your audience.
Tip
Three: Images.
Similar to Tip One, because when it comes
to using images on your cover, whether photographic or illustrated you should
use a professional image library. Why? One, this avoid nasty copyright infringement,
and 2, the simple truth is you will get much
better quality images. Do not, do not copy and paste something you found on
Flickr, unless, lean in close, I have to whisper this, that’s right, closer,
closer. NO! Bad author! Bad, bad bad! How would you feel if someone plagiarised
your writing?
Tip
Four: Typefaces.
This is a little hard to explain if you’re
not a design nerd like moi, but trust me, typefaces are important. The
typeface you use for your Title should compliment the images and at the same
time reflect and enforce the novel’s tone and style.
It will be helpful to understand that most
people have preconceived ideas about fonts (whether they are conscious of this
or not) and therefore it’s important not to muddle things up. For example,
imagine a cursive script font, like old fashioned copperplate handwriting. Such
a font would be suited to a Historic novel, but would be highly comically and
plain old inappropriate if used on a modern novel following a jaded sports
journalist who uncovers a ice-hockey scandal that goes to the heart of the---
You get the idea.
If you don’t, having completed Tip Two you
should have a pretty good idea of the kind of font to use even if you don’t
know the name of it, whether it’s san serif or slab serif or decorative. Give
yourself a quick Google lesson in the basics san serif versus serif fonts and
go from there.
Tip
Five: Testing
The cover design you end up with, whether
you did it yourself (bad!) or entrusted a dedicated, talented designer (*good*)
to create for you, the proof is in the testing. So it’s time to round up a
focus group (minimum three but more is better) of Readers. Your focus group
should be avid Readers of your genre,
and also the intended age and gender. Show them your proposed book cover along
with a selection of those book covers you loved and get feedback on what they
think. There is no point asking your 40 year brother Bob the accountant to give
you his feedback if you’ve written a young adult novel sci-fi novel – even if
Bob liked to read sci-fi when he was a kid.
Why? Because our life experiences influence
everything. They bias everything to. Graphic Designers spend a lot of time
learning to think first and foremost what their intended audience wants/needs.
So while Tips Two through Four are very
important and should help you on your way, at the end of the day Tip One is the
Tip to rule them all. Why? Because you get what you pay for: professional input equals professional
output. This is common sense.
