book cover design

book cover design

Book Cover Obsession

Published by Owen Jones on 8 June 2022

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A book cover. Megan and her ghost tiger.
Book Cover Obsession

A dog with a bone…

I’m sorry if I’m boring you, my regular readers, but I currently have a Book Cover Obsession.

As you probably know, I wasn’t like this even a couple of months ago, but that is a sign of how rapidly these things can get a hold of you. Or, me at any rate.

In my defence, book covers are extremely important to a writer, but I just hadn’t realised how much before.

My Book Covers

As people, we are admonished not to judge a book by its cover, but the plain fact is that we all do that several times a day. So, I am getting to grips with this now, and am commissioning 2-3 covers a month. Today, I was trying to decide which the next two should be, and I noticed that my two worst selling books have black covers! Well, have black as the predominant colour (or shade, for the pedants).

Obsession

I hadn’t realised that before, but why hadn’t I? Probably, because I made them, and think that they fit the story perfectly. However, when you analyse it, I know the story, but a potential reader does not! It could be off-putting, I suppose. It was amateurish, but now I a using professional book cover designers.

Someone said that black on the cover is acceptable, if there is a death in the story. Well, there is, but the book browser doesn’t know that. I think that people can get too bogged down in symbolism. Another person Tweeted that two bullet holes on the cover of a murder mystery might signify that it is the second volume… Really? My guess would have been that the shooter was a poor shot.

Interpretation

Not only that, but not everyone takes the same thing home from reading the same book. I have talked to many readers over the last ten years who loved a book of mine, but had a totally different take on what it was about… and their interpretation was just as valid as mine.

There is one fantastic reviewer who actually taught me what two of y books were really about! How about that?

It’s why I love reviews. I often learn things about my books that I didn’t know, and I mean that quite literally. However, when will this book cover obsession pass? I don’t know… when all my novels have better cloths, I suppose.

Tiger Lily of Bangkok Series – When The Seeds of Wrath Blossom!

Daddy’s Hobby – The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl

Sister blog: The Amiable Dragon

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Book Cover Sense

Published by Owen Jones on 4 June 2022

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:59 — 694.8KB)

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Example book cover

How is your book cover judgement?

I have always thought that my book cover sense was pretty good. Why would I think that? Well, I have been reading all sorts of books for all sorts of reasons for about sixty-five years, and I have published more than eight hundred books over the last twelve years.

It amounts to a lot of experience, I think you’ll agree.

However, book sales have been dropping off this year, and most pro’s will advise an author to look to his or her book covers in such a situation, since people do judge a book by its cover despite the sages’ clear advice.

I checked my top sellers and found nothing wanting. Still, it is difficult to be objective about one’s own work, so I took them to websites where people will evaluate them.

Book Cover Evaluation Sites

There is a Facebook Group called: ‘Does My Book Cover Suck’.

Nobody liked any of my top three covers! It was like a punch in the face 🙁 My pride and joy was being rubbished, and what was almost as bad, I could see what my critics were talking about, once the problems had been pointed out to me.

Now, I have eight hundred book covers, as I said above, so I realised that I had a very big, and potentially, very expensive problem.

Book Cover Sense

After a few beers of commiseration with my book cover sense, or during them, actually, I set to work on a fix. Eight hundred times any figure is a lot of money, so I first went to Fiverr and the like. However, you won’t find anything book-related there for $5 any more. Book covers were averaging $35-$60, so I gave that up.

QR link to book cover designers
QR link to book cover designers

To cut a long story short, I found a firm that surpassed my expectations and came in at a very reasonable price. Furthermore, people, even total strangers, have started complimenting my covers again.

The book cover above is one that came from there.

Here is my link to their site (the QR code leads there too).

Go check your book cover sense, and take a look at some of their off-the-peg designs! Prices start at $10! Or have one totally unique, tailor-made for your book

https://bit.ly/ukr-book-covers

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Modern Digital Designs

Published by Chalita Majang on 7 February 2022

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:56 — 569.9KB)

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Or how to keep up with the Joneses!

Modern Digital Designs being used to sell books
Modern Digital Designs for The Megan Series

My Dad, Owen Jones, is a writer, as regular readers of my blog will already know, and has been a author of books for ten years on February 21st 2022. I was a teenager then, but I remember the excitement of the occasion very well.

It had taken him about fifteen years to produce a book from his father’s automatic writings as a Spiritual Healer, and the last thing that he had to do was produce a cover for the book.

Looking back on it, it probably shouldn’t have, but it did come as a shock that he would have to do that as well. Now, my Dad knows his way around the Internet, but this was a totally new experience, and it was for me too.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, he did that and uploaded everything to the leading online bookshops of the day.

Book Cover

The cover was basically a flat image of the front cover of the book, but that was what all authors were providing at the time.

However, over the years, some more design-savvy authors began to provide more eye-catching cover images.

As far as I recall, it began with spread-eagled shots of the front and back covers plus the spine. They were definitely a big improvement.

Modern Digital Designs

After that, book covers went 3-D, and that is even better in my opinion, as a general item, but there are specialised uses for all three styles.

Finally, so far, that is, some authors are putting modern digital designs and the 3-D covers with the blurb on a relevant background image, and that is the bee’s knees in book advertising covers for me.

Look at the postcard I made for my father at the top of this page.

I am thinking of learning how to do this, so if you are interested, please encourage me to get into modern digital designs with an email.

Best wishes,

Chalita.

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