Cover Design Tips for Indie Authors

Despite the old maxim 'Don't judge a book by its cover,' everybody does. Covers actually say quite a lot, so if you're going to publish a book you gotta make sure the cover's only saying good things. Here are some quick tips on the subject:

1 - "Don't get cheap on me!" - Do not take the easy way out. Don't freehand your cover or use a program like Paint to create it simply to save money and time. You might be able to get away with that for a small number of children's books, but for the most part people will never even pick up such a book. Covers like this give the impression that the book is amateur trash, that it's not well written, not well put together, and not worth their time.

2 - Study other covers - Take a little trip to the local libraries and bookstores. Find popular books of the same genre as your own and examine the cover designs. Why would that particular cover grab so much attention? Is it the graphics? the cover copy? the title? the colors? reviews?

3 - Big, and easy to read - Make sure that your title is big and easy to read. Same goes for your name. These are the two most important pars of your covers. The easier it is for your title to stand out from a distance, the easier it will be for people to walk immediately toward it.

4 - Be subtly flashy - Use a color scheme and design that can't be ignored but doesn't go overboard. You want people to like looking at the book, so don't burn their eyes out with too many intense colors. Remember to keep it pretty simple. The more questions your cover inspires--the more mystery it contains and curiosity it inspires--the more likely it is that people will pick up the book to read the cover copy.

5 - 120-word max on cover copy - Book browsers won't spend a lot of time reading every piece of cover copy (also called "the blurb"), so ensure that yours is short, powerful, and has a very catchy tagline at the beginning. The shorter the better, but make 120 words your max. Comparing this project to fishing, the cover is the tip of the hook and the blurb is the barb. The barb usually isn't very large, but it does it's job well. You need to set this thing and make it so readers cannot walk away without taking the book with them.

6 - Don't be afraid to hire a professional - If you have no idea how to design a good cover, don't try. This isn't something you can just throw together and have success. If you know what makes a good cover but don't know how to use Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator or another like program effectively, don't DIY. People will be able to tell in a heartbeat. Be brave, be humble, be smart, and hire a professional; it's well worth your money.

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