Episode 32: Covers
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Hello, my beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of moth you want to be. Thank you for joining me today for the writers triangle podcast. And today I’m gonna be talking about all things book covers, I absolutely love book covers, and I’m going to be talking about them at various levels, like how the Big Five handle them, which are now the Big Four, how you can handle them, if you’re self publishing, and how medium presses and small presses handle them and talking about the artists perspective, the writers perspective and the publishers perspective, because I like to demystify everything having to do with publishing. And the reason that is, is that I believe that every book that succeeds, it’s every author success, every author gets to excuse me, every author gets to enjoy and that success because the more people who are interested, and reading books and thinking about books, and talking about books means that more books are being read. And if more books are being read, that means your book has a higher incidence or probability of being read. So I like to be really supportive of everyone really, and have everyone succeed. And I think there are enough eyes in the world and enough readers in the world for every kind of book, and every kind of author, even though I don’t publish every kind of book and every kind of author, because we’re a small press, and we can only do so many a year, I really am rooting for independent authors to succeed and small presses to succeed. Because that’s our lane, right? We’re small press. And the more small presses that succeed, the more visibility every small press will get because eyes will be looking at small presses and indie presses and wanting those types of books. So that makes me really excited the prospect of anything I say, helping anyone get from writing their book to finish book cover to publish, that really keeps me going and motivates me to do the podcast, if that makes sense. So looking at the book cover process, a lot of people, a lot of our authors have asked me When should I start thinking about the book cover. And I argue as soon as you start writing your book, think about the images that most are most powerful, and the themes and everything that’s in your book, as you’re writing it. And if you finished writing it, then remind yourself of if you had to take or imagine if you had to take a snapshot to represent your book, what would that snapshot look like? And to succeed in understanding what that snapshot will look like? I encourage authors who are questioning how to do a book cover to look at covers in their books genre, and see what the mainstay is see what the trends are and decide whether or not they want to be trendy. I argue that you can start at the place of no and find your Yes. For me, I don’t want any of our covers to be on trend, because that means they’ll go out of fashion. What I want our book covers to look like is the face of the story that they’re covering. What does that face look like? What are the elements that are central to your books theme? What are the images that come to mind when you think about your story and what you said what you told the readers? What images did you paint and create for them? That’s really the focus I sort of steer our authors towards. When looking at trends, it’s important to develop an eye Excuse me, have the sniffles today, and the allergies are bugging me to develop an eye as I was saying to develop an eye towards what is prefabricated cover versus what is An Illustrated cover versus what is an elemental cover. Those types of those are some of the covers that I know An Illustrated cover is completely drawn, completely created based off of the brief that you send the artist and the contextual or piece together sort of think of the different types of covers that we have. So looking at like not my raucous we sent the the things that we wanted on the cover to the artists and the artists put stock images together in a way that created an original new image, but didn’t make any of the image herself. The same with from the lighthouse. The artists took stock images, put them together and didn’t actually create any of the images herself. But then if you look at something like
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relatively normal secrets, those knots all illustrated and if you look at the next one Notice on our website, you can look at all of our covers, and all of the artists that we work with. They’re listed under talent, and they’re all fabulous to work with. You’ll see that that’s purely illustrated and very obviously illustrated. And then looking at the next witness, which is very different. All of these covers are very different from each other. That’s also an illustrated cover. Looking and getting familiar with what are the different types of covers the types of covers that use a compilation of stock photos, or the type of colors, covers that are completely drawn by an artist or their type of color covers that are stock or pre made covers? Those covers tend to be like, what pops in my mind is like a Harlequin romance. You know what’s going to be on on Harlequin romance cover, right? It’s going to be probably a man and a woman. And the woman might be running away or the man might be embraced or some sort of interaction between a male and female covered. Sorry, character. Thinking about it, do you want characters on your cover? Do you want words on your cover? Do you want what would best capture the feeling and vibe of your book. The reason that I stress that that it should capture the feeling and vibe of your book, even if it’s a premade covered, pre made covers are the best way to go. If you have a really tight budget, you can find really great creative pre made covers, and just takes typing and pre made cover book covers and really going through, you know, the different artists and different pre made covers are available and find something really great for yourself. And you can customize a premade cover a little bit, you can tweak it and have it look a little bit more original. And not something I think is worth talking to the artist or company and asking them, can I tweak this Can I change colors and seeing how much you can customize a premade cover, because they are going to save a lot of money. We don’t use pre made covers, because we’re lucky enough to have a little bit of a bigger budget than if I were self publishing my own book. And so within our budget, we’re able to fit in a completely customized cover, and a completely customized Illustrated cover or completely custom or someone designs the cover but uses stock images to create that design. For me, I look at when I’m setting the budget for covers, I didn’t just willy nilly set the budget to be open ended and whatever anybody wants, I looked at class of artists and what their cost was what the cost range was. And set it sort of in in the middle of that. And use, we use media priced artists, artists that are in the mid range and not at the high end, you can pay up to $10,000 for a cover. And that’s just so far out of our budget being honest, the big five will sometimes get one of those $10,000 covers, and not is a custom piece of art that’s created by a professional artist. And that’s not the book cover the art itself is not the book cover, they then have someone in house, put the book cover into one of the templates. We don’t have that kind of that kind of budget. And our artist that we work with put all of our art into the templates. Before I go into the technicality of book covers. I want to talk about the book cover process more and at greater length and the importance of it.
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So for me, I really think the cover is so important. Really, really, really important. And I didn’t always think this I started off thinking that covers don’t really matter. And the back blurb is way important way more important than the cover. And I’ve come to realize that no, that’s not the case. Not that the cover does actually impact the book, really, in a meaningful and deep way that sets the trajectory of the book. And I’m surprised by the fact that people judge a book by its color. I really honestly judge a book by its cover. We had one book that people were just drawn to the cover, and that’s why they they bought the book and the book is not my records. People are drawn to the cover. They didn’t read the back blurb, they didn’t read the content notes and they just dove right into that book. And they did not like the book The people who did that. And it was because the cover of the book is gorgeous. And it sets that it’s a family drama. But it doesn’t prepare you for the content nodes. And it doesn’t prepare you for the fact that it deals with a lot of trauma. I advise everybody to not judge a book solely by its cover to like, flip it over, read the back blurb. And please be sure to read the content notes, they’re there for a reason. A lot of people would get the book, read it, and then halfway through be like, What the heck, read the content notes, and then be like, Whoa, this is not what I signed up for it all. We’re very lucky that the majority of those people have finished the book. But the reviews were mixed because of that. And that was quite shocking to me. And that was really my first education on how people interact with the book’s cover. And it was the antithesis of how I process a book. For me, I don’t go based off cover, I go based off of what I’m in the mood to read. And I go to if I’m in a bookstore, I go to that section of books. If I’m shopping online, I go to that section of books, and then start from there. And I guess the second thing is the cover when I really sit down and think about it now really, and I look at covers and find a cover that’s interesting to me, or titles, I think titles more than covers. Yeah. I’m sitting here, like deeply thinking about my process. I mean, what do I do? Actually, this was part of my my education about covers is having a sit down and think What do I do and asking? And I’ll be honest, it was more so asking the team, what do they do? How do they shop for a book? How do they move through a bookstore? How do they move through a website? What do they search? How do they look to figure out how important is a cover? And then looking at what reviewers said, and having, we have a group of beta readers. And we do have a section for what do you think about the cover in their BETA readers and getting their feedback and really educating myself to understand so I could do right by our authors. And realizing that this was an area that I was really biased and had a very fixed opinion that everybody does it my way. And I was really surprised that people just walk into a bookstore and just roam around and look for a cover that grabs them. That’s strange to me, I would never shop that way. But my mood really, because I have dyslexia, my mood really affects my ability to read. And if I’m reading something I’m not in the mood to read my dyslexia is so harder to fight. It’s awful. It’s like, uphill both ways. In the snow, for reals for ILS is a misery making. So I don’t read when I’m having a really bad dyslexia day. And that’s usually if I’m tired, or grumpy, or just not in the mood to consume knowledge through written words. And so for me, I think my disability really shapes and colors, my relationship with books. And people who don’t have a reading disability are very different. And also age groups tend to be different.
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I think when I was younger, I would just read anything. If I was in the mood to read, I wouldn’t care. When I was 12. I might have mentioned this before I was a paging library. So I would just consume, like whatever. And I think being a page in the library really set the tone for me in terms of how to consume books, and that you can consume a lot of books in a short amount of time. And you can set your mind to Hey, today is going to be a science fiction reading day or today is going to be a horror reading day. And that really molded and shaped me. And I asked everybody what molded and shaped you as a reader and listened to their stories and understood that a lot of people do just go off the cover. They don’t go off of genre. They don’t go off of author they don’t call off of type of press, and they just walk through and say does this cover strike me? That’s going to be something so after sniffle again so sorry that I have allergies say I need water water. My apologies to everyone who has sensory issues if that’s just cringy for you. I try not to sniffle or drink water when I’m recording but today the pollen count is wild is just off the chain. We have on our street we’re really lucky. So I’m gonna digress for a minute here on our street. We’re really lucky in terms of the view. We have all of the flowers that bloom in Japan. So we have blooming flowers from usually around the end of March until mid May. And that’s beautiful to look at, but horrible on my sinuses and allergies. And I don’t take any allergy medication for it because the only medication that works is Benadryl. And it makes me loopy. And makes me really tired and a little makes the world a little bit fuzzy. And I try to stay focused and clear during the day when I’m working. So I can only take it at night. I know podcast for right. So back to my long ramble about covers, I think I’ve brought home the importance of your cover being something that connects your readers to the story and connects you to the cover and makes you feel good and proud of the cover. If you have a book cover that you’re proud of, and that you love, you’ll promote it more, you’ll be happy to show it off, you’ll want to show it off on our social media, you’ll want to if you’re doing advertising, share it with an advertiser, we have some authors who hire personal publicist, and you’ll be happy to give your publicist that as part of the materials for your book for promoting your book. What goes into, you know, things that rather what I meant to say things that go into a book cover really important because you have the front cover, the spine, and the back cover. And all of those are helpful in terms of promoting on social media. So you can promote the front cover as a cover reveal, you can use the spine as part of a tease for the cover. You can use snippets from the blurb as part of a tease for the cover, and get anywhere between 10 or 15 social media posts just from the cover construction, and communicating about the cover process. If you’re struggling for content, and we’re all content creators now, right? In this day and age of social media. If you’re struggling for new fresh content about your book, the cover process can really provide a lot of content for your book to talk about your book without talking about your book kind of thing. And give you exposure and get eyes on your book, get eyes on your account, and improve interactions on your account and get people following your account. That gives another layer of you know why a book covers important and really stresses the importance of imagery in today’s modern era of books. We use book sirens, to promote books to get those early reviews. And it’s so important with book sirens that we have an image that fits in their image. And if it doesn’t, if our cover doesn’t look good in their promotion, because you can use the URL to create a tweet. If it doesn’t look good in the promotion, then we have to have an image prepared and we prepare a Twitter image because we’re mostly on Twitter. We are also on Instagram, and we’re working to get more consistent with Instagram. I think I need to hire a social media person. We’re a little bit, I’m really consistent on Twitter, but I’m not as consistent on Instagram as I want to be. And that’s because I do our social media and I think I’m gonna try to rope someone else into doing it. Sorry, I’m so spaced today because my allergies a little bit distracting.
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Thinking about your cover as the face of your book and as your first introduction to the world and how people are going to meet your story and meet your characters. I think gives a way into making it as big as it should be. But as manageable as it actually is. Also looking at we have a cover art form that we send out to all of our authors to help them thinking, help them start thinking about the book and also help the artists that we work with figure out what the author is going for. And on that cover. We have like the title, the author’s name, what the story is about what the main characters are about, and what you want the aspects of your cover to be, as well as any reference covers. If you see a book and really love the cover, and you think you want something along those lines, unique but sort of in the same universe and style. We have the authors include that. Looking at different book cover art forms, and filling them out and practicing filling them out and thinking about what would this get me and what would the image look like? is really important. Sorry, I take another drink of water is really important and allows you to practice talking about your book as well. I think that the cover art process really prepares that elevator pitch that everyone talks about where you You have to describe your book. And I think it’s like 15 seconds is the rule. The cover art process, I believe helps authors do that. Because of the back blurb. The back blurb is about 250 words for a full novel. And for a novella, I think it’s about 150, to 200 words on the back of a novella. Writing that writing the content notes and writing a two sentence tagline for the book, really helps authors think about and talk about and summarize their book and practice talking to other people about their book, your cover artist, and your your editor is probably the first person you talk about your book with. And then the cover artists is the next person that you’re talking about your book with. If you’re self publishing, if you’re going through a press and publishing, you’re probably talking about your book a lot with the point person and the press. That camaraderie and that practice of talking about it and thinking about it. Where you’re not deeply in the story is really invaluable. It, it really gives you a means to promote your book and get comfortable with the process of promotion. And this promotion is just a process of talking about your book and telling people why they should read your book, talking and thinking about the cover and talking to thing about the cover art process, thinking about your content nodes, thinking about your back blurb, thinking about your tagline, thinking about your social media posts, helps get authors out of the story and out of the book and back into the real world. As I think about it. I love authors who become completely immersed in their story and completely immersed in our characters, and really personify their characters and really believe that their characters are these individual real beings that create their own story. That’s really exciting for me, when I hear that, you know, a character has changed the story, or the muse, your muse has decided that something needs to happen in the book. That to me is exciting, because it shows such a serious connection with the book and the characters and the story and an immersive experience. And for me, when I’m reading those immersive experiences, I find it’s easier for me to have an immersive experience with the book, which is awesome. And I absolutely live for that experience. I think most people are looking for that, right, they’re looking for a way to step away from the day to day reality and have some entertainment and get into a story. And is sort of like for better or worse when you’re thinking about dating someone. You look at their style, right their lifestyle, and you look at their face, and you look at how they’re they’re dressed. And I know we all want to say that personality matters. But really personal style matters. And if we’re completely honest with ourself, we do sort of think things about people based on the way that they look. And it doesn’t mean that we’ll roll them in or out solely based on that. But it’s the same with the cover.
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If the cover looks interesting, people are more likely to pick up the book and turn it over and read the blurb. The blurb is one of the most important things that you’ll write for your book, that back blurb. And that back blurb means to tell enough of the story to entice, but not so much that you’re giving spoilers, it can hint at things that can leave people towards things. But it’s not going to be an all inclusive statement that encompasses the beginning, middle and end of the book, I find really great blurbs from my perspective, cover about the first two thirds of the book, and then leave the last third of the book a mystery and something for the reader to complete, completely discover on their own and connect with on their own. Those are the three sections of the book. And something else to be I kind of touched on a minute ago that I wanted to dig in a little deeper was the difference between art and a book cover. And the difference between an art piece and the book cover are the aspects of a book cover that are different than the image. So you have the image which is a great piece of art. And then on top of that you put the book title and you put the author’s name and if it’s a publishing house, you put the publishers logo on the spine and back and on the back you have to do an ISBN and you have to think about do you want a wraparound piece of art? Or do you want three separate looks or do you want front spine and then the back to be different? and figure, Figure that out for yourself like, what do you want your book to look like when it’s on a shelf versus when it’s, you know, when someone puts it facedown in the book, as is splayed open? Or when somebody is just holding it and rotating it in their hands. Do you want that to be a cohesive story? Or do you want it to be sort of a piecemeal story? I know that trend right now is really wrapped around us, book covers. And that’s kind of our approach is we do wrap around book covers, where we have the front cover, spine and back cover all considered as one piece of art. And then have all of the components Put, put on it afterwards. When if you commission a piece of art, which you can do yourself, you know, go to an artist and get just a piece of art and then decide for yourself what you want the typesetting not the typesetting what you want the font to be for your title and what you want the font to be for your name and all of that and you put the lettering on it yourself and you put the back blurb on it yourself and your ISBN and all of those things. You have to keep in mind that every printing press has their own template that you have to put it into and Amazon has its own template as well. All of the different iterations of the book, paperback, hardback ebook, and audio book all have different dimensions and measurements. With the exception of the ebook you can really get away with using either your paperback cover or your hardback cover. The audiobook covered depends on what you negotiate with the narrator you may need to put the narrator’s name on the cover or you may not depending on your negotiation if you’re doing an audio book. But the templates are different based off of who’s printing your book, make sure that you understand how to take an image and put it into that template. And if you’re hiring a book cover artists, make sure they know how to work with the templates that you’re going to be using. If you’re doing just an Amazon book, make sure they know how to do the Amazon template. And if you’re doing just single printing press or you’re printing yourself, or you’re doing a short run, make sure that you have the right template. And that starts with having a typeset book because the size of the book does change the template a little bit. So knowing how many pages that your book is once it’s typeset is an important part of the book cover process. And making sure that you’re able to have something tight and satisfactory. It’s really important to us that all of our authors love their books. were first starting out we had
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one in particular, I’m not going to say which book cover but we did have a book cover where the author was not really engaged with the book cover process. And as a result, the author did not like the book. And as the book cover, rather, they liked their book, but they didn’t like the cover. And as a result, that author didn’t really promote their book, because they really didn’t enjoy putting their cover out. And that was really sad for me, I wish that they had said, Hey, I really don’t like this cover. And we could have worked to get a different cover. So that’s all I really have to say about book covers. I hope my wandering ramble was helpful. And I’m so sorry that I’ve been congested. This episode, I had no idea my congestion was bad. And so I started to record and today was the day I had to record so sorry and thank you for for bearing with me. I’m so touched and honored that y’all take the time to listen to my ramblings and musings on publishing. I really am passionate, honestly and truthfully passionate about demystifying publishing, I really do want every author to be successful, and reach all of their author goals, and exceed their wildest dreams when it comes to the publication process is so magical when a book is published to me, I just really enjoy it and I want everyone to get into it and have a great time and feel confident and know that their book will sell and know that they have a great cover or a great editing experience, whatever, whatever phase they’re at in the publishing process. I hope that it feels awesome and manageable and is this builds excitement right for for the actual launch. So that’s all I have to say today. I want to thank all my beautiful cinnabar moth for listening or any kind of moth you want to be and you can even be a butterfly if you want but I’m not right Carrie and I’m not trying to bite her rhyme. I know that right? Carey’s fans are called lambs but she’s also Mimi’s also obsessed with butterflies so that’s where that line came from someone asked me I thought I fill you guys in on that talk to you soon bye