Adventures in Making Book Covers

Hello everyone!

Today I had a lot of fun revisiting my very first published book Seeing Double. Unfortunately, it’s not doing as well as I’d hoped, so I went to Pinterest naturally for a solution. What I found there were many many suggestions to alter my book cover. In fact, it’s been proven that having a great book cover will get you more readers.

Why?

What happened to never judge a book by it’s cover?

Sadly, we all judge books by their covers which means if you don’t have a very intriguing fun cover you’re not going to get as many readers as you’d like.

I’ve decided to put this theory to the test. It’s time to fix my book cover!

When I first started writing my first book I had a working book cover. In fact, when I write, I typically have a preliminary working book cover with a working title to help keep me inspired. For Seeing Double this was more than true. I actually wrote the book around this first book cover. I just felt so inspired by the picture I used as the book cover, I formed a story around it.

Unfortunately, I never wrote down where I found the image, which means I cannot ask the owner for permission to use their image. That means I cannot use the image as my book cover. But it is one of my favorites, so I will share it now. And if you stick around, I have a vote at the end of this post, you can vote for this one and I will find a way to replicate it legally.

Without farther ado, here it is:

Now

This is what I have right now for my book cover.

I made this in a hurry because I wanted to publish my first book and I knew if I didn’t do it quickly I’d chicken out… again… So that meant I had to get it do fast. I enlisted the help of my best friend who is an amateur photographer. Since we were out of time, I decided to go with what she had.

Good thing so photographed our local waterfall, the inspiration for several of the scenes in the book. Since it features in the book, I decided the waterfall would make a perfect backdrop for the book cover.

Using Canva.com, I made this first book cover. I’m not entirely happy with it, but it was my first attempt two years ago. So give me a break!

Ok ok, so it’s not very interesting. Nor does it give you any clue to the story. It’s a pretty picture, but that’s it. And it definitely looks like an amateur made it.

Back to the drawing board I go!

The Process

Yay Pinterest! My best friend during dilemma’s like this.

I started researching the best way to make a new book cover that will help sales. I ended up finding this great tutorial on youtube on how to make you’re own book cover using Microsoft Word. I highly recommend you watch it if you’re thinking about making you’re own book covers while using word!

After watching the video I went on a hunt for stock images that would work great for Seeing Double. And that’s when the magic started!

This is the first version that I came up with.

Than my amazing, helpful boyfriend came home from work and made the comment that the font looked like I just gave up and slapped the only font I could find on there. *face palm*

But you know, he’s right. I settled with this first font after not feeling like any of the other fonts available fit the story. Yet again, my awesome boy helped me go through fonts yet again and we came up with this:

This seems so much better than my original book cover. But I am not done yet! I still have plans to meet with a good friend, a good artist, to talk about my book designs. Perhaps she will help me create an even better cover with original artwork from her! I can’t wait to see what our lunch date with create. And no worries, I shall let you know all about our shenanigans!

Now’s you’re time to help me out, which of my three book cover designs do you think is better? Why do you like the one you picked more than the others? Is there anything you’d do different? Any suggestions? I’d love to hear from you!

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