The birth of a book cover #AmWriting #Writerslife #BookCovers
It’s important to get a book cover just right – or as close to just right as possible. A cover can tell a reader in which genre the book falls. It can hint at what a book is about. It can pique a reader’s interest into buying the book. And, probably most importantly, it can totally turn off a reader or potential buyer. With this in mind, I struggle to make each book cover just right.
I’ve made some doozies of mistakes with covers in the past. Instead of listening to expert advice, I thought I knew better. Spoiler alert: I did not. So, when it came to developing a cover idea (I don’t actually design the cover itself) for Finders, Not Keepers, instead of just thinking of something that ‘fit’ with the story, I also took some time to research book covers and what would work best with the novel.
Although Finders, Not Keepers can be categorized as a cozy mystery, I didn’t want the cover to scream COZY MYSTERY as I didn’t want to limit the potential audience of the novel. Although Finders, Not Keepers also has some suspense in it, I decided not to go with suspenseful looking cover as this would be misleading to readers and the last thing I want to do is mislead potential readers with a book cover. Can you say one-star review?
Having decided on giving Finders, Not Keepers a cover typical for mystery genres, I started out by researching mystery novels on Amazon. Once I had a good idea of how those looked, I went on to spend days and days scrolling through possible pictures. I really struggled with finding something that fit with the novel and was mysterious as well. At some point, I had a list of more than twenty search items going. Everything from ‘mystery’ to ‘female friends’ to ‘diamond necklace’. I was all over the place!
That’s when I remembered the original title of the novel – The Diamond No One Wanted. I decided not to use this title as it hinted too much at cozy mystery. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t use the original title idea to come up with an idea for a cover! To make the title mysterious, I decided to show a woman hiding a diamond.
And that’s how the cover for Finders, Not Keepers was born. I’m hoping the title evokes questions like: Why is she hiding the diamond? Where did the diamond come from? And what does a diamond have to do with a murder?
As a former librarian, I like the old checkout card facsimile. Does the book have a library connection?
The protagonist is a high school librarian. I nearly named the series The Librarian Detectives.
The diamond necklace really does add to the cover.
I’ve only ever had covers made by my publisher’s artists, other than the cover I did for my perma-free story, which I just tried to make match my other covers. I wish I had the talent to make all of my covers from scratch for stories I’d self-publish if I could.
I wish I had the talent as well! It’s the hubby that actually makes the covers look good.
Ahh, you gave away your secret. 🙄In my opinion, selecting a title and the book cover are the two hardest projects when publishing a book. I’m still wondering if the title, cover or both are the problems for poor sales on my last book “Guilt – My Companion” I would value your opinion. HUGS
I’m certainly not an expert but I did take a quick look. WHen I look at the cover and excerpt, it sounds a bit of a cross between memoir and self-help (ie readers could learn from your growth) but when I look on amazon, the categories they have the book in don’t seem to fit. I quickly looked at the covers for the top 50 of those categories and they are completely different.
I do like the cover and I think it fits with the memoir/self-help category. Is that what you’re going for?
I would have to agree that the book is a memoir and I wrote it to help others that are going or went through similar tragic life events. It is a LGBT ‘coming out’ story. When I put it out, I didn’t want it limited to memoir/biography and I didn’t want it limited to LGBT readers. It’s more. It is a survival story with a positive ending. Amazon selected the categories, they were not my original. I don’t object to the categories other than I think they are hurting sales. I’m at a lost where to go now.Thanks for your input.
Good luck! You can always change the categories and see if it helps
Cover helps add to why does she have the diamond. Love it
*Blushes* Thanks!