Ep. 164 - Covers: Good and Not So Good

Covers are important. Both on beds and books. On books they are used to judge the entire content of the book. Imagine strolling through a bookstore where all the books have the same dull borwn and white covers. Only the titles and authors are different. How could we choose a book? The people who make book covers are talented creative people. Their talent and creativity, however, come at a price that first time self-publishers may not be able to afford. How do first time self-publishers (which used to be called vanity publishing) come up with covers?

Like me, they do it themselves. Like many self-creating book cover people, I have neither the creativity nor the talent to produce a good cover for my books. Nor the cash to pay a competent book cover designer. If I get the money to pay for a good designer (some designers get up to and maybe more than $2,000 a cover.), I will be more than willing to pay for a good cover.

On the Authority Self Publishing podcast they mention that authors should find a book cover designer who is familiar with the author’s genre. I realize you don’t want a romance novel cover on a murder mystery novel or a fantasy cover on a technical manual. But what if your genre is less specific. I’m talking about Literary Fiction, whatever that means. From Nanowrimo discussions, I can assume that Literary Fiction means not being in a specific genre that is easily identifiable such as fantasy or romance, mystery, thriller, or western. Or even historical fiction. The Great Gatsby? What’s the genre for that little tome? What about Moby Dick or Infinite Jest or House of Leaves?

I’m definitely not comparing myself to any of those authors but I do worry about what genre I belong to, if I belong to one. And if I don’t belong to a genre or sub-genre, how can I explain to the book cover designer what I need? Does the designer have to read the book? What if the designer doesn’t like my style? Or can’t read English?

Despite reading in all the book cover designer websites, such as The Book Designer, all of which say the first and biggest mistake any self-publishing author can make is to make their own covers, I did. Here are two.

The name of the novel is

This Giant Frothy Thing: Love and Terror in Tokyo.

I have two questions for you.

• Which cover do you prefer, even if you don’t know the content?
• What does each cover say about the content of the novel