Book Covers that Sell

Everyone is familiar with with the old adage, "Don't judge a book by its cover," yet most people do it anyway. We can't help it.  It's human nature.

Therefore, if you're a self-published author and you want to sell your book, you must have a good, effective cover.  It is the first point of contact that readers have with your work.

What makes an effective book cover?

• The cover must look professional.  If it looks sloppily put together or "homemade," readers will assume that the content is similar.  
• The cover must fit its genre, but the same time, it must stand out from the crowd.  This is one of the trickiest aspects. Wanting your book to look like other big sellers in your genre is natural, but nobody ever became truly successful by imitating other people. Your book cover should fit the genre but be as original as possible so that it attracts attention and readers want to click on it to find out more.
• The cover must not be too "busy" or detailed. Many authors make the mistake of trying to tell the entire story with the book cover. If you try to do that, you'll end up with nothing but a confusing mess. The "less is more" rule definitely applies to book cover design. A similar mistake is wanting any people shown on the cover to look exactly like the characters in your novel. This is not important - your book cover's main job is to attract attention and provide readers with a "flavor" of your book.
• The cover must look good, with the title legible, at larger thumbnail sizes (about 80x120 pixels on Amazon, for example).  This is crucial. If it merely looks like an indistinct smudge, readers are very likely to pass it over.

Of course, effective book cover design is part art and part craft. At the end of the day, you have to use your instincts and go with what you think will best sell your book, and you will often end up testing several covers before you find the one that works best.

How can you have your cover designed? Although its possible to do it yourself, unless you have some experience in book cover design, what you'll end up with will probably look amateurish, even though it may not look that way to yourself.  Therefore, I would recommend hiring a professional designer.

I offer this service to other authors by working with the same graphic designer who creates my own covers, and my rates are competitive.  If you're interested, please contact me at mike (at) mikewellsbooks.com and tell me about your book.

Why I Will Never Change the Cover of Wild Child

Although many readers love the cover illustration of my young adult thriller, Wild Child (paperback edition), it is occasionally criticized, and there is a certain pattern in the comments.   “Looks amateurish”, “Not polished” and “Unprofessional” are a few examples.

Well, there's a reason that the cover may appear appear amateurish, unpolished, and unprofessional to some people.  It was created by a 17 year old art student in Atlanta, the winner of a city-wide student art contest I held in 1997 for the best cover illustration for the book.  His name is Seron Fuller, and he is an phenomenal artist.

Over 150 students entered the contest.  No guidance whatsoever was given other than to read the book and come up with the design that they believe best depicted the story and characters.  There were lots of interesting designs, but when I saw Seron’s illustration, I was awestruck.  He chose to depict what I consider the perfect moment in the story, when Briana shows Kyle the magical green water.  The expressions on their faces, and their body language, it says it all!  Briana:   euphoric, hyper, and slightly out of control. And Kyle:  bewildered, concerned and uncertain, as if thinking, “What am I going to do with this girl?”

Before I go on, I want to emphasize that the readers who have criticized the cover design had no idea that it was done by an art student, or that I’d even held such a contest.  I know that these well-meaning readers have only had my best interest at heart—most raved about the story and the writing.  They only want to see Wild Child get into the hands of even more readers, believing that a more professional-looking cover would help make that happen.  And they may well be right.

But there are several reasons I will never change the cover design of Wild Child.   

First, a key part of art contest prize was that the winning illustration would be used as the paperback book cover forever.  Not just for the first six months, or until the second paperback edition was published, or until I got tired of the design, but forever. To change the cover now would be going back on my word, and I would never do that.

Second, my books are like my children, and I think most other authors feel the same way.  If you’ve read The Wild Publication Story, you know that I threw 3,000 paperback copies of this little baby in the trash can—every copy I had—before the poor thing could even walk!  Miraculously, she was able to crawl out of  that rubbish bin all by herself and make her way into schools, to help teach young people English, and into the hands of a dozen Amazon resellers, to help those people make a living.  To change the cover now would be like telling my 16 year old daughter, “Honey, you’ve done absolutely amazing things up to this point, but some people think you’re ugly so we’re going to give you plastic surgery.”

Whenever I’ve been tempted to have a new cover designed for the paperback, I always remind myself that it was Seron’s cover that was on all those copies that found their way out of the trash can, and not another.   This may sound silly to some people, but I believe there is a certain magic in his cover illustration, just as there seems to be in the story itself, and that this magic comes across to readers, at least on the paperback edition that you can hold in your hands.

Seron Fuller's Self-portrait

But there’s a far more important reason that I would never change the cover.  When Seron Fuller won the contest and I presented him with his $250 check, I asked him what his future plans were.  He answered, very modestly, “I want to be an illustrator at a Hollywood movie studio.”  I thought this was very ambitious, but on the other hand, with his amazing talent and quiet determination, I did not think that goal was beyond his reach.  I told him so, and I encouraged him to go for it.

Today, 14 years later, Seron Fuller works in as an illustrator in Hollywood, at Paramount Pictures.

Just knowing that his winning the Wild Child cover illustration might have played some small role in his journey to achieve his dreams is worth more to me than any amount of money I could every make from selling mere books.

Thank you, Seron, for being part of the Wild Child magic!