Apr 27, 2022
The pitfalls of book covers!
“Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&ref=nb_sb_noss_1
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The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.
[00:00:00] Over the past two weeks, we have talked about the pitfalls that come in writing. So the pitfalls or these two pitfalls that come with craft. Today, we are going to do episode one of two about the pitfalls of design, layout, and design today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello, hello. Hello, and welcome to the show.
[00:00:49] Welcome to Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis and I live in a tiny house in Northern Utah, and writing is one of my very favorite things to do, and I write things and I have this podcast to tell you guys all about it. I have produced a number of different things in my day. I have also done a lot of research and whatever.
[00:01:13] I tend to do my best to be as current as I can be on the things that we talk about in this podcast. And I'm here to show you that a short story can be produced in three months and a novel can be produced in 18 months. And hopefully through this podcast and through whatever other resources you are using, you can get the wisdom to understand that sometimes that timeline needs to be modified.
[00:01:45] Back in October, I released the short story Brigitte and from draft to publish that short story was cranked out in two months. And it's a good short story, guys. I feel it's proof that a system can work if you are prepared for it. But as we can see, simply six months later, uh, my next short story, which is going to be Tiz, the second installment of tales from Vlaydor, is still in the drafting stage. And I have not looked at it for many Wiles for many weeks, and that is because life happens and sometimes you get to allow for that. So today we are talking about specifically your book cover if it's not going to be a book, the cover art that you are using for your stuff, the cover art that represents your work. So here's the deal, guys. I'm going to hurry and lay down some truth about your book cover, some kind of hard to swallow truth. Your book cover is your most powerful marketing tool.
[00:02:57] So here's the deal and it truly is your book cover represents a certain amount of value of what is inside the cover of what is the content of this thing. It represents that. If it is not designed correctly, your work may be misrepresented and people will not be interested in reading it or buying it.
[00:03:21] And so here's the deal, with a lot of this, especially with like self publishing. Sometimes we feel that we need to do all of the things. And the fact of the matter is even if you are traditionally published, you are going to be doing most of your promotion. Most of your advertising will be done yourself.
[00:03:40] And it's okay to know that. It's okay to be prepared for that. If you get traditionally published, I hope that your traditional publisher will give certain amounts of resources to you, especially they tend to do that for debut novelists, not necessarily for a second book. As much. And the thing is with publishers, they are here to make money, which means they funnel their marketing resources to the people and the books that are already bringing in money instead of risking all of it on all of these newbies or specifically on all these people who have written a second book.
[00:04:21] So debut novelists often make a bigger splash than the second book that they write. And if the second book is one of a trilogy, it will sell fewer copies than the first book does. And the third book will sell fewer copies than the second one, it's just how that tends to go. You will find plenty of exceptions to that rule, but you will find plenty more that fall in to what I just said.
[00:04:49] So with your book cover, a lot of us feel that we are doing all of the things by ourselves. And so in order to save money or in order to save time, we feel that we need to also design a book cover in addition to writing an amazing book. My experience is, and this is going to be hard to swallow, perhaps, but this is my experience.
[00:05:15] Not all writers make good graphic arts designer. Not all writers should design their own book cover. Me included. So if you look at Tales from Vlaydor, Installment One: Brigitte, you will see that I designed that. So here I am saying don't do what I did. I designed that on my iPhone. And the thing is, Bridgette was largely an experiment in many different ways to test a system.
[00:05:45] And I had all of the resources in place for the content of the story. I had my editor in, I had my trusted team of beta readers to bounce ideas off of, and I did not have the resource of a graphic arts designer on board with that. So I did my own because we were doing a system. We were testing a system.
[00:06:06] If you look at the book cover for Brigitte, there are too many words on it. It's okay. It's not great. I'm not going to tell you that it's great. It's okay enough though. It's okay ish. In further, I guess, versions of Brigitte when I have a larger collection of these Tales from Vlaydor under my belt, I will have better artwork that is already on the plan.
[00:06:30] So here's the deal. When you look at your cover art and you go to design a book cover, or if you are hiring a graphic arts designer, there are things that you really need to pay attention to. Just like the content of your book, it needs to be recognizable as being assigned to a genre while at the same time eye-catching and interesting.
[00:06:56] And it's really hard to play that game of balance sometimes. Am I original enough to catch people's attention and to keep their focus, but Am I so different that people can't figure out where my book should be? Just because people like genres, people like to read specific genres and if your book doesn't seem to fit, they're not going to be as inclined to pick it up.
[00:07:23] And so there is a certain look to contemporary romance. There is a certain look to contemporary fiction. There's a certain look to many historical fiction, and there's a, certain look to many different sub-genres of fantasy. It's important to be familiar with what you're going for and what you feel your book could fit in with where your book could go and find that balance between
[00:07:52] interesting, but also understandable as to where it can go. So interesting. But categorizable, Your book needs to have certain symmetry. It also needs to have certain fonts, like a certain font effect. Don't use the font
[00:08:10] Papyrus. Don't use that. You don't get to have that unless your graphic arts designer is going to be modifying that in some way.
[00:08:17] Your book cover needs to be readable. And so if you are doing a big fancy something or another, with the words itself, turning the words themselves into a type of art, it needs to be readable and it needs to be readable from a distance. This was, a bit of a complication that we were having when we were going through the design process of my first novel as magic shifts.
[00:08:45] So with that book, the word magic is very artistic. It's not a font. It's. Lettered after like magical smoke. And at first the artist who did the art for the book wanted the entire title of the book to be in that style of smoke. So he wanted all three words as magic shifts to be. This smokiness and it was super fun, but it was really hard to read, especially if it's going to be the front cover of the book.
[00:09:22] So what we did was we kept magic. Magic was easy enough to read, but as and shifts, we made more legible with a font and it works. And then on the back cover where. The art history stuff is not as important because it's not noticed first. We had a smaller version of the entirely artistic title as magic shifts in that magical smoke on the back cover.
[00:09:53] And that was a fun touch. the artist also included a couple other images that he gave to me in the package deal, I guess, that we brought in to the chapter headings as icons. And so the chapter headings themselves have some original artwork, which was fun to incorporate, but that is going to be talked about on the next episode.
[00:10:16] So tune in for that next week. But like I said, Earlier your book cover is your most powerful marketing tool. When you save up your money and you hire a graphic arts designer and you hire an artist, the thing is guys be prepared to save up some money for that. There are some other options though. I have been on some.
[00:10:41] Specific Facebook groups of graphic arts designers that crank out book covers and the art is actually very good. And if you can find one that works for your story or needs some very simple modifications, you can get away with a decent book cover for 70 to $300, depending on where you look, I pay.
[00:11:06] For completely original artwork. I paid $800 for as magic shifts. For the witch's pupil, which in my opinion is even better artwork. And I can say that without hesitation, because the same artists did it for the witches pupil. I paid $650 for that because I went with the same artist, the artists who did those book covers is a man named Tyler at the time he worked for Marvel comics.
[00:11:33] I don't know if he still works there. I haven't kept in touch with him over the years. save your money when you get your book cover, Make sure that your artist or your graphic arts designer, sometimes you hire an artist for the artwork and then a graphic arts designer to design the cover and incorporate that artwork as a book cover.
[00:11:54] I'm likely going to do that when I do some bigger projects here, I don't think I'm going to do it exactly that way with my short stories, just because the short stories don't represent the same time commitment as a novel does. When all of that happens, make sure you have a portrait version of your book cover and to make sure that you have a square version of your book cover.
[00:12:17] you want those two, if not more different versions of your book cover for several different reasons. If you ever choose to do an audio book of your book. The cover art for audio books is square. Also, if you're posting your book cover, on social media, like Instagram, you post square pictures, those posts are square, and it's good to use those.
[00:12:44] If you have those two images. Ratio sizes then you can make on your own, the various different images that you are going to do to promote the release of your book, the sale of your book, and any type of other promotions that are going along so long as the book is available. And you can do that very easily through apps.
[00:13:08] that you can get on your phone, like Canva or a couple other apps like that. So the images that people are only going to see likely once. With big text about like releasing February 1st or whatever the text may be. You can do those on your own, but the book cover itself, I will never recommend a writer to sign their own book cover.
[00:13:35] Also, if you're a writer and you are reaching out to an artist and a book designer, don't require them to read your book, you get to be talented enough to write. a summary of your book anyway, or a hook or the stuff you're, you're going to be including on the back of your book called the back matter or whatever, or on the inside sleeve, that needs to be enough to make the book understandable.
[00:14:02] And that needs to be enough for, you know, a person to start a basic design and then get some feedback along the way. requiring an artist to read your book cover to cover in order to effectively design artwork is not feasible and nobody is probably going to jump to do that. So I have seen some artwork by writers that is usually pretty laughable.
[00:14:26] the artwork tends to be pretty low Rez. It tends to be a patch work of stock images, which is fine. But, a graphic arts designer will often use stock images, but they know how to knit it all together and make it. Professional looking. Sometimes it can include original photography, which becomes really weird and confusing.
[00:14:51] If you are doing a fantasy book and your homemade cover arts is like your neighbor dressed up in a homemade wizards, robe beside a Creek in your backyard. And they're like chanting and casting a spell and it looks like someone snapped a polar or. it can get really weird and confusing. So my challenge to you is to find a sub genre.
[00:15:19] If you are in fantasy or whatever, find a genre or a sub genre that your book belongs in and See what the other cover arts of many books that belong in that genre looks like, see how they do things. just see and pick out some things that you like, pick out some things that you want to represent.
[00:15:39] and then finds an artist That can mimic that or do that, or has the style that is similar to that so that your book cover will be original, but still fit. So that is my take on book covers. If you are a writer, don't design your book cover. just don't do that.
[00:16:01] You have already written a big thing and you have gone through the revision process and whatever else, but I can tell you, it is not the same work to design art as it is to design. A story. It's not the same work. It requires a different set of skills. So cut yourself some slack and simply save up some money to hire somebody hire professional or get professional work done somehow.
[00:16:26] So that is it for today on cover arts. Join me next week. As we talk about the layout of your book on writing and the tiny house.
[00:16:38]
[00:16:38] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.