As a self-published author, marketing your book is a critical piece of the puzzle to your success. Do you know how book cover design influences your sales? If you want to end up on the best-seller list, your cover design is a critical consideration worth exploring.
Factors like using a DIY book cover design or choosing a professional to handle the job make a massive difference in sales and your success. Making just one mistake in your cover design could make the difference between a prospective reader picking your book off the shelf at the bookstore or adding it to their checkout at an online retailer.
We curated this list of 7 common book cover design mistakes to avoid. Keep them in mind when you finish your manuscript. They’re as important as the quality of your work when it comes to self-publishing success.
Mistake #1 – Producing a DIY Cover
Sometimes a DIY book cover design works out. Most of the time, it doesn’t. IT’s the first mistake on our list for a reason, because so many authors make this mistake.
We get it, you’re strapped for cash, and you see your target audience leaning on the quality of your work, not the over design as the deciding factor in choosing your book over others on the shelf.
The reality is it’s the other way around. We’re visual creatures, and we’re more likely to base our purchase decision on the cover, rather than the contents. A DIY cover could end up saving you money on your publishing expenses, but it could cost you thousands in lost revenue.
Mistake #2 – Bland, Boring, Uninspiring Design
Your cover needs vibrancy and contrast to stand out to the protestive reader. You’ll blend the right visual representing your genre, compelling typography, and well-organized positioning to stand a chance at attracting prospective readers.
A boring and bland design drowns your book cover, diminishing its impact with your audience. An inspiring design sets the tone of what the reader can expect from your work.
It’s especially important in the urban fantasy, science fiction, and YA genres where the right imagery and cover design can mean the difference between sales success and stagnation.
Mistake #3 – Overusing Fonts on the Cover
The guidelines for effective cover design suggest two contrasting fonts are the best choice for your cover typography. On rare occasions, you can consider adding a third, but it’s not preferrable.
If you decide to go the route of using a third font, use it as supporting text or a tagline, not the core message. In most cases, you can use a single font and change its thickness or weight between regular, bold, and italic.
Mistake #4 – The Title Doesn’t Look Good in a Thumbnail
Today, more people buy their books online than they do in bookstores. The age of digital shopping gave self-published authors the ability to reach a wider audience and generate more sales.
While that’s great, it’s not going to help if your cover design isn’t legible in thumbnail format on online platforms like Amazon.
You might have an attractive cover design with a captivating title, but it needs to work in thumbnail format as well as it does when the prospective reader is holding a physical copy in their hands. The authors name and title should be legible in thumbnail format.
Mistake #5 – Overusing Visual Elements and Text
Don’t clutter the cover. Overusing visual elements is confusing to the reader and challenging to process. It’s easy for designers or authors to lose hierarchy and structure when planning their cover design.
The cover doesn’t need to feature all the elements of the story – keep it simple, silly. Placing emphasis on conveying the right genre and the feel of your story is key and more important than displaying the intricate details of scenes.
The covers purpose is to intrigue the prospective reader into buying the story, not spoiling it. For abstract covers, choose a minimalistic design featuring a single visual and matching text.
Mistake #6 – Using a Low-Quality Image
Drawing the prospective readers attention with your book cover design requires a high-quality image. Using small, grainy, low-quality images that don’t work in expanding or condensing it is an amateur mistake.
It creates an impression that the author didn’t invest effort or thought into selecting the image, even though that might not be the case. Images that are old and poorly scanned won’t work because they get pixelated. Nothing screams DIY cover more than a pixilated image.
Mistake #7 – Using a Copyright-Protected Images
Using a copyright-protected image for your cover could land you in court, costing you more in legal fees and settlement costs than you make on book sales. For instance, using images of landmarks like the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris are a no go, or using an image of a Mercedes is also a bad idea because the Mercedes-Benz logo is copyrighted.
Even when searching stock images for your cover, you need to exclude options for editorial images. These are fine for editorial use, but forbidden in commercial cover design. Don’t simply log onto Pixel Bay or Google and choose the high-resolution image you want, you could land is serious hot water for your transgression.
The only images suiting use for commercial book cover design are “creative commons.” Some images might need attribution while others won’t. There are different licensing types with images from the creative commons to consider.
Some stock photos might look great, but they’re free for anyone to use. So, you might end up choosing an image that’s frequently used by other people for different projects, diluting its creative value and impact with the prospective reader.
Choose your image from professional stock photo sites where you pay for the license. It might cost you some money, but you’ll have a better chance of securing an original image.
Wrapping Up – Remember to Avoid Subjectivity
Subjectivity in book cover design occurs when the author’s personal preferences get in the way of the impact of the cover with the prospective reader.
Instead of designing a cover to genre requirements, the author may decide on a specific visual element or color scheme that doesn’t fit with genre or presents a poor design choice. Don’t get too attached to any specific design, go with what the pros suggest.
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