You all know that saying; beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or that beauty is on the inside. It's all true, except when we're not talking about people. When it comes to objects and art that is meant to appeal to the eye, beauty matters. While there are different opinions of beauty, and one person would say something is beautiful when the next might claim it to be ugly, we are still more interested in things we find beautiful.
And this is where we come to the topic of authors and book covers. Now a days, self publishing has become the IT thing in publishing. More and more authors are self pubbing, and I'm actually planning on jumping on that wagon myself. I even have a project I'm working on for that, but more on it later.
The trend I noticed with self published authors is many of them tend to make their own cover art. How hard can making cover art be? You take a stock image, add your name and title somewhere on it, and done. Right?
WRONG! Sure, if your book is so unoriginal and generic, that you plan to advertise it as "If you liked book X, than you will like this because its almost the same book" a generic cover like that works. However, most authors don't see their work as unoriginal and generic, so why have a cover like that?
A bad cover will send your reader a bad message. Besides thinking that the story must be unoriginal just like the cover, the reader will also question how professionally done is the actual book. My thought process goes like this: if the author can't afford to spend 20 to 50 dollars for a book cover, than they probably will not spend 50 - 200 dollars on a professional edit.
So you see, that generic cover you made for yourself is going to actually cost you sales instead of increase them. So get that cover artist. Spend those extra few dollars. Get that cover where the photos are so manipulated that even if you see a similar cover out there, the differences still make the cover unique.
Come back Wednesday when I will tell you how to find a good cover artist.
PS: This is in no way being said about the authors who know how to make covers. There are many of those out there, and their covers are great.
I envy those who can and truly appreciate the cover artists I've worked with. They make the books really pretty and sometimes convey the message better with a picture with just a few words.
ReplyDeleteYou're right a great cover is what gets me as a reader to even look at the book first. I love covers. I am hoping to get into the making of them at some point. But if I don't...I will always lean towards someone knowing what they are doing. :)
ReplyDeleteGreat post!
Nikki
Good points.
ReplyDeleteExcellent post!
ReplyDeleteThe problem with bad covers is that the author 9 x out of 10, doesn't know they're bad covers. It's THEIR cover and they love it, blind to any flaws. Heck, they even love bad covers designed by other people.
ReplyDeleteWell said! The cover is so critical. It's got to press an emotional button, IMO.
ReplyDeleteI make my own covers. I usually use more than one image to create them. The more I've done it, the better I've gotten at it. I put my money in editing. When I start making a return on my investments, I will hire an artist to do my covers. That's the plan.
ReplyDelete