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judge my book by its cover. please.

Posted: April 19th, 2011, 5:02 pm
by eriksetterlind
Hi everyone! My name's Erik. I recently went the indie route by publishing my novel, Morality Blurred. I have a blog up and running, I tweet, etc. I'm new to this forum, and it looks like a great place to meet other writers and share our worlds. One thing I'm kind of iffy on is my cover. Some days I like it, some I think it was put together at the last minute by someone with no experience doing this kind of thing (ahem). I'd love some feedback!

I couldn't figure out how to copy the image here (that should tell you something about my tech expertise), so this is a link to my blog that has a large pic of my cover. I swear that this is not a sneaky way to drive traffic to my blog and for you to buy my book. Although if you want to, I certainly won't stand in your way.

http://esetterlind.blogspot.com/p/buy-m ... urred.html

Thanks and I hope to chat w/ more of you soon!

Re: judge my book by its cover. please.

Posted: April 19th, 2011, 6:28 pm
by Doug Pardee
Image

Trusting that you want candid comments:

The typography is deadly dull. That's a big problem with almost all non-professional covers. It takes a lot of experience and experimenting to get typography and text layout choices that make the title draw readers in.

The line that reads "a novel" can go. It's a novel. You don't need to tell us. If you're going to tell us anything on the cover about the book, give us a hint at the genre. That's where your tag line comes in. Unfortunately, "An act of passion haunted by the mind" simply doesn't make any sense to me. It sounds like maybe it should be the other way around. Even then, I don't get any real indication of the genre.

Only the big-name authors get any value out of having their names be big on the cover. You certainly want your name on there, but the reader's first impression should normally be either the image or the title — whichever is more informative and intriguing.

Personally, I don't find either the image or the title to be informative or intriguing. As for the image, it's hard to make a grabber of a cover image without at least one person in the frame. They don't necessarily have to be recognizable, and can even be just a stylized outline, but books are about people and that's something you normally want to convey in the cover art.

So, sorry to say, the cover strikes me the same way most self-pub covers do: utilitarian like a Soviet-era building. Having a professional do your cover isn't particularly expensive, and (my opinion) is an excellent investment.

Here's a self-pub cover that I think is excellent (done by a professional):
Image
I don't think the title of this one is a grabber, but the image is. And the tag line makes it clear what the genre is... although in the latest revision the tag line is changed to "Hugo Award nominee".

Re: judge my book by its cover. please.

Posted: April 19th, 2011, 6:32 pm
by maybegenius
Hi Erik, welcome to the Bransforums :)

I checked out your cover. It's most certainly not the worst cover I've ever seen, but it's not especially eye-grabbing, either. Doug's comments were all very good, as well. The white of the font looks washed out in places (mostly where there's light shining in the alley) and the image itself, while obviously linked to your story, isn't very captivating. It's also a bit low-quality -- the full-size image shows that it's grainy. All in all, I think you could do with a better cover. If you search around DeviantArt, you may be able to find some great artists who are willing to commission a cover for you, not to mention all the self-pub cover services that are available these days. Pricing on that can vary, though, and you need to make sure to tell them it's intended as a cover for a book that will be sold and that you'll credit them for their work. You could also look into stock photography at websites such as Stock.XCHNG, but again, you need to read the fine print and make sure to contact the original photographer if you intend to use the image on a product intended for sale.

If you know anyone who's handy with Photoshop or other image editing software, you might be able to enlist them for help, too. Look at some of your favorite psychological thriller covers and note what you like about them.

Remember, a cover doesn't have to be super complex to look stylish and interesting. Check some of these out:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3658/339 ... e9c1_o.jpg
http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/great ... 1132-5.jpg
http://www.phawker.com/wp-content/uploa ... -cover.jpg
http://bookcoverarchive.com/images/book ... .large.jpg

Good luck with your novel!

Re: judge my book by its cover. please.

Posted: April 19th, 2011, 8:33 pm
by eriksetterlind
Doug and Steph,

Thank you so much for your comments and suggestions. That's exactly what I needed! And no worries about being candid--that's why I went here for advice instead of asking my mom.

Re: judge my book by its cover. please.

Posted: April 20th, 2011, 12:39 pm
by Sommer Leigh
I agree with the comments above and wanted to add a little. I studied visual persuasion in college and so it is something I am very interested in. Your entire cover should do double duty - it should be eye catching and tell a story about your story. Choose an image that encapsulates the major setting of your story. Make it speak to the mood, the voice, the genre, and the expectation of what the reader will get when they open it up.

The font and color of the type should be doing that too. There are a lot of cool fonts out there, many are free. Look for one that speaks to your genre, your mood, your voice, your characters. Make sure it is legible, of course, make your name smaller (cold truth - no one cares about your name. Not in the grand scheme of your book cover design. Unless your name is also marketable, it should get out of the way) but make the font work harder for you. Same goes with color. The color should evoke a mood, a setting, or object within the story. It should tie in nicely to the image. It can come from something in the image itself, but doesn't have to. The image and the title and the color should all work together.

Even placement is important. If you put the title at the top of the book and center it, for example, using the type you have the title is screaming at the reader. It says "SOMETHING BIG IS HAPPENING RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW." It evokes the idea of newspaper headlines and news reports. Left align everything and it suddenly speaks to being orderly, academic, professional. Move the title into the middle of cover, make the font smaller and sans-serif, put lots of space around it and the title is suddenly alone, somber, tragic. It speaks of terrible things and giving up and being controlled. Move the title to the bottom and it becomes a caption for the image. That's not a bad thing if the title is referencing something about the image. Incorporate the title into the image and it provides subtext about what is happening in the image. For example, if you kept this image and made the font much smaller and used photoshop to rotate and skew it to move along the wall by the sidewalk as if it were printed on the wall near where the wall and sidewalk meet, then the title says "Come this way, something is going to happen at the end of this street or around the corner, or beyond that door. Come follow me." It would put the reader into the image as part of the perspective. Very immersive. Use the light on the wall to illuminate the words and now this very dark cover has a focus point of light. "Look right here" the light says while the title says, "And follow me." I'm also not crazy about the yellow/brown undertones. It is unpleasant to look at. I'd probably use photoshop to add more blue to the colors to soften them up and make the shadows appear deeper.

Anyway, I hope I didn't bore you with all that :-) I deconstruct covers and images all the time. I would also like to see a more detailed tag line that tells me more about what I'm going to find inside. It should tell me more about the genre.

Re: judge my book by its cover. please.

Posted: April 20th, 2011, 1:01 pm
by eriksetterlind
Sommer--

Not bored at all! Visual persuasion sounds pretty interesting. I've never thought about the elements of a book cover that way (as you can tell). Thanks you so much for your input, and I will definitely use some of your advice in my redesign.

Re: judge my book by its cover. please.

Posted: April 20th, 2011, 2:26 pm
by Sommer Leigh
eriksetterlind wrote:Sommer--

Not bored at all! Visual persuasion sounds pretty interesting. I've never thought about the elements of a book cover that way (as you can tell). Thanks you so much for your input, and I will definitely use some of your advice in my redesign.
I'm glad you enjoyed it :-) Sometimes I can't stop talking about this subject once I get started. In college I couldn't decide if I wanted to go into Marketing or get a degree in English with a concentration in Rhetoric. I took a ton of classes in graphic design and mass communication, but in the end I majored in English and ended up with a minor in mass communication. It's become more of a hobby now than anything, but I still love it a lot.

When you work on your cover, will you come back and post it again? I would love to see what you come up with next!

Re: judge my book by its cover. please.

Posted: April 20th, 2011, 2:52 pm
by eriksetterlind
I'll definitely post changes and get more feedback before I publish the new cover. Thanks again!

Re: judge my book by its cover. please.

Posted: April 20th, 2011, 3:44 pm
by Margo
Wow, Sommer. That was educational. I'm going to get you to look at my covers before they go up. (I intend to have professional covers for the novels, but I can't really justify the cost for a short story cover.)

Re: judge my book by its cover. please.

Posted: April 20th, 2011, 4:17 pm
by Sommer Leigh
Margo wrote:Wow, Sommer. That was educational. I'm going to get you to look at my covers before they go up. (I intend to have professional covers for the novels, but I can't really justify the cost for a short story cover.)
Sure! And if you have any need for help let me know. I have an embarressingly large number of fonts and access to others because I'm just nerdy enough to belong to font clubs.

I'm always happy to help. You always help me get a grasp on how to make my writing better. It's the least I can do.

Re: judge my book by its cover. please.

Posted: April 20th, 2011, 5:51 pm
by Margo
Sommer Leigh wrote:...because I'm just nerdy enough to belong to font clubs.
Yet another reason I like you so much, sis. A font club. That's an exceedingly high level of geekcool.

Re: judge my book by its cover. please.

Posted: April 25th, 2011, 1:09 pm
by eriksetterlind
Here's a redesign. Thanks again for everyone's advice! I think I figured out how to get the image on here but it's really big. Sorry! But please let me know wht you guys think so I can tweak if needed before publishing.

Image

here's a link to the blog if you'd like to comment there:
http://esetterlind.blogspot.com/2011/04 ... d-one.html

Re: judge my book by its cover. please.

Posted: April 25th, 2011, 8:29 pm
by Sommer Leigh
I have one change I would absolutely make, and a couple of suggestions. First, see how the white of the cover background and the white of the blood background are different? You should make them the same so it doesn't look like an image on the cover but instead blood drops on the cover. The two whites would not print very well, either.

I would also make the blood smaller. A smaller bit of blood within the clean, untainted white space would have a lot more impact than a huge drop of blood filling up the white space. I would make it a little less wide than the word "blurred" so that you get a nice visual triangle with morality being the longest word then blurred, then the size of the blood. Good design LOVES to break things into threes and set them up in triangle shapes. Visually this is a very comforting arrangement. It feels right because it is a shape we recognize subconsciously.

Maybe also try moving your tag line from the very top where it is kind of easy to miss, and put it down close to the splatter of blood since the tag line and the image seem to be talking to each other. Break it into 3 lines so that it balances the image out.

"the difference between
right and wrong
is as clear as blood."

If you have access to a good graphics program, I would even stretch the line for "right and wrong" to be as long as the first line, and then do the same to the last line to make a perfect little text box to fit near the curved space of the blood image.

I like this cover much better than the older one. The simplicity and sterility of it makes for big impact. There is a feeling of wrongness to see so much white stained by drops of blood. It implies that within the pages there will be blood spilled where blood shouldn't have been spilled - an innocent person maybe, a murder, something happens that shouldn't be allowed to happen. The simple picture and the font choice remind me of Chuck Palahniuk's early covers.

Re: judge my book by its cover. please.

Posted: April 25th, 2011, 11:05 pm
by eriksetterlind
Thanks Sommer! I tried to fix the two shade of whites and I'll give it another go, but I think that it might be above my pay grade. I'll play around with the size of the image and the tag line, as well. Thanks again for your invaluable input!

Re: judge my book by its cover. please.

Posted: April 26th, 2011, 8:47 am
by Sommer Leigh
eriksetterlind wrote:Thanks Sommer! I tried to fix the two shade of whites and I'll give it another go, but I think that it might be above my pay grade. I'll play around with the size of the image and the tag line, as well. Thanks again for your invaluable input!
If you need any help let me know. The white is a very easy fix.