How do you come up with a cover?
Finding the right cover for your book is probably the most difficult thing there is for writing. If you're lucky enough to hire someone to create one for you, half the battle is done. But you should still have an idea for what you want. Here's what I've been told by various cover artists...
First, you should know the exact genre of your story. The themes of the story as well. Is it dark fantasy for young adults or a cozy mystery for older adults? The two covers will be totally different. Once you have this in mind, you can begin the next phase, searching for a picture or design.
The people on the cover do not need to match the characters in your book. This one took a while to catch on, but the professionals have told me this so it must be true.
If you need help in deciding what will work for the genre, go to Amazon's top 100 in the genre the book will fit under. Now look at the covers that are similar to the feel and theme of your book. That should narrow it down even more. Of those covers, which fits with your audience? Of those books, which appeals to you the most? Using that cover design as a guide, you can now search for an ideal picture or combination of pictures for your cover.
You do not need to convey everything within the cover. Choose the main idea of your story.
There are loads of websites you can visit to learn to design your own covers, but if you are able to hire out it's probably better. When you do hire someone to design the cover, let them know what you're thinking about for the cover. A designer is more experienced so they will know how to get your idea to work. If it doesn't fit under the genre, they may come up with something similar that will work better. It is wise to get a couple different designs made out to choose from instead of having one and that's it.
https://miblart.com/blog/book-cover-design-ideas-checklist/ The entire website is loaded with useful information so check out the other pages on the site as well.
https://reedsy.com/ Check out the blogs and see what speaks to you.
canva.com is a good place to create ebook covers. If you know what you're doing in other software, you can use those ebook covers and create paperback with them. That's a totally different list of tips.
Once you have the cover art, choosing the font and colors is the next step. Again, you want to find something that fits the genre of the book. https://www.creativindie.com/300-fool-proof-fonts-to-use-for-your-book-cover-design-an-epic-list-of-best-fonts-per-genre/ this website is the best place to start for searching for the right font. The entire website is a great tool as well.
When using fonts, you don't want to use more than 3 different fonts. The trick is, you don't want to take away from the art on the cover and you don't want the art to be too busy. The job of the cover is to tell the reader what genre it is. At the same time, you want to give the reader a glimpse of what it's about. Time travel, aliens, a romantic comedy, winning the lottery? It will be the first thing the reader sees. If you did a great job, they will turn it over for the blurb. Now that's where the challenge really comes in lol.
If you are making a paperback...Think of the cover as a whole--the front, spine, and backside of the book. Do you want the art to wrap around? Some books have a wrap-around design, while others don't. What fonts you use on the front should also be used on spine and backcover. When writing the blurb, you want the font readable at a small size, so using something basic is probably better.
I hope you find these tips helpful. When it comes to design, I'm still learning but this was what I have learned. If you are putting your own covers together, it's a good idea to join cover design groups on facebook and get feedback from the other members before you settle with the final design. You can learn a lot from them. It's where I learned. You can also go to youtube and watch videos once you're ready to tackle design yourself. Tons of great videos there!
