Barbara Eberhard's Blog - Posts Tagged "cover-layout"
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.
