It’s A Cover Up! – Miss Write

This week I have invited Katheryn Lane to Miss Write as a guest blogger. She’s so enthusiastic about the intricacies and development of book cover design, I just had to get her in as a contributor! I play a game of ‘guess the genre’ privately when I’m browsing online, so this blog post really ticked some boxes for me. Thanks to Katheryn, and all the best wishes as your continue on your writing path. Over to Katheryn…

Lou x 

I just love book covers! In fact I love them so much I’ve even dedicated a whole page of my blog to them! In my opinion, the cover is a key element of the book. You might have written a great book, but if it has a lousy cover, people might not want to buy it.  Apparently, the average reader spends as little as eight seconds looking at a book cover, (I certainly look at it a much shorter time! – LG). That’s if they even notice it at all!

I’ve asked a lot of authors about their book covers and some of them, such as Patti Roberts, are able to design brilliant book covers themselves (take a look at her great covers for the ‘Paradox’ series). Other authors, such as KE Saxon, ask someone else to design their covers (see the wonderful cover of her book ‘Diamonds and Toads’). Personally, I took the second route and hired a designer for both of my novels, ‘The Royal Sheikh’ and ‘Her Latin Lover’, as I was completely unable to master the art of cover design myself! After looking at numerous designers’ websites, I chose Judy Bullard, because she has done a lot of covers for romance novels, which fitted my genre, and she charges a very reasonable price (a major consideration!)

When I contacted her about my first novel, I didn’t really know how to go about the whole process. However, I sent her the book blurb and a description of the two main characters that I wanted on the cover, and she came up with the rest. For my second book, I had a little bit more of an understanding of how the process works, so this time I sent her some example photos of couples to give her an idea of what I was looking for. The pictures I sent were copyrighted, but she used these to find a non-copyright image that had the same feel to the pictures I sent. Next, she asked about the background and since the book is set in South America in a small town and up in the hills where coffee is grown, I sent her some photos showing the type of setting that I had in mind. Again, these pictures were copyrighted, but Judy found a non-copyright image that was even better than the pictures I’d selected. She then added the title and my name, with my name in the same font and size as my previous book to provide a bit of consistency between the two.  

Whichever method people use, do it yourself or hire someone else, for digital books, I believe that a really a good book cover needs to strongly convey the book’s genre, so readers know exactly what they’re buying (I think this is especially true for unknown, first-time authors), it needs to have a strong image to make it eye-catching and it needs to look good even at a reduced size as the final cover will appear as a small image on Amazon, approximately the size of a stamp. Therefore, the images and wording must be clear and easy for readers to see. Finally, don’t overcomplicate the cover by trying to put too much on it; sometimes it’s the simple covers that are the most effective. For example, the cover for ‘One Pink Line’ by Dina Silver is brilliant, no wonder it’s selling so well! 

Thanks for hosting, Louise – best of luck with the blog and your writing!

About Katheryn Lane

Katheryn Lane works full-time as a teacher, mother and wife, but somehow also finds time to be a part-time writer as well! She loves to write contemporary romances set in exotic locations. Her first romance, THE ROYAL SHEIKH, was inspired by her experience of living in the Middle East and her second novel, HER LATIN LOVER, takes readers to the treacherous towns and countryside of South America. In her free time (on the rare occasion that she has any!) she likes to lose herself in a good book.

THE ROYAL SHEIKH and HER LATIN LOVER are available from all Amazon websites, such as Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

You can connect with her online at the following places:

Twitter: @KatherynLane

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/KatherynLane.Author

Blog: http://katheryn-lane.blogspot.com

Email: [email protected]