Book Cover Design SECRETS: How to Make a Book Cover That SELLS

One of the biggest hurdles new writers face is coming up with a great book cover design for their first book. Whether you just need an ebook cover or paperback, there are some things to know before you try book cover design in Photoshop, or worse, Canva. It's especially tricky for indie authors and self publishing authors who want to save money while still getting a quality design. But designing book covers is not as straightforward as it may seem. So do you need a professional book cover design? Let's talk about it on Authortube. :)

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[igamergirl]

I was just listening to a Writing Excuses episode on this! They had a marketing guy on and talked about covers and how it's really just there to get people to look at your book for more than ten seconds. Apparently in traditional publishing, even if the cover isn't a one to one about the story, if it communicates that it's within a certain genre and looks attractive, then as long as it catches readers attention, they could really care less if it's accurate. As a librarian I get this idea even more, as I see some very middling covers from indie or self-published authors as well as covers that feel out of sync with books but look nice.

[emmaleighb]

Loved the video! At this point, it's definitely going to be a long time before I actually need to worry about cover design, but I'll keep all this in mind when I eventually get there. Out of curiosity, what eventually made you realize you needed to change the cover for The Light Thief?

[thejaguar]

Fantastic video! Niether of the two books I'm working on are anywhere close to needing a cover design, but as someone who's never published anything I've always been curious about what working with a designer is like. Hearing about your process with the second Light Thief cover was a great insight.

Also, wow, an entire chapter evaluation for free? That's generous! I may take you up on that offer. Or possibly not. Depends if finish something I feel like sharing within the next week. I did have three thoroughly edited chapters in one of my books that I had previously considered "beta reader ready", but I'm making changes to both one of the characters and to the order of events because of some recent ideas to improve the flow of the few chapters, so I'm now in the process of rewriting them with said new changes

[Hxarh]

🌽 Hi David. YouTube recently recommend your channel, and I'm so happy it did. I think your advice is great. It's self evident that you know a thing or two about this industry.

I'd absolutely love to see what you think of the fist chapter of my MG fantasy. (And like another commenter said. That is very generous of you to offer. Thank you) 😁 🌽 Corn

[myriahwebb]

I'll add that when you're showing your cover to someone who will read your book, make sure it's someone OTHER than family or close friends.😅 I've made that mistake, and have found that more often than not, they're the people who will let their pride over the fact you're publishing something speak louder than any constructive criticism. In the long run, being showered with nothing but positive feedback is crippling for growth. You're better off getting feedback from someone who doesn't know you well enough to let personal bias get in the way of their advice.