Okay, this won’t be a terribly long post since the only covers I tend to do are the artistic, silhouette-style covers you see on some of the re-covered classics. You know, the ones with the flowy, decorative fonts and more of a focus on shapes and color than fancy Photoshop skills. So I’m not really the person to talk to if you want to a lot about cover design like you see on most books. And that’s not the focus of this blog anyway.
But, if you’re an author, you do have to know how to handle your cover. It’s the very first thing a reader sees, and readers do, unfortunately, judge a book by the cover. This can be turned to your advantage, but only if you’ve gotten a designer who designs or have yourself learned to design cover art that’s a match with the genre and the feel of the book. If you haven’t… Well, your cover may send the wrong message.
The main things you need to know about cover art are as follows:
- Designers are not one-size fits all.
- You must own the image rights.
- You want the cover to fit the genre: the goal is not to necessarily stand out but to fit in while giving readers a general idea of what your story is about.
Designers Are Not One Size Fits All
This is pretty straightforward. Not every designer will be a match for your project. Make sure you do your research. Look at what they design and the artwork they’ve done for other covers. If you can, talk to people that have purchased for them or read reviews left on their work. Ask for samples.
Most designers have a style they stick to. Their covers are going to feel somewhat similar just as paintings from a particular artist will feel similar when you look at them. A Van Gogh, for example, looks far different than a Leonardo Da Vinci. We can pick up on those styles of each artist and differentiate between the two. It’s similar for a designer. You can tell if someone’s being honest about the work they’ve done by looking for those similarities in the designs. If their work is all over or has some designs that are way, way different than anything else in their portfolio, be careful about it. They may be using other people’s art. Just be smart, basically. Do your research and take your time because your cover can really do a lot for the book.
You Must Own Image Rights
I don’t care what images your designer uses, you need image rights. If they create the piece entirely from scratch, which some do, then you get the rights when the artist is paid and gives you permission to use the art they created for the cover as they created it. But this means you need a piece that, from font to background image, needs to be entirely 100% owned by the artist. Otherwise, things get trickier.
If your artist didn’t create the image and the font 100% on their own, you need to own rights to images for use in that way. Places like Unsplash, Pixabay, and Pexels that offer free stock photos with Creative Commons zero licenses (use them basically for anything with no attribution) aren’t reliable. There have been issues I’ve seen occur in groups where artists used their images only to discover that the image was originally not the poster’s image and, as a result, the artist was in trouble for copyright infringement. It’s serious, guys. Don’t use these sites. Invest in a subscription for a year to a place like Envato Elements or buy individual stock photos from places like Shutterstock or Adobe Photoshop if you’re not going to require your artist to do the work to get images that you’ll have rights to using in your cover. Same deal for the fonts. If you’re in doubt on the fonts on what you can use it for, ask the designer. Free for commercial use may not always extend to ebooks or covers (As dumb as it is), so make sure you check with the person who’s listed as the creator. At least that way, with a written paper trail, you can say you did your due diligence to make sure you weren’t infringing on copyright.
A Cover That Fits the Genre
Lastly, make sure your cover will fit the genre. Make sure your designer does good work within your genre too before hiring them. You aren’t looking for something that will be super unique. Only something that draws the reader’s eye and gets them to click on the blurb. And, ideally, you want those people drawn in to be your type of reader. If you write dark romance, you probably aren’t too focused on drawing in fantasy readers unless your dark romance is set on another planet with elves and dwarves. Same goes for the reverse. I, as a speculative fiction writer, am trying to draw in speculative fiction readers with my cover not readers looking for a light, feel-good romance or some other genre.
So it’s important that your cover fits the genre and then, if you can, try to incorporate some aspect of the book. It can be a vague representation, but having a little bit of something to give your readers a general idea of what the book will be about helps with marketing, so don’t ignore the boost it can give your book.
Conclusion
That’s all for today, everyone! I hope this has been helpful to you. See you next week on Thursday Technicalities to discuss more topics from our current discussion on publishing preparation. Stay safe with all of the craziness currently going on with this pandemic. Until next time!