The cover of your book is the first impression that readers get of it. If the cover doesn’t grab their attention, they won’t even bother to read the description. If they don’t like the description, they won’t buy your book. So it’s really important to have a great cover.
An attractive cover doesn’t just attract attention, it also keeps readers engaged once they finish reading the description of your book and decide to buy it. If they don’t like your cover, they’ll still buy it if they’re really interested in what you’ve written but they’re likely to be disappointed if the quality of your writing doesn’t live up to the expectations set by the book’s cover.*
How To Make Your Cover Art Hotter is a blog dedicated to helping indie authors create better covers for their books. Here you will find articles about how to go about creating an attractive and effective cover for your book as well as reviews of indie covers and helpful tips for creating covers yourself.
Hi! I’m Michael. I’m a book designer and author of multiple successful indie books. I’ve been making covers for indie authors since late 2010.
This blog is about creating cover art that sells by giving you tips, ideas, and other ways to help make your book cover stand out in the crowded marketplace.
My first book used a stock photo off of shutterstock.com. It was good, but it wasn’t great, and certainly not professional looking. And it was an unknown author with no reviews or anything like that. Yet it sold well enough to get me interested in making covers full time.
Then I started reading up on design theory, taking classes at my local college, even studying art in school (I dropped out when they moved me from oil painting to pencil drawing…). Over the next several months I made a lot of crappy covers before finally starting to get the hang of what makes a good cover.
And now I want to share my knowledge with you!
Hi, I’m Riven Phoenix. I am a graphic designer and book cover creator. I have designed hundreds of book covers for indie authors and small presses in the past decade.
I want to help you learn how to make your book cover stand out in a crowded marketplace. I will teach you how to design an amazing cover for your own books that will sell more copies and make more money!
I also offer professional design services should you need them. Let me know if you have any questions or need something custom created for your business.
So you want to make a cover for your book? Great! The first thing you need to know is what the word “book” actually means. It’s not just a rectangle with some printing on it. It’s an invitation, and the words on the cover are the bait that draws readers into your story.
Treating your cover as if it were just a piece of art is a big mistake. The art will be great and everyone will love it, but all they’ll see is the art. No one will want to read the book.
The most important consideration in making your cover is what will get people to read the book. That’s why even though I do most of my own design work, I still hire an artist—to help me make the best possible bait for readers.
So let’s talk about how to make that bait irresistible.
The Book Designer shares a great article from outside sources on what makes a book cover eye-catching and appealing.
The article goes over the importance of color and font, which, whether we admit it or not, can make or break a book. The author also goes into detail about choosing the right image, as well as how to get your work noticed by publishers.
It is important to remember that while making sure your book cover looks good is important, it is not the be all and end all. A good book cover will help get more attention for your novel, influencing potential readers to pick it up in the bookstore, but ultimately you need a good story to back up that pretty picture.
The best advice in this article is to talk with other artists who may know more than you do about this topic. Whether you are looking for someone to design your cover for you or simply want some suggestions, talking with other people in the art industry will benefit you greatly in the long run._
Hire a professional. I already said this. It’s important enough to say again!
I’ll be honest with you, I can’t draw (that is, draw well). In fact, I am not even good at art. So how did I design my own cover? I hired a professional. And you can too!
The author of the article above that I just linked to got her cover done for $200 by a professional artist with years of experience. To me that seems like a small price to pay for something that will make your book look so much better than the majority of the books in your genre selling on Amazon. It might even make a difference in who ends up buying your book.*
**A note about formatting: because each platform has their own formatting requirements and nuances, when it comes to formatting your manuscript, hire an editor or format it yourself using one of the many tutorials available on Google. Formatting is arguably just as important as the writing itself; if you do not format correctly then you are unlikely to be accepted onto any platform. For example, Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) will reject your manuscript if there is too much blank space between words or any paragraphs that are not justified properly. This means that you should definitely seek out one
