eBook cover design - who do we use, who do we avoid?

I agree. Stuart Bache is quite versatile; he sucks at everything.

I produce first-rate art in any medium and in any style. From pencils to oils, pixels to polygons to clay I can do it all. That's because unlike Stuart, and the thousands upon thousands of his ilk, I am classically trained.

 

Is that all your work? I'm totally impressed. Especially the turtle. I wouldn't mind owning the little fox jar either.

 

Yeah, those are what I would call 'crap' covers—and they scream 'amateur!' They are obviously chunked together by people who don't have a design background. (I do have a design background, but I have no computer graphics skills, so I will be getting a pro to design my cover, even though I have a pretty good idea of what I want.)

 

. Tell her about her recommendations from this forum. Her turn-around time is only about three or four weeks. BTW, she got a writeup in USAToday for her work, nice for a twenty-something stay at home mom.

 

This was my first [ever] production for 'The Wordcloud' a site that is sadly no longer with us. The project never took off as such and if you like what you see you know where to find me.

 

Not sure that's the best version of the question, since any book with "Steven King" on the cover will sell well.

"How many best selling book covers for previously non-famous authors have you designed?" might be more pertinent.

 

I'm removing the barrage of irrelevant artwork because the sheer amount is bordering on feeling like spam and calling those involved to please stop derailing the thread. Ok someone here doesn't like Stuart B-something. Others disagree. Can we end it there?

 

Also editorial services, just thought I would add that as well.

 

Good simple covers:


VS.

Bad simple covers:


Xcuse my badly shot photos but my mobile cam is crappy and I was not in the mood to decorate accordingly.

Mystery goes with simplicity when it comes to covers. You don't need a design overly complex. All of the above good covers are simple, on point and intuitive. They are also balanced due to the masterful way the designer chose the lettering. My favourite (and the only mystery book from the bunch) is "The End of Mr. Y." Apart from this clever cover, the edges of the pages are inked black, which adds to the book's mysterious and playful look and makes it pop out even more from the rest. These books were purchased.

The bad covers on the other hand speak for themselves I think. These books were free. They came as free content with a newspaper. Everything about them is cheap as hell. Very bad choices from the designers. It shows that they were made in a rush from amateurs. That's what you get when you don't care to pay a decent price for your book cover and that's exactly what the newspaper editorial team did with these covers, since these books were meant to be given as free content.

I believe that the cover really matters. 9 out of 10 times, when the cover is shit the content tends to follow for a weird reason. Don't get me wrong. I also entertain myself reading crappy books as well sometimes. For example when I'm bored and I don't have enough money to spend on buying a decent book. All the crappy covered books above were given to me (I got lots and lots of them) from a person that bought that newspaper. They've never been read by her. I've selected just the ones that looked somewhat interesting and tried to read some of them, but up 'till now, I've failed reading one from start to end.

And before criticising me for buying Twilight, I got it before it became a movie and frankly, I've enjoyed reading it. I also bought the second one, but read a few pages and then dropped it. The second one was crap to the point of losing complete interest.

I'm not saying that you should invest all of your monthly salary on your cover. It need not be like this, but at least check out your artist's portfolio, before hiring him/her. When an artist in this domain is accomplished and confident, she/he will not bargain upon the price. It's going to be fixed upon specific parameters. My teacher has spoken a very wise word once. "Fast, good quality and cheap. Chose two of these parameters and put them together, but know that the third parameter is going to be reversed every time."

 

Some of the modern Horror covers in the self-pub department (well I am guessing they are),
look rather plain-ish with an 'edgy' look to them that makes them look cheap.

While this Sci-fi cover is simplistic, it works. Not too bad for a short either.


Mystery covers seem to have changed a lot from the old days.
Some are simplistic, and others look like the lean more into
Horror-esque visually.
I guess it all depends on what you're looking for.

(An aside, I find the text that dominates over the background
image looks tacky, due to the fact that it seems to be pointless
to have a background image that is not clearly visible or definable
at a glance.)

 

I tend to do my own covers, purely because it's a bit of fun for me. I wouldn't say they're particularly good, or an example of what kind of thing is on offer out there, but just to show what kind of thing you can achieve with a couple hours in photoshop:







ETA: Huge apologies for the obnoxious size of these, no idea how to make them any smaller but sorry!!

 

Sorry I know this is an old post and all that but I am trying to find someone who can tell me how I can design my own cover for self-publishing. I have no money to spare, it is my first book. If it sucks and no one nuys it I can cope with that but I want to get it done as I am bubbling with ideas for my next.
So can you suggest how I can make either a stock footage one or design my own, and then how I can self publish quick and cheap? As this is my first book, forgive the stupid question but is it possible to epublish and just get maybe a dozen or so for me for prosperity?

Many thanks

PS

I am not going to spend £3000 I promise....jeez that is crazy

 

If you trust yourself with Photoshop or Gimp, you can DIY.
There are both free and fairly cheap stock photo sites that you
can use, and also places you can get fonts. Though with the fonts
they usually come with a small bit about the license and some are
free to use for limited commercial work, and other's ask for a fee
from $10-60 for the rights to use their fonts commercially.
Hope this helps a bit.

 

There are actually several questions lurking in here.

1. As Cave Troll has commented, you can certainly do your own cover, especially if it will only be for en e-book. An e-book cover doesn't require a spine or a back cover, and doesn't care how many pages there are or what weight paper it's printed on. The affordable cover design artists from places like Fiverr.com, in my experience, don't create artwork for you. The one I used for the cover of my novelette has a subscription to a stock photo service. She gave me the link to the site and told me to pick what image or images I thought would work. She then combined two photos into a cover, and slapped the title and my name over it. For an e-book cover, that's just what you'll be doing.

Start by looking at many books in the same genre as your book on Amazon. See what other covers look like -- then design your cover along similar lines. There are sites from which you can get images and photos for free but, as I mentioned in another thread, be careful. Typically, images on those sites come with a "creative commons" license, but they aren't all the same. Some are free only for non-commercial use. Be sure to find and read the license that attaches to the specific images you want to use.

2. The same applies to fonts. You can probably find an okay font in the fonts that came with your computer. If not, there are gazillions of "free" fonts you can download from the Internet. Like the photos, check the license for each font/ Some are only free for non-commercial use.

3. As for publishing -- you can publish for free (or almost) with Amazon KDP -- especially for an e-book. Keep in mind that anything you write is copyrighted as soon as you write it. BUT ... if you want to register and protect your copyright, you have to register it with the U.S. Copyright Office (if in the U.S., or the equivalent in other countries). There is a fee for registering, and you have to send in a record copy of the publication. (Two physical copies in the U.S., in the case of a printed book.)

4. Amazon also allows you to publish printed books for free, but there's a lot more work involved than for an e-book. You will need to have the book interior completely formatted to the page (trim) size you want. You will need a separate image for the cover, because the printed cover has the front, spine, and rear -- and the spine has to be coordinated with the page count and the type of paper. Amazon's KDP service will walk you through it, but for the first time out expect to make several false starts. In fact, KDP will offer to "design" your cover for you, so that's an easy way to go. I have not tried that part of the KDP service, so I don't know if it produces tolerable results.

Once you have a physical, printed book set up on Amazon, they offer it for sale. Whether or not anyone else ever buys one, you can purchase "author copies" for the cost of printing plus shipping, so that would allow you to get your physical copies for posterity. You will have to decide whether or not it's worth the extra effort of producing a printed book.

 

Wow! Great guide. Thank you very much.