Our guest blogger, Milan Manko, is a senior book cover designer at MiblArt, a book cover design company for self-published authors. MiblArt believes that book covers are your number one marketing tool (and I agree), so the firm’s cover designers help authors get the most out of them. Connect with them on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. 

(EDITOR’S NOTE: From July 12-19, 2024, get 20% off a MiblArt cover package with coupon code SANDRA20 at checkout when using my compensated affiliate link.)

Affiliate Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means if you click on them and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission (at no extra charge to you).

Why DIY book covers kill your sales and how to choose a professional designer who will hit the mark

By Milan Manko

According to a Written Word Media survey, 53% of indie authors work with a professional designer on their book covers. The data isn’t surprising because in terms of return on investment, covers remain one of the most effective book marketing tools.

Why is a book cover so important today? How can you find the best designer for your book?

Let’s answer both questions so you can better manage your book investments and get a cover that will help you reach your readers.

Why is it important to have a professional book cover design?

A Panorama Project survey concludes that to target the majority of U.S.-based avid readers, authors should focus on online marketing, family-friendly book events, and distributing their books to brick-and-mortar stores. And it won’t be effective without a professional book cover.

Here are a few reasons why you need to hire a professional book cover designer and not design a book cover by yourself:

1. A designer knows how to create an unforgettable first impression.

The cover art should grab a reader’s attention even before they’re able to process the image. It’s all about the initial impulse that will urge people to learn more about the book.

2. A designer analyzes the book market and your genre.

Clear genre signaling is vital for marketing as people often look for new books by genre – and Panorama’s survey proves it. So, a cover that quickly conveys its niche will be ahead of the competition.

Each genre, each subgenre, and each particular author have unique audiences with unique preferences. And only with a professional book cover will you draw the audience you need.

3. A designer knows how to work with typography.

Bad typography can ruin even the most beautiful book cover art. DIY book covers often have inappropriate or unreadable fonts that clash with the art. A book cover designer knows how to make typography pop.

So, a professional book cover requires good knowledge of typography, composition, color theory, and industry trends, and the ability to create immersive visual storytelling.

In other words, finding a beautiful stock photo and slapping a book title on top doesn’t cut it. You need an experienced book cover designer for this job.

How to find a good book cover designer

One of the most reliable ways to find a good designer is to ask your fellow indie authors with covers you admire who designed their covers. They won’t leave you hanging!

One of the most reliable ways to find a good designer is to ask your fellow indie authors with covers you admire who designed their covers.Click to tweetIf you have nobody to ask, research is your only option. Create a list of companies or freelancers to choose from. And here’s what to do next.

Check customer reviews.

Experienced designers should have at least some customer reviews or testimonials from authors. If reviews are on social media pages, you can easily check whether the people who left them are real.

View examples of book covers in your genre.

A designer who makes amazing romance covers may struggle with science fiction or fantasy. Or a designer can make dull romance covers but create gorgeous nonfiction designs. Ensure the designer’s portfolio proves their savviness in your genre.

Ask about their book cover design process.

The quality of the design process determines the quality of the result.

For example, a good cover design process can look like this:

1. A call or a questionnaire to determine the author’s requirements, references, story concept, and visions of the cover
2. Negotiating payment terms
3. The first draft
4. Several rounds of revisions
5. Final cover art

A good design process is systemic and deliberate.

Ask about the number of revisions (and whether they’re included in the fee or extra).

Like it or not, revisions are an integral part of the design process. Ask your designer about the number of revisions included in your fee and specify in what cases you have to pay extra for them.

Also, find out what exactly counts as a revision. For example, some designers do only minor revisions for free (such as changing the font, adjusting the text position, etc).

In most cases, designers are okay with more complex revisions too, as long as they come during first drafts when they’re easy to make. So, it’s your responsibility to spot any inconsistencies early.

Ask about copyrights, license, and source files.

To avoid legal troubles, ensure that designer uses official sources for their visual materials so your future cover doesn’t violate copyright laws.

In addition, you should ask what type of license you’re purchasing and how many e-books and print books you can sell.

Also, ask if the designer gives you the source files. Note that most of the designers don’t give source files or if they do, they charge a fee for them. Some designers can provide you with flattened source files with editable text in PSD format.

Agree on deadlines and payment.

There are a few things you should ask about pricing policy and deadlines:

• Does the designer charge in advance, and if so, how much? Half of the fee is a comfortable maximum in case of complex works with illustration, for example.
• What about a refund? Is a refund partial or complete? In which cases does a refund apply? Ideally, you want a refund if the cover is bad quality or doesn’t meet your initial requirements.
• How long will it be before you receive first drafts and a final design? You need to ensure you’ll get the design in time to launch your marketing campaign.

The designer and author synergy

The rest is up to your chemistry with a designer.

You need to feel comfortable and trust their opinion. All in all, designing a book cover is a job for two people: You exchange ideas, experiment together, and share feedback without worries.

We hope you’ll find a cover design partner with whom you’ll have perfect synergy. Good luck!

Do you love your book cover? Tell us why in a comment!

I know cover designer extraordinaire Alexander von Ness through his Self-Publishing and Book Marketing Group on Facebook, where I’m a group administrator. Alexander is a book cover designer with more than 20 years of professional experience in graphic design, including more than a decade as art director in a branding agency. In the past 10 years, his main area of focus has been book cover design. His website, Nessgraphica, is among the top trusted sites for book cover design services overall.

Book cover re-designs: A pro offers 7 before and after examples

By Alexander von Ness

Are you wondering if you should you re-design your book cover?

You’ve probably noticed that more and more authors are doing this.

They’re doing it for several reasons, but the most common and important are:

1. The author isn’t satisfied with their current cover.
2. The book sells poorly because the cover doesn’t fit the genre.

As a professional book cover designer, I can show you what it looks like in reality and reveal a few cover design “secrets.” They might help you decide whether and why you might want to think about doing this for your book, too.

Lessons from book cover do-overs

No one wrote and published a book just so it would sit on a shelf, no matter what they say.

Eventually, most want to sell as many copies as possible so their book becomes popular. A good cover will help get you there.

To illustrate the value of a good cover design, I’ll share a few examples of what a book cover re-design looks like and why I made specific changes.

Book cover re-design 1 – Hearts Set Free

In this example, we can see that the re-design does not deviate in general from the original. The focus on the sky (which the author strongly insisted on) turns this cover into a real “beauty” that will surely give this book much needed gravitas and character.

The author wanted the cover to contain only two basic elements, as explicit opposites. They are the desert, as a synonym for loss and helplessness, and the sky, representing hope and a new beginning.

He also wanted to strongly emphasize the contrast between these two elements while showing how they fit together, too.

I’m very pleased with this re-design. I think that it’s a great example of how with very few – but high quality – changes, a book cover can look fantastic and professional without deviating from its original.

A more detailed overview of this book cover re-design example can be found here

Book cover re-design 2 – The Career Game Plan

In this example, we can see that the re-design has a noticeable shift from the original cover, with the new cover still making a significant difference.

Where? In the title placement, for one.

Changing the title font and repositioning it in a much more visible location makes a huge difference. Additionally, I cleaned up all the clutter around the title and subtitle by stripping it so it’s as visible, readable, and transparent as possible.

I also replaced the photo of a man in a suit with an image of both men and women. This moves the design away from an exclusively male audience to include women, which is very important for this type of book.

A more detailed overview of this book cover re-design example can be found here.

Book cover re-design 3 – Windborne

This is a very interesting example of a book cover re-design in the true sense of the word.

We can immediately see the problem: an undefined genre. This automatically implies an undefined target audience – one of the biggest mistakes in book cover design.

Something is missing here, too.

I added the female figure, our “heroine,” as the dominant figure. The book is about her and not a tree or a church, right? This undoubtedly turned this book into a story about a girl instead of a story about a small church on a prairie.

I also included a windmill, something that appears in the book, as a small symbolic element.

I’ve completely changed the tone and warmth of the cover to give it an old-fashioned look, which works because the story takes place through a few generations. I created the title lettering myself because I wanted the cover to have a handmade quality.

A more detailed overview of this book cover re-design example can be found here.

Book cover re-design 4 – Gold Boys

Can you tell from the original cover what this book is about?

The first cover so completely missed what it’s supposed to represent that it’s hard to understand how it could have happened.

We can very freely conclude that this is dark humor or a medical mystery and not the psychological thriller that it is.

The book is about two best friends (do you see them on the original cover?) who attended Saint Anselm College (do you see it somewhere?) together and are drawn into a dark detective story.

The original version is a great example of how a simple cover can mislead the intended audience and others.

A more detailed overview of this book cover re-design example can be found here.

Book cover re-design 5 – Worship of Hollow Gods

I’ve seen so many books where there’s a sky and some letters on the cover. Most people have no idea what it represents. We can only guess.

The title tells us what this book is about, but let’s be honest. Would you ever click on this thumbnail on Amazon?

If you’ve already put in the effort and time to write a book, then you can put in at least a minimum more to create a meaningful cover.

It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece designed by an expensive professional. Just give your book a chance!

A more detailed overview of this book cover re-design example can be found here.

Book cover re-design 6 – The Spirit War

This is an interesting attempt to rely on one’s intuition . . . and a classic example of a cover design that’s all wrong.

First, I would like to point out that this is the first book in a trilogy that I had to re-design in its entirety. In the beginning, I had doubts about how to approach this because I knew that two more books were waiting for me, and all three, of course, must be recognized immediately as interconnected.

When it comes to topics like religion in a book, I am very careful because the authors very often present their personal vision of religion and faith. Great attention must be paid to every detail.

If you look at the complete re-design on the link below, you will see in the lower left corner the Christian three Kings coming to bring the “good news.” In the Christian religion, this is known as the news of hope.

A more detailed overview of this book cover re-design example can be found here.

Book cover re-design 7 – Onyx Webb

Lastly, a book cover design that screams “never do it alone if you don’t know how to do it.”

Never!

In her guest blog post on my site, “Never Judge a Book By Its Cover! – Are You Really Sure?,“ the author of this book describes the changes that cover re-designs brought to her publishing business and personal life.

As in the previous example, this book is the first in a multi-book series, and I was re-designing all of the covers.

The spider’s web visual element had to “stretch” throughout the whole series. It proved to be difficult to do because it interfered with my need to emphasize the main elements on each cover.

In the end, however, we went from what I consider to be a repulsive cover design to one that’s acceptable and interesting, and fits perfectly in the paranormal suspense and ghost fiction genre. That was our goal.

A more detailed overview of this book cover re-design example can be found here.

Is your cover ready for a new look?

Some authors have requested book cover re-designs of more than 10 books because they’ve discovered that a professional book cover design is a visual representation of your book’s quality content. It also shows your own appreciation for your hard work.

Yet, many authors worry that a re-design will cause brand recognition problems. Truth is, keeping a bad-looking cover is worse than reintroducing your work.

A good book cover design opens doors, so give your book a chance and watch your sales grow.

Who knows? Maybe there’s a masterpiece between your book’s covers that the world just hasn’t recognized yet.

Do you have questions for Alexander about cover design? Just ask them in a comment and he will reply.

This author was getting clicks on her Amazon ads, but those clicks to her book’s detail page weren’t converting to purchases. She thought her book description might be the problem, so she asked if anyone would be willing to review it.

There’s a lot I like about this, but what I like the most is that she was open to suggestions. That’s the sort of thinking that will turn her book marketing around.

Here are four other things you can do today to get – and stay on – the right path with your book marketing.

1. Get feedback on everything. (And pay attention to it.)

I love that the author mentioned above asked for feedback on her book description. You can continually improve your book’s Amazon page as you learn and grow.

Take what she’s done one big step further and get input earlier in the publishing process. You want to solicit feedback from your target audience on your:

• Manuscript with beta readers
• Cover design
• Book description

It’s important that you solicit input from your target audience.

Case in point: In a Facebook group I belong to, authors ask for opinions on cover design options. When I don’t read the genres involved, I don’t weigh in.

Why? Because I’m not in the target audience.

2. Stop promoting to everybody.

New authors often think that “everybody” will love their book. Those with experience know that’s not the case.

As fashion designer (and countless other people) Joseph Abboud said, “You can’t be all things to all people.”

I’ll bet you had someone in mind while you were writing your book. It might even have been yourself. Maybe you wrote the kind of book that you want to read.

You aren’t “everyone,” right? That means your ideal readers might very well be people just like you.

You will be far more effective with your book marketing if you invest the time to determine who will buy your book, then select the tactics that will help you reach those people.

3. Learn from the best-selling authors in your genre.

Make a list of the 10 top-selling authors in your genre, whether it’s sci-fi/fantasy, memoir, cozy mystery, or soups and stews cookbooks.

Study their websites, Amazon book pages, and social media profiles. Pay attention to these elements:

• Author branding: Do you see a uniform look on the website and social media headers and graphics?
• Website content: What are the tabs/menu options, and what information is on each?
• Social networks: Which ones are they using (that information will give you insights into where you’ll find your readers)? What content do they share and how do they do it?

Best-selling authors have figured it out. Take the time to learn from them.

4. Track your results.

You want to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. You won’t know what is and isn’t working unless you’re watching for a connection between what you’ve done and whether it’s had an impact on sales.

This applies to all of your book marketing goals, not just book sales.

For example, let’s say that your goal for the next two months is to get more Instagram followers. Set a specific goal (how many is “more?”), then track what happens every time you do something that you believe should generate an increase. Laura Laing’s excellent guest post, “Social media data tracking for authors in four easy steps,” is a good how-to starting point.

When your specific goal is related to book sales and you’re self-published, implement one tactic at a time. Then check your KDP dashboard to see if that sold any books. If you’re not self-published, monitor your Amazon category rank in your book’s product details.

As you try new tactics, watch what happens when you do. If you don’t get the results you expected, determine if it’s because:

• You didn’t execute the tactic properly (see more on that in “3 social media mistakes authors must stop making now“)
• The tactic isn’t a good fit for your book or audience

Always keep learning

The author I mentioned above knew she needed to be open to outside input. She realized that this was an opportunity for her to learn how to do something better.

If you’ve been writing and publishing books for awhile, you know that what works and what doesn’t can change. Amazon is a great example of that — the rules and algorithms there seem to be ever-evolving.

That’s why it’s important to be open to learning from others who might be more successful or more knowledgeable. Just as importantly, though, you should learn from your own experiences. They’ll teach you a lot if you pay attention.

What’s one change you’ve made with your book marketing that has helped you move forward? 

Tip of the Month

I like to share a “Tip of the Month,” a free resource or tool for authors, on the last Wednesday of the month.

This month, it’s a free download for “700+ power words that will boost your conversions” from Optinmonster. Use the words on this list to help you craft:

• Book titles
• Blog post headlines
• Web site content
• Advertising text
• Email subject lines
• Social media posts

To get your copy, just click the cheat sheet title in the blue box under the first paragraph of text (see below), provide your name and email address, and download the PDF cheat sheet to your computer.

Sometimes, changing just one word can make all the difference.