Who says single-image covers have to be boring? ;-)

The NaNoWriMo 2014 season is nigh, and with it comes an increasing demand for book covers. I don't anticipate having enough time to work on design-related things in November, so I'm declaring the next few weeks to be a marathon of plotting and pre-made cover designing.

As always, I would love to hear your requests! General ideas are going to be easier to accommodate and sell given the nature of pre-made covers, so any color schemes, styles, or motifs you'd like to see would be particularly useful.

(For example: "A quirky cover featuring a swan" will have a greater chance of suiting someone's novel than "A quirky cover featuring a swan, a castle covered with ivy, a little red-haired girl standing in the window, and a tinsel-decorated spanish moss tree growing on its own little island in the water." The latter would be considered a custom cover, and my rates for those are listed here.) 

You're not locking yourself into a purchase by submitting a request, by the way. If you happen to like the resulting cover and want to purchase it for your novel, great! My main goal here is just to have a decent variety of pre-made covers available before NaNoWriMo arrives.

If you don't feel like commenting on this post, you can also leave a comment with your request(s) on facebook or tweet me @ataviststrilogy from the sidebar. I can't guarantee that I'll get to or be able to accommodate every single request, but I'll do my best!!!

When you're a creative type, pricing your work is hard. It's a guilt trip and a half. Can I really charge THAT much for something that only took me X amount of time?

Well...yes, you can.

Because you didn't develop those kind of skills overnight.

You practiced for hundreds, if not thousands, of hours.

You experienced more failures than successes.

You learned from each mistake.

You persevered.

And then you started doing good work consistently and efficiently.


You spent years becoming skilled at something so that others, in exchange for a reasonable amount of money, don't need to do the same.

If that's not valuable, I don't know what is.

---

So guess what? I'm going to practice what I preach. (Huzzah!)

Effective 6/19/14, my custom covers rates have increased. eBook covers now start at $94; paperbacks start at $144. If I've already started working on your cover and quoted you a price based on my old rates, don't worry—your project won't be affected by this change. For those on a tighter budget, I also now have pre-made eBook covers starting at $44.

Thank you guys so much for your continued business and support—I couldn't do this without you! :3

Let me just start off by saying that this has been a fun use of my morning. For the sake of this informative post and eyeballs everywhere, I dismantled one of my newest pre-made covers and made it lousy eight times over!

And when I say lousy, I mean that these covers are lousy in relation to my current skill level—I think I'd deserve to have my hands gnawed by marmots for trying to sell you such an oozing pile of incompetence. That said, we're all at different stages in our cover-designing endeavors, so what I might consider awful could be something you're fiercely proud of—and vice versa. The same goes for our novels, our hobbies, and just about everything else in life; perceptions of their worth tend to be relative. 

But regardless of your current skill level, here are some things that all of us can avoid when selecting, styling, and placing fonts for our covers.

Does the Edwardian Script for the title necessarily look bad? 

No. 

Is Edwardian Script—and Scriptina, for that matter—so overdone that a little piece of my soul dies every time I see it slapped on a pre-made romance cover?

Absolutely.

I've used Scriptina all of one time, and I did it because I truly believed it fit the aesthetic of the cover art. Front and center of every third cover on Amazon's 'Romance' page is not the time or the place for this font.

And that author name! I can't tell you how many covers I've seen where the title or author's name is inexplicably (and obviously!) stretched well beyond the font's intended height-to-width ratio. If you have to abuse the resize tool to this degree in order to somewhat get the result you want, you're better off using a different font that already possesses those qualities (i.e. tall and bold, wide and skinny, etc). Don't force what isn't there because I can already guarantee you that it will look like crap on a cracker.

You know where I see covers like these the most? On sites like Wattpad and FanFiction.net. These covers typically consist of a picture pulled from Google Images and a narrow, out-of-place handwriting font slapped over it. While I would never advise using images you don't own or have the license to use for anything beyond personal use, I really don't have much of a problem with people using these kinds of fonts for the covers of stories they've published for free online. 

It just doesn't sell books.

It's not compelling, it doesn't build intrigue, and it doesn't look professional.

First of all: DON'T COVER UP THE FOCAL POINT OF YOUR COVER ARTWORK. If you commit such an atrocity, legions of tiny mouse-men with little pointy sticks will commit to shanking your fingers until you move that crap out of the way. 

Also, don't even think about using Lucida Handwriting. Nothing screams self-published quite like Lucida Handwriting (or pretty much any other Microsoft Word-bundled font, for that matter).

The clipart is also unnecessary and should not be the focal point of this cover. Generic accents and dingbats should be used to enhance already kickin' cover art—they're not main attraction material.

Like Scriptina and Lucida Handwriting, Lucida Blackletter is yet another overused and easily recognizable font I'd recommend avoiding.

That aside, the main problem with this particular version of the cover is that the text overwhelms the artwork. There are too many fonts and textures going on (not to mention the stretched author text) as well as a lack of balance between the design elements. While you don't want your text to be too small, your text also shouldn't be unnaturally contorted for the sake of filling empty space.

The title font and execution is boring. The font uses lacks any "X" factor and tells us nothing about the story; if anything, all it does it detract from the artwork. The presentation of the author name's is doubly offensive because

a. it's Scriptina and

b. has large and unnecessary drop shadow/beveling.

I cannot emphasize this enough: use drop shadows and beveling sparingly. I recommend only to use drop shadows for increasing readability if absolutely needed; and even then, use the least amount and at the lowest opacity possible to get the job done. Beveling can add a nice touch to an already polished cover, but it's really hit or miss. (If it helps, I've found that serif fonts look best with modest beveling when the cover art is already relatively simple.)

Here we've got Lucida Blackletter, excessive drop shadow, stretched text, and...why, there's even a white glow around the letters!

Text glow is something I try to avoid. It can look really cool when done well, but it's a fine line to balance. If you're going to use text glow, fight the urge to use it in tandem with drop shadow and beveling. It's overkill.

I can't tell you how many covers I've seen that have the strangest font textures. You don't need your title to resemble a frothing hairy merman in order to grab people's attention—in fact, I'd argue there's more beauty to be found in simplicity. If you must have a texture, don't use any additional drop shadow, beveling, or text glow and be sure to consider whether or not the texture actually adds value to your cover's appearance or if it's just something you thought would look cool in theory.

Similarly, try to limit the number of fonts used on your cover. One or two is ideal; three is acceptable depending on how the fonts interact with the cover artwork and each other. If you haven't designed many covers before, limit yourself to two fonts until you've had enough time to throughly test which combinations do and don't work for you!

Comic Sans and Papyrus are the butt of many designer's jokes. I entreat you: don't go there. They're laughed upon for good reason, and the last thing you want is for people to deride the everlovin' hell out of your work just because you made an unfortunate design faux pas.

Also note that the size and placement of the title is neither eye-catching or in balance with the rest of the cover. While I'm all for simplicity, this isn't right kind of simple.

Simple doesn't mean lazy.

Simple means an uncluttered design that's polished to the point of looking effortless—even though it wasn't.

Before we get to the cover as I originally designed it, I should mention that the cover art is actually a combination of these two stock images:

(If you read my "Making of" posts, you've seen me stress the importance of taking your stock images to the next level. Anyone can license the same stock image you chose for your cover—it's up to you or your designer to make it unique!)

So here's what I consider to be a solid cover. I can't claim that this is the absolute/definitive "right" way to have done this cover because honestly, there is no "right" way. The possibilities are truly endless, and this is just but one interpretation pulled from an infinite, sometimes comic-sans plagued sea of potential.


(BUT BEFORE YOU SCROLL ANY FURTHER: do you hate the color pink? If even the word makes your eye twitch, you might want to click here for an alternate version.)

(This cover is currently available for purchase on kmwritingdesign.com and Etsy.
 If you don't like the colors, don't worry; I can change 'em.  As always, it's first come, first served!)

1. Use fonts with purpose. Look at the covers of books in your genre and take notice of the font's type (serif or sans serif) and function on the cover. Is the title understated? Right up in your face? Is it a solid color? Is it transparent? Is it imposing or is it inviting? Lowercase serif fonts are great for creating a refined, poised look for literary and non-fiction covers, while large uppercase serif fonts draw emphasis to the urgency of action-driven works of fiction.

2. Strike a balance between your text elements and your cover art. Don't place text over the main focal point of your art; conversely, don't make your text too small for fear of covering even the least important of areas.

3. Don't over-design. What I was driving at with this post is to lay off of the drop shadows and bevels and textures—if you're just starting out in cover design, they'll probably do you more harm than good. Do your best to master the basics before introducing those kinds of novelties. You'll be glad you did!

4. Be mindful of color. Choose font colors that are both readable and that reflect the emotional setting of your novel. If you're designing a cover for a gothic novel, chances are that pink and purple aren't representative of the story to come; similarly, a black cover with red and white text is too dark and brooding for an upbeat chick-lit read.

5.  Don't let your personal preferences for colors and fonts dictate your choices. I don't care how much you love orange and the font "Cracked"—use whatever best represents the story tucked between your cover's virtual (or physical) confides. Because after all...

It's not about you.

It's about conveying the contents and core values of your book to potential readers in a single glance.

By the way, did I mention that you can pay me to handle all of this cover-making insanity for you?

Oh, man. I finished over a dozen covers last week—that means I'm set for at least three month's worth of these posts. Because my volume of output has increased that substantially, I might start featuring 2-3 covers per week so that you won't see stuff I did in May only just showing up here in September.

Here are two covers that are currently available for sale on kmwritingdesign.com and Etsy. (I decided to start selling on Etsy to gain more exposure; of course, the whole "one-author-per-cover" thing hasn't—and will never— change. Once a design is sold on one site or the other, it's GONE!)

The Secret Life was one of those labor-intensive covers that didn't completely 'click' until the last minute. The version I posted it to my writer's group for feedback had the larger set of poppies coming straight up from behind the title. There were many suggestions thrown around, but the one that worked out was to move them to the side (as seen above). I may or may not have died a little inside from my lapse in judgement, but hell...people don't always nail these things on the first try, right? ...Right? 

Please tell me I'm right. 

First of all, I LOVE that those aren't even her eyes. I don't know what led me to think that I could get away with such trickery, but for a freakalicious cover like this...well, I'd say it works. Unlike The Secret Life, this one fell into place like

...which was, surprisingly, actually the case with the majority of the covers from this last batch. Like with all other things that require practice, the ability to visualize and then pretty accurately realize a specific design does in fact develop over time! (This totally contradicts what I blathered on about in last week's post, of course.)

*raises glass, takes sip*


Until next time, here's a preview of more Making of Monday covers to come!

Available for sale on kmwritingdesign.com.

I had a few false starts with this cover. I was going for something simplistic, but a few underwhelming concepts convinced me to go in a whole different direction with it. That's the thing about design—sometimes you think you know exactly what to do, but the truth is that until you put the design down and look at it in real life, you don't know jack shit about how it's actually going to turn out.

At a certain point, so much of any given design comes down to trial, error, and a few happy accidents. ;-)

This is the first Making of Monday that features one of the pre-made covers for sale on Kat Mellon Writing & Design. After a long period of doing nothing but illustrated covers, having something like this to work on sure was nice!

As you can see, I'm pretty thorough with editing my stock images. Because standard stock images are so accessible and non-exclusive, it's important that you give your images a unique twist—and, in some cases, alter the original image beyond recognition—to avoid one day stumbling across a cover that looks pretty damn close to yours.

So tell me—of the two versions, which do you prefer and why?