Everything Authors Need to Know About Book Cover Design

Readers DO judge a book by its cover, so if you're self-publishing you need to know what's important for your book cover design. In this episode I'm talking with Katia from Miblart about all things book cover design so you can find more success with your book.

Transcript

Aryn: [00:00:00] All right. Welcome to rock your book launch. My name is Aryn Van Dyke. I'm the host of the podcast and founder of book rock star, which is a book marketing company that helps teach authors, expert book marketing strategies to help them get their books in front of more readers. So, I had a really great conversation with Katia from Miblart about book cover design.

So you are going to hear that conversation in just a couple of minutes. It is such a fantastic episode for any author who is self-publishing and needing to go through the design process for their book cover. This is going to be an episode that gives you a lot of really great insights, a lot of really great tips for you to be keeping in mind as you're going through that process. So, A book cover is the first thing that your reader sees and is [00:01:00] the kind of piece of marketing material that is going to attract them to learn more about your book. So it is a part of the process that it shouldn't be done quickly.

You should really think about investing money and resources in this part of the process because getting a professionally designed book cover, a book cover that's going to really relate to the other books in its genre and connect with the target reader is really important. It has a huge impact ultimately on sales and how many people are going to end up You know, clicking on your book, looking further at the contents of your book and ultimately buying it.

So this conversation with Katia, again, has really wonderful tips, especially if you are an author who is self-publishing. So without further ado, I'd love to jump into my conversation with Katia from Miblart.

All rightKatia ya, thank you so much for joining me [00:02:00] today. I'm super excited for us to chat about, book cover designs and how authors should be thinking about book covers and just some of the best practices that they should be implementing. So I appreciate you, you joining me. 

Katia: Hi, Aryn. Yeah, I'm also very excited about this talk.

Aryn: Excellent. Alright, so let's just kick it off with this. If I am an author who is self-publishing, what should I be thinking about when it comes time for me to get my book cover done? 

Katia: So first of all, you need to make sure that you are certain about your manuscript and where the story is going, or not if it's a non-fiction book, what topics you want to raise.

Because if you don't think it's true, then you might not reach the target audience. And when working with the cover designer, you cannot really change all the time [00:03:00] what results you want to get. You need to be certain. And so my advice is to finish working with the editor. And then hire a cover designer, or you can also do it simultaneously, but make sure that your manuscript is more or less finished.

Then you need to understand the purpose, like, do you want this book to make sales or you're just doing it for fun because it's yours? Then if you understand clearly understand these purposes, you can do the strategy and also the budgeting. You can then decide what kind of services you want to hire.

Do you want to go for like lower budget services or highest budget services? It will, it will all depend on what you want to get as a result. Because investments. If you want to make sales, you also need to invest money. After this you need to start doing your research. It can be looking for covers from your maybe friends [00:04:00] who write in the same genre.

Some fellow authors covers in your genre that are, Top bestsellers on Amazon, you need to start seeing some patterns that repeat from cover to cover in this way, you will clearly understand the general standards and you will do the market research as well. Then you, when you train your eye like this, it's important to also start making notes.

For example, what covers you like, what covers you don't like, and why. What may be some elements you don't like or you want to avoid or you want to implement. This will all be really useful for the future cooperation with the public. Another thing you can do for the research is going on Pinterest.

There's so many different visuals. Just start saving book covers you like, or maybe even the images. If you like the atmosphere, you think [00:05:00] that this image reminds you of your, I don't know, the theme of your book or the character. You can also save it and then send it to your designer. Or if you design your own book cover, you It will be useful to see these kind of patterns and always write down your ideas.

Sometimes, greatest idea, they can come to you when you're just walking the park or taking a shower. Don't neglect those because sometimes they're the best. You need to write everything down. And if you can do some sketches also, like don't be shy of your art skills. If you don't have any just write it all down.

After this, when you want to hire a book cover design, if you want to hire a book cover designer, you really need to check the legitimacy of this person. So this person has to have a good portfolio. And it's important that it's in your genre because not every book cover designer can offer design in [00:06:00] every single genre.

Like in our company, for example, we offer both like like fantasy, romance, thriller, horror, different genres. But this is because we have different designers. We have a team of six people and each of them, they specialize in two or three main genres and some sub genres. And Then check for reviews and how are they communicating with you.

You need to discuss everything in advance, like the risks and the price, additional pricing, pricing the deadlines. And if everything everything sounds fine, then you can go on and start to cooperate. But don't, but don't fully rely on any person you work with. You need to always have plan B as well.

If something goes wrong, if I'm not sure, like, If something happens, designer gets sick or something, you cannot really risk your publishing deadlines. So [00:07:00] you should always have different plans in case something goes wrong and also hire a professional in advance. If you see the cover can be ready in like, I don't know, three business days.

Don't trust this timeline too much. Because they might be revisions. You might not like the cover. You want to change something. So it's really important to do everything in advance and you need the cover to be ready before your marketing campaign. 

Aryn: Yeah, no, that, that makes a lot of sense. So I, and I think too, thinking about revisions, how.

I guess in your experience, what, on average, how many rounds of revisions do authors tend to go through? 

Katia: In our company, it's usually, it usually takes about two, three rounds of revisions to get the cover they like. Sometimes they get it without revisions because our, in our process, we prepare [00:08:00] more or less ready cover already.

So it's not sketching. But yes 203, it's very normal. It's not, there are exceptions, of course, when if you offer unlimited rounds of revisions, you just get a bit crazy and the whole year you're working on the cover. 

Aryn: Yeah. 

Katia: But they are rare cases. 

Aryn: Yeah. So, yeah. I guess going back to you made some really great points about authors just making notes and doing research.

So what are what are kind of those main elements that authors should be looking at with other book covers, like in terms of like, like, would you say it's important to look at types of like fonts and colors? Like what are some of those like, yeah, the elements that they should be like putting down in their notes and in their research?

Katia: Sure. So this is color, colors, which are used for the genre. Also colors are not They're not only important for genre standards, they're also [00:09:00] important for attracting your target audience. Is it a book for kids, young adults, or adults? You might see that the color schemes will differ. And what kind of covers dominate in the market?

Are they, what kind of style? Is it an object or there is a person on the cover, silhouettes? Maybe there is a specific illustration style? Yeah. Which is common for this genre. Then you can also pay attention to composition. Where is the title located or the imagery. Typography, of course. Typography is really important in book cover designing.

You can see you can even check on the internet, what kind of font is used if you're interested in that, or you can just like save the examples and also try to compare. So that's about it. 

Aryn: Yeah. And if 

Katia: there's a, [00:10:00] yeah. And if there is an interesting element, unusual design element, maybe typography is beautifully connected to the image and you like it, or I'm not, I don't know, maybe typography is in a certain interesting style.

It doesn't mean the designer will copy this. You can just send it to the designer. So they can also try to think about a creative idea visual idea for your book cover. 

Aryn: Yeah. No, I think, I think that's a helpful thing for authors to, to think about is, because correct me if I'm wrong, but I think providing as much information for a designer on the front end probably makes the whole process a lot smoother.

Katia: Yes, that's right. And It's universal truth about designers. You cannot like, yeah, they are professionals and they have a lot of experience, but they cannot read your mind. You will still [00:11:00] have preferences. And even if designer, I don't know. designs like the best ever book cover, you might not like it just because you, you, you also have some sort of style.

Maybe you think you have a different vision. So when you want to work with someone, you need to stay, you need to understand how much input do you want your designer to make? Do you want them to give suggestions, bring ideas to the table. In this case, that's totally fine and welcome, but you need to be open minded about these ideas.

You cannot just say no to everything. On the other hand, if you already have a clear vision, like, yes, I've been dreaming about this and I know what I want to get, then you need to describe it as detailed as possible. Don't hope for the designer to read your mind. And then this is, this will, it will, Guarantee a successful cooperation.

Aryn: Yeah. [00:12:00] So I think there's a lot of authors who I think approach their book cover with the idea of they can just figure out how to design one themselves. And in some cases, I think that it, you know, it probably could turn out okay, but what what would you are, you know, maybe three important reasons or you know, I guess however many reasons that you can think of to for an author to seek a professional designer when it comes to their book cover.

Katia: Yeah, let's just go with three. Otherwise, it will be a really long talk. The first one, they need to understand the purpose of the cover. I mentioned this earlier. It is either a fun project or you want to make sales and they need to understand that the cover exists only to. Attract your potential reader, reader and make sales, [00:13:00] because if there are no, there's no sales, they will not be reviews.

It will not be like this. Your product will not be attracting anymore. It's just one thing leads to another. If you really care about sales, it's a good idea to invest in a professional book cover and designers who offer their Book cover design services, they don't only share their hard skills in design.

They also share their knowledge about the market. So you need to, you don't need to stress yourself out and making huge research. Yeah. We need to do the research, but not that in depth as designers have, because they've been designing so many covers before. It will save a lot of time when you hire a book cover designer.

And Then it's also true that the, your front cover, like your book cover, the quality of your book cover can be [00:14:00] associated with the content of your book. Unfortunately, Unfortunately, if the cover doesn't look professional, let's imagine just, I don't know, poorly cropped images, maybe low resolution, some comic sans as a font, it will not be so appealing to spend my money or even spend my time on this book.

Because I might think that, okay, if the cover is so ugly, I'm sorry. And maybe this person didn't didn't go through editing, they didn't do any formatting. And for me as a potential buyer, I will doubt my choices, I will not want to spend my resources on this. So again, book cover can either break or make sales.

And even if you have a really simple concept for your book cover, still, [00:15:00] you need to know typography because it's also a very crucial element of a book cover. If typography doesn't really relate to your genre, then it will just look misleading. And you can also tell this, but this book cover is not so professional.

For that, you also hire a designer for this kind of knowledge of formatting or typography. And the last point is it saves so much time and efforts. Book cover designing is also like a niche of graphic design and people study it for years. They go to universities, they get degrees, multiple courses. You cannot really expect to know graphic design in only a week or a month, how much time you have.

And it's normal not to be a professional in every single field. Since you've decided to write the book, I think that the main purpose of it was to write the book, not doing all the other things. [00:16:00] Exactly. I think you might agree that everyone, not everyone, but most of the people, they hate marketing, for example, like writing book is one thing, but for marketing, yeah, I need to hire someone that will hire Aaron for this because it's so much resources, time and effort.

So just like It's good to save yourself from the struggle. 

Aryn: Absolutely. Yeah. I, I, I couldn't couldn't agree more on that. I think that's really the whole, like the whole aspect of marketing and even thinking about book covers falling into that aspect of like the visual marketing that's going behind it.

I think it makes a huge difference because for me as a reader, The cover is, you know, that first thing that I'm like, Oh, that could be interesting to me. And it makes me, you know, if I'm on like searching online, it makes me click on the book. If I'm, you know, walking around in a store, you know, it makes me kind of stop and take a look and read it and say like, Oh, this is something [00:17:00] that, you know, interests me based on its visual.

And so like, let me see what the content is about. Whereas seeing the, like exactly like you, like you said, a cover that, Maybe isn't up to kind of the high design standards. I kind of see that and I will walk right past it or I'll scroll right past it on a site like Amazon. So it's I'm glad that you're, you're here today sharing some of these insights because I think covers get skipped over a lot in the process of book publishing.

And it's an important piece that authors really need to I think invest in. So tell tell us a little bit more about Miblart and the services that you guys offer for maybe both the, you know, external cover, you know, interior formatting and how authors can get connected with you. 

Katia: Yeah, sure. MableArt is a primarily a book cover design [00:18:00] company.

For this, for book cover designing, we offer photo based covers. They made out of stock images or some designers. They already use some 3D modeling sometimes illustrated covers, which yeah, that's MableArt. Which is a digitally drawn artwork created from scratch. And we also have a premium design service.

This comes with some more benefits like getting to concepts and the design is mostly 3D rendered. So it allows to have more complex complex details to have details on this cover. Besides we also offer logo design service, interior formatting we design marketing materials connected to book promotion.

And if there is a need, For other design services, we can do the custom offer as well. And we are quite well known in Indie authors community because our, most of our services, they don't require a prepayment. You can just you can just place the [00:19:00] order for zero dollars and pay only when you're satisfied.

And we offer unlimited revisions, so you don't need to be completely sure of what you want before working with us. We will take care of it. Other than that, we also take an active part in educating people about book cover designing. We have a Mibble Academy is a place where you can subscribe to our email courses about book cover design and get some useful freebies.

Aryn: Awesome. Very cool. And then what How how can people visit? What's the, what's the website that people can visit to learn more about your services? 

Katia: The website is Miblart, M I B L A R T dot com. And you can either reach out on the website, There is a, the section called contact us, or you can also find me on social media.

Instagram is katia. [00:20:00] bookcoverdesign. And you can also get a cover idea from us for free. So when you go to our website, the first you will see is the big. Banner, which says get the freak cover idea. So I suggest you can take advantage of this. One of our designers will analyze your brief and they will describe in text, what kind of cover it's suitable for your story and your genre.

Aryn: That's awesome. Yeah. I think, I think for, especially for any authors who. I mean, even if they're in like the process of writing and have that idea of exactly what their manuscript is going to be, what a cool feature for them to take advantage of. Just to, just to kind of get at least an idea you know, in writing from a designer of what their cover could look like.

So that's a, that's a really, really great offer. So I, I, I'm so appreciative of your time today and sharing a little bit more about the, like, book cover design process and why it's such an [00:21:00] important thing for authors to take advantage of. 

Katia: Yeah, thank you so much. I hope this talk was useful and you learned something new today.

Also, if you want to try out our services, you're welcome to use my promo code, which goes Katia. 10, which gives you 10 percent discount on your first order with MibbleArt. You can use it for our photo based covers. 

Aryn: Awesome. Great. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. And I'll have the information about where readers can find you in the description of the episode.

So if you're, if you're listening take a look there so you can take advantage of this this special offer and go find MibbleArt online. So again, Katia, thank you so much for joining me today. All right, if you are an author who is wanting to get your book out in front of more readers and ultimately make more book sales, then this is a hard truth that you need to hear.

Book marketing isn't just a plus, it's a must. [00:22:00] So, if you are looking for ways to make money, To get your book out in front of more potential readers. If you're looking to make more book sales, then check out some of the different products and services that Book Rockstar has available. So if you head to bookrockstar.

com, you can find links to an online book marketing course that walks you through all of the different marketing strategies. that you need to understand and maybe start implementing to get your book out there in front of more readers. There's information about a live 60 day boot camp that we run throughout the year, which really empowers you as an author to learn all of the different steps, all of the different expert book marketing strategies within a 60-day period.

Plus, you've got access to me to ask your specific book marketing questions as you're going throughout the bootcamp process. We've also got some different options for one on one work that we take on a few times a year. So head to bookrockstar. com to learn more information about these different [00:23:00] book marketing products and programs, because if you want to get your book into the hands of more readers, bookrockstar.

Book marketing. Isn't just a plus it's a must. So head to bookrockstar.com today. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. Stay tuned for more.