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Creating Great Covers

Creating Great Covers

Is a well-designed book cover important? Let’s see first how other book-creation experts weigh in this question. Here are just three of the current top answers to this question on Google:

“A book cover creates the first impression on its potential readers. Therefore, a book cover design is one of the most important aspects of marketing a book. If the cover is not designed well, you will loose sales. … A successful book cover needs to make a reader ‘feel’ the manuscript rather than ‘tell’ about it.” — Design Hill

“A book cover is the book’s billboard, and even without the reader or author knowing, it causes expectation. If a reader sees a book with an amateur cover, they’re going to believe that it’s also poorly written.” – Buz Books

“The popular idiom is “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” but despite how true it might be in an idealistic sense, the reality of the book industry is that the vast majority of readers do indeed use the cover of a book as a deciding factor in not only whether or not they should buy the book, but if they will enjoy it as well.” – Writers and Authors

Currently, my venue of choice is 99 Designs. There you can either choose to enter a contest to create your book cover or look at the portfolios of the designers and choose one that has the kind of covers that fit the vision you have for your cover. This latter choice is a 1 to 1 designer contract. Over the past decade, I have had great results and have kept my expenses for covers down to around $400 a book.

When you realize that legally your book is your intellectual property that lasts your entire life and then 70 years after, you may see the monetary investment in a quality cover as very important. I strongly believe and have seen the value of creating a professional cover. Again and again, I tell my clients that your investment in your book should last at least four years or more. In this case, $400 for a book cover really means you have invested approximately $100 a year to build your brand with a beautiful book cover that, hopefully, also includes a well-edited and well-designed manuscript.

Take a look at the home page for examples of just some of the books my team and I have been involved in creating.

 

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