Tips on book covers for indie authors

Re-visiting a useful blog for writers.

Do you ever judge a book by its cover?

Well, I’ll confess that in the times of e-books, I am definitely guilty of that. There are literally thousands of books out there on Amazon alone and it’s so easy to flick down the screen and pick a book by the cover that stands out and grabs your attention.

Whether you are designing it yourself or having a designer do it for you, you still want to be able to have an idea of what you want and what the reader will buy.

For many this may be a half-naked man, (yes please) for some it may be a child holding a scraggly toy rabbit or maybe it’s artistic and animated. Every ones tastes are different, but I do think that before you go out there and design your cover you should do some research first and make sure it is applicable to the genre your write.

It’s no good to have a cute young couple holding hands on the front of a book like a YA novel which is actually about a farmer in his thirties who finds a three boobed alien in his corn field. No, your readers will definitely be disappointed, if not, a little freaked out. But once you have that down, it’s much easier to shop for your pictures. Yes I said‘shop’ for your pictures because you can’t just go google image surfing and use whatever you like.

Now, I used a fantastic company called Okay Creations. I already had an idea of what I wanted my cover to portray and any good designer will have questions so he or she will get this just right for you (hopefully the first time round.) This part is important because you don’t want to be wasting your time and definitely not theirs because they have a life too and some may even charge you extra to meet your indecisive needs and when you’re an Indie author, you really don’t want to be forking money out needlessly.

If you are doing it yourself and have Photoshop on your computer and actually know how to use it, you may be able to design your own cover. Sadly, I’m not one of those lucky or intelligent bastards...

Excerpt my article comes from being a guest on Monique Mcdonell's blog. For the rest of the article go to http://moniquemcdonell.weebly.com/2/post/2012/12/guest-post-by-kerri-williams-diy-covers-and-contracted-designers.html

Hope it helps, good luck.
Kez