I think the quote ‘Never judge a book by its cover’ is true for people and not for books. Because that’s how people judge books now. I’ve always been pulled towards books with great covers. The book may be great but if it doesn’t have a compelling or classic looking cover my eyes will graze right over it.
When creating my children’s books and my novel I decided to create the cover myself. I almost hired someone on Fiver to create the cover for my novel, but it was a piece of control over my book that I didn’t want to give up. Because I’m so connected to the book and its characters, I felt I would never be satisfied with someone else’s conception piece of a cover. I went through multiple ideas and a couple were ones I felt determined were THE ONE, but I eventually went with something completely different.
If you have the skills, I highly recommend you create your own cover. No one knows the story better than you. I learned Adobe InDesign and Photoshop in college, and I continued to work on these skills afterward.
When creating your cover make sure you:
- Think about the overall essence of the story. What part of your story do you want to use to draw readers in?
- Think about the genre and how other book covers in the genre look. You don’t want your book to look out of place beside its fellows.
- Think about what catches the eye. What will make the reader pull your book off the shelf? Ask friends and fellow readers of that genre.
- Think about the fonts- THEY MATTER!! Your potential readers need to be able to read the title without having to try to decipher the hieroglyphics you chose for a font.
- Make it unique. Some may disagree with me on this, but I think it’s important to be current yet unique. I didn’t make mine look like a painting like many others do- instead I used free images (which is an important thing to remember- don’t use copy righted photos!) and with a little Canva magic I created my cover.
Abigail Elizabeth Black 