You’ve spent hours crafting your novel, novella or short story. You’ve sweated over the blurb and marketing spiel. If you’re going down the trad route, you’ve cried over your query letter. But if you’re an indie author, you need some top tips to choosing your book cover!

Cover design is one of the key ways to get your book noticed, along with that strong blurb and, of course, excellent content!

Traditional publication

If you opt for the traditional route it’s likely you won’t have a lot of input into your cover design. This is not a problem for those of you who (like me!) aren’t visually creative and are happy to leave it to the experts.

It is not so great if you do enjoy that side of publication and have strong ideas about how you think your book should look on the shelf.

Independent publication

More than a few traditionally published writers have told me they have hated the design chosen for their book by their publisher! It was not what they would have chosen and had to fight hard to get their voice heard. The pressure for the independent author is slightly different.

If you’re an indie author the design buck stops with you. You have the final say on the look and feel of your product. An essential you must budget for is a book cover designer. A professional cover will get your book noticed. When briefing the designer, there are two key criteria you need to consider:

1. Know your genre

This is harder than it sounds. A lot of authors believe they have a multi-genre book, or have even devised a new genre! The likelihood of this is very small, I’m afraid. There’s not a lot out there that is completely original.

Even if you’ve written a cross-genre book, you need to determine, from a practical point of view, which shelf or shelves your book needs to sit in. With a lot of the online distributers you can choose a number of genres, but make sure you choose the right ones.

If you put your sci-fi epic into the romance shelf because you know there’s a large readership, you won’t get very far. Readers go to a romance shelf because they want that sort of story, not sci-fi. It doesn’t matter how good your book is.

Know your genre, know who’s selling well and know the book covers they are using. Your cover needs to fit in because you want the readers of your competitors to see your book, recognise it as something they’ll like and buy it.

It’s unlikely you yet have the reputation or brand to take a gamble on something revolutionary.

2. Thumbnail

Be aware that as someone who is selling purely online, not from a physical bookshelf, your cover design needs to be uncluttered and arresting.

As a reader scrolls through the list of books advertised on, for example, Amazon, your book needs to be clearly recognisable as part of your genre. Don’t fill it with too many similar colours and tones, or small images.

This was one of the first top tips I was given when to choosing my book cover and although it sounds like common sense, it’s easy to get carried away with a cover you like aesthetically. Instead, the focus needs to be on whether it will sell your book.

As Joanna Penn often reminds us, don’t worry if you don’t get it right the first time. Being an indie gives you the freedom to have it resdesigned, if you think it needs it, at a later date.

3. Advice from the experts

No matter how visually creative you are, no matter that you design books covers for other people, the advice from all the experts is to pay someone else to do yours.

Give them the blurb, give them examples of covers you like, then let them do the creative.

The reason is that you are too close to the story. What you like and what is best for the book may not match. Of course you ultimately have the final say, but let a third party use their experience and objectivity to give your book the cover it deserves.

That said…

There is an excellent cover design webinar by Stuart Bache, facilitated by The Self Publishing Formula, that takes you through the basics of how to design your own cover. If budget is tight this may well be worth attending.

There are so many things to consider when publishing an independent book, and book cover design is one of the most important. Don’t leave it to the last minute, get it prepared well in advance. You can use a book cover reveal as part of your marketing.

In addition, keep a desktop folder of book covers you like so that when the time comes you have a database of inspiration, especially if you write across genres.

The Day She Came Home

For the cover of my book, The Day She Came Home, I found somebody through www.reedsy.com. I submitted my brief and gave examples of other books in my genre. The designer came back with 3 possibilities.

I shared the designs with my Reader’s List and asked them to choose the one they liked best. After that I asked for a few alterations to finalise the image and text.

As part of the deal, she also gave me social media banners and a 3D mockup of the book to be used in my promotional materials.

Before She Came Home

For my free short story, Before She Came Home, I used canva.com. I searched for an image I thought represented the short story, and because the story is a free giveaway, there are no copyright issues. I particularly love this image and hope you do too! 😃

If you haven’t read either of these stories you can find The Day She Came Home here, and Before She Came Home Here.

Remember!

A final top tip to choosig your book cover is don’t reinvent the wheel, go with designs that have been proven to work!

If you’re haven’t already, sign up to my newletter and I’ll send you my free short story, Before She Came Home.