Barbara Eberhard's Blog - Posts Tagged "cover-design"
Cover Design
I spent most of today on cover design for both my dad's biography and for my next fiction book. Needless to say, the cover designs are quite different.
The fiction book, tentatively titled "Rich People Problems: The Story of Raggedy Ann and Andy", was easier to create. Fortunately, Raggedy Ann is no longer copyrighted. So, I found an image of a "rag doll" on iStock for $12, and she serves as the primary image for the cover. I have made the titles for my non-fantasy books the same font: Eagle Lake. I did change the style of the cover overall from the design I had been using, getting away from having the non-fantasy and fantasy covers look the same. I also set up the paperback and hard cover covers to be the same, which is not the case for my previous non-fantasy books. The Kindle version is simpler, having no back cover. But similar enough that it's obvious they are the same book.
One of the challenges of using KDP to produce the covers, as opposed to some other software or hiring a graphic designer, is that there are only a limited number of designs. However, within each design, there are a number of layouts - including an author photo and biography, or not, and varying the placement of all the parts of the design - the title, the subtitle, the author's name, etc. I have rarely used the author photo - I'm not a fan of my picture in general. And I usually replace the author bio with reviews of my books, to hopefully convince readers that I write compelling books. There is also a selection of sets of colors to use, and then once you've set the colors, you can also vary them manually if you choose to. Same with the fonts. Each design comes with a default set of fonts. But you can manually change them if you choose to - like changing the font on the cover for my next non-fantasy book to match the styles of the others.
I found it much more challenging to make the cover for Dad's biography. For one thing, I wanted the look to be completely different than any of my other books. I wanted to incorporate a piece or two of Dad's artwork as well - though I only have high resolution images for some of them. The back cover description is not really a description of the book itself - as it has been for my fiction books - as much as an argument for the project and for Dad's being a maverick. Likewise, I've replaced the review section with some of the tributes that have been published about Dad, which again are part of the impetus for why I'm writing the biography in the first place.
Overall, though the two layouts ended up very different, I am happy with both. Subject to change as the books progress, of course.
The fiction book, tentatively titled "Rich People Problems: The Story of Raggedy Ann and Andy", was easier to create. Fortunately, Raggedy Ann is no longer copyrighted. So, I found an image of a "rag doll" on iStock for $12, and she serves as the primary image for the cover. I have made the titles for my non-fantasy books the same font: Eagle Lake. I did change the style of the cover overall from the design I had been using, getting away from having the non-fantasy and fantasy covers look the same. I also set up the paperback and hard cover covers to be the same, which is not the case for my previous non-fantasy books. The Kindle version is simpler, having no back cover. But similar enough that it's obvious they are the same book.
One of the challenges of using KDP to produce the covers, as opposed to some other software or hiring a graphic designer, is that there are only a limited number of designs. However, within each design, there are a number of layouts - including an author photo and biography, or not, and varying the placement of all the parts of the design - the title, the subtitle, the author's name, etc. I have rarely used the author photo - I'm not a fan of my picture in general. And I usually replace the author bio with reviews of my books, to hopefully convince readers that I write compelling books. There is also a selection of sets of colors to use, and then once you've set the colors, you can also vary them manually if you choose to. Same with the fonts. Each design comes with a default set of fonts. But you can manually change them if you choose to - like changing the font on the cover for my next non-fantasy book to match the styles of the others.
I found it much more challenging to make the cover for Dad's biography. For one thing, I wanted the look to be completely different than any of my other books. I wanted to incorporate a piece or two of Dad's artwork as well - though I only have high resolution images for some of them. The back cover description is not really a description of the book itself - as it has been for my fiction books - as much as an argument for the project and for Dad's being a maverick. Likewise, I've replaced the review section with some of the tributes that have been published about Dad, which again are part of the impetus for why I'm writing the biography in the first place.
Overall, though the two layouts ended up very different, I am happy with both. Subject to change as the books progress, of course.
Cover Design Challenges
I design my own covers. It's part of my being frugal since I don't make much money from my books.
KDP has a variety of cover options. First, you can pick a general layout you like. Then, within that layout, there are options that change the placement of the author name, title, secondary title, etc.
Today, I designed the covers for the upcoming fantasy series, Dichotomies. I have used the same basic layout for my fantasy books since the beginning, with a solid banner across the top of the cover, a thin line in a different color, and then an image or photograph. In the top solid banner lies the author name. On the front cover, the title goes in the middle of the layout, with the secondary title at the bottom. I like this look because it's clean and the author name isn't that prominent. In some configurations, the author name is the largest thing on the cover - yuk!
On the back cover of this design is the book description, a block meant for an author biography but which I use for book reviews, and a photo square, where I put my flower logo.
The image or photo is obviously an important decision. This, more than anything else I think, draws the reader's attention. Since this trilogy is about dichotomies that starts with half the world living on land and half the world living on water, I decided to use that as my organizing principle for the photos. I had thought about using dragons images - even downloaded a bunch of options from Pixabay - but the images weren't high resolution, and I couldn't find ones I liked that were. So, instead, I decided to use some of the default images supplied by KDP. In keeping with the theme of dichotomy, and because each book will follow the story of a particular character, the photos reflect the basic dichotomy of each character. That is, Book One is a land-based image, in this case of a mountain since the main character has fled to the mountains after being ostracized by her village. Book Two's cover image is just the water, in this case at sunset. It was challenging to find a photo with no land in sight. But that's an important part of Book Two's dichotomy, as the main character has never been on land. The cover image for Book Three, where the dichotomies start to converge, has both land and water in it. The main character of Book Three shows characteristics of both land people and sea people, and is seen as dangerous because of it.
The last decision needed for these covers is the color scheme. KDP provides a bunch of predefined selections, and I decided this go-round to just use one of theirs for each of the books. But I also want the colors to somewhat match the images. One of the drawbacks of KDP's covers is that each block of text on the cover can only be one color. And of course, the text has to show over the image chosen. The default is to have all the text be the same color, though I've often customized that as part of my cover design.
But the hardest part is that the choices made for one format - as I've vented about before - don't carry over to the other formats. So, for each book, you have to remember what image, colors, and layout you chose to replicate it for the other two formats. What I've chosen to do, though is have the paperback and Kindle versions look pretty much the same, and the same as the other fantasy books/series I've written. But I chose a completely different format for the hardcovers.
We'll see if that decision sticks.
KDP has a variety of cover options. First, you can pick a general layout you like. Then, within that layout, there are options that change the placement of the author name, title, secondary title, etc.
Today, I designed the covers for the upcoming fantasy series, Dichotomies. I have used the same basic layout for my fantasy books since the beginning, with a solid banner across the top of the cover, a thin line in a different color, and then an image or photograph. In the top solid banner lies the author name. On the front cover, the title goes in the middle of the layout, with the secondary title at the bottom. I like this look because it's clean and the author name isn't that prominent. In some configurations, the author name is the largest thing on the cover - yuk!
On the back cover of this design is the book description, a block meant for an author biography but which I use for book reviews, and a photo square, where I put my flower logo.
The image or photo is obviously an important decision. This, more than anything else I think, draws the reader's attention. Since this trilogy is about dichotomies that starts with half the world living on land and half the world living on water, I decided to use that as my organizing principle for the photos. I had thought about using dragons images - even downloaded a bunch of options from Pixabay - but the images weren't high resolution, and I couldn't find ones I liked that were. So, instead, I decided to use some of the default images supplied by KDP. In keeping with the theme of dichotomy, and because each book will follow the story of a particular character, the photos reflect the basic dichotomy of each character. That is, Book One is a land-based image, in this case of a mountain since the main character has fled to the mountains after being ostracized by her village. Book Two's cover image is just the water, in this case at sunset. It was challenging to find a photo with no land in sight. But that's an important part of Book Two's dichotomy, as the main character has never been on land. The cover image for Book Three, where the dichotomies start to converge, has both land and water in it. The main character of Book Three shows characteristics of both land people and sea people, and is seen as dangerous because of it.
The last decision needed for these covers is the color scheme. KDP provides a bunch of predefined selections, and I decided this go-round to just use one of theirs for each of the books. But I also want the colors to somewhat match the images. One of the drawbacks of KDP's covers is that each block of text on the cover can only be one color. And of course, the text has to show over the image chosen. The default is to have all the text be the same color, though I've often customized that as part of my cover design.
But the hardest part is that the choices made for one format - as I've vented about before - don't carry over to the other formats. So, for each book, you have to remember what image, colors, and layout you chose to replicate it for the other two formats. What I've chosen to do, though is have the paperback and Kindle versions look pretty much the same, and the same as the other fantasy books/series I've written. But I chose a completely different format for the hardcovers.
We'll see if that decision sticks.
