Every day, new authors try their hand at creating their own covers. Some succeed. Either they have a good eye for composition or they got lucky. Others? Not so much. As a reader, you may not know exactly what’s off with the image, but you can tell the quality isn’t the same as some of the best sellers sitting on the shelves down at the local bookstore.
If you’re set on making your own book cover, whether it’s for fiction or non-fiction, we have a few common mistakes to look out for and avoid.
Text too close to top/bottom/sides of book. This is the number one most common mistake we see. Many newbie cover designers seem to feel they need to fill up every available bit of space on the cover. The titles are often pushed way up close to the top, or expanded as far as they will go from side to side, and the author’s name or text down along the bottom.
Give your cover some breathing room. Keep all text at least a quarter inch away from top/bottom/sides. Too close and you risk the printer accidentally cutting off some of the edges, or the text seeping over the side of the spine. On a digital cover, the image ends up looking like a mistake, like you cropped it too closely.
Pixelated images. When I make a book cover, I use a lot of images from iStock. I never know what size they’re going to end up, so I always get a size larger than I think I’ll need. Remember, you can always shrink an image down and not lose resolution, but going larger breaks the image up. The edges lose their sharpness, they become jagged and blurry. This is called “pixelation”.
Poor font choices. Fonts are fun. I sometimes joke that I collect fonts like some other women collect shoes. In a way, fonts are like shoes, each one has a specific purpose. You wouldn’t wear a pair of Alexander McQueen’s platforms to run a 5K marathon, would you? Not unless you’re Lady Gaga. Even then, I wonder how well that would work out for her.
When choosing fonts for your cover consider the tone of your book and what font style fits. Legibility is also a major factor. That fancy script may look good on a printed version, but how does it reduce down for the thumbnail you’ll need for your digital version?
The Kitchen Sink Effect. Some new authors creating their own covers feel a need to squeeze in every single little bit of symbolism from their story into the space of a cover. They need the main character, the stormy background, the castle where the hero finds the maiden, the dragon circling the sky, the butterfly that flapped its wings somewhere near the coast of Brazil and the magical, sword-wielding wizard who saved them all.
STOP! You don’t need to dump a kitchen sink over your audience’s heads. Less is better. Leave something to the readers’ imagination.
Turns to mud during the Thumbnail Test. Your cover needs to look good in a variety of sizes. You’ll need the large versions for the printed covers, and smaller ones for your distributors (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.). When you make your cover, reduce it to a small thumbnail and see how the text holds up. Small sub-titles and thin fonts will get lost. Too much detail in the imagery will turn to mud. You want everything as clear as possible. Remember, the online lists of books are your virtual bookshelf. You still want that cover and title to stand out and be readable.
Poor choice of stock images. Sometimes stock image human models look too commercial or contrived. Other times, the image you choose may look great to you, but leaves your readers scratching their heads. Choose wisely.
Poor Photoshopping skills. Covers are often made up of many individual images put together. When done correctly by someone skilled in Photoshop, the final result is seamless and amazing. When done by someone without those skills, it’s painfully obvious.
Have you ever seen one of the old movies where you can see a definite edge around the actors as they were filmed in front of a green screen? Usually you see it when the actors are driving in a car and the background is whipping past outside the car windows. This happens in Photoshop too when images are cut from one image and pasted into another. The lighting is slightly off, the edges around the subject too sharp, the shadows on the ground don’t look right. If you’re not careful, your sexy leading man ends up looking like a cardboard cutout.
Too much copy. Sometimes authors have a lengthy title, a sub-title, sub-text, their name, a recent review, etc. all jammed onto that front cover. Go back to the Thumbnail Test. Reduced down, it’s a mess, and enlarged at normal print size, it’s a jumbled mass of chaos.
Too much picture. Recently I’ve been noticing a lot of new designers and authors falling into this trap. They have a great cover image, but the title, subtitle and by-line look like an afterthought. The copy is squished at the top and bottom, or it’s poorly placed and small that you can’t read it at all, and the only thing you see is the background image. Words and pictures have to compliment and enhance one another, they have to work in such a way that in a blink, a new reader can look at it and get all the information they need. Sure, you have a pretty picture, but what’s the title? Who wrote it? Think about how you want to use that negative space within the image so it enhances your title, not bury it.
Big Name Author. Lately there’s been a trend for new authors to make their names larger than the book title. They got this idea from the bestsellers. Don’t do it. Save it for when you have a following. Let the title of your book hold the spotlight for now.
How does your cover hold up? Are you making any of these common mistakes? Would you like your cover reviewed by us? Contact us and let us know, we’d love to hear from you.