Book Covers & Creating Your Own

Book covers are more than important, they are vital to your sales. If your book has a bad design, people won't buy it - simply because the book won't be aesthetically pleasing. On the flip-side of the coin however, a very appealing book (however bad the main plot is) can and will sell.

When creating your own cover, you need to keep in mind a few components, and a few important things.

Book covers are usually composed of several things, including a main image, blurb, ISBN number/s, author, publisher, endorsement et cetera. There are many other things that you can find on a decent cover, but for now we’ll just run over the basics.

If you look at the front of any novel or book, you have the title (which acts as the main text), the author (which usually serves as secondary text), the main image, and usually endorsement from another author, a well-known reviewer, or even a blogger.

On the back of the cover, we may have several endorsements (for example, on Robert Masello’s Blood & Ice, we have three endorsements from very popular newspapers), the blurb (this is vital. Get it wrong and the book won’t sell), then at the bottom, we usually have the publisher, genre, price, ISB and credits/legal stuff.

Now, when creating your own, you need to keep in mind one simple thing: everything you put on there has to have a purpose. For example, if you write a horror, don’t make your cover a bright yellow colour with happy people on there – that isn’t very much within the theme, and will probably turn away the target audience group. Another thing, is to ensure that there isn’t too much going on! This may seem simple, but the amount of newbies who get it wrong is quite astonishing, to say the least.

The first time you create a cover, you may be a little shocked, or confused - this is perfectly natural. You will need a template for this, and please make sure that the template fits your book - I more often than not stick with a 9 x 6 trim as I find this to be a decent size for my novel; you can experiment with sizes, but I suggest flirting with this design, first of all.

You need a cover which entices your audience, a cover that draws someone over and a blurb that literally screams "buy me!" (no, don't write that!). Before you create your full cover, you may wish to hand out a few free copies and get it reviewed so as you have endorsement for your novel.

I'll be glad to endorse it, for you!

Anyway, depending on how big your book is, you may need to have a much larger or smaller spine - keep this is mind.