Choosing The Right Book Graphic For Its Cover

People say, don’t judge a book by its cover but authors know the truth. Covers can make or break their books. A cover (and title) is what makes first contact with readers.

For readers, a book’s front surface is its story’s face and eyes. The graphic offers readers clues about what’s behind it. Readers start digesting a book from the cover.

Yes, a book’s cover really matters. If it’s the wrong graphic, the right reader won’t find it, and the wrong reader will be sadly disappointed. This is when bad reviews are written.

Don’t be mistaken. A good graphic (and title) won’t guarantee a book’s success, but it does give it a chance to be seen. It must first be taken off the shelf to be in the game. Even if it’s denied and put back on the shelf, it’s better to have been discovered and rejected than to have been overlooked.

My Experience

I chose a black background for my book’s cover because it made a statement of ominousness. And then the cover graphic was laid over to tell part of the story. If I made it a pink cover covered with love hearts, it’d say the wrong thing to the wrong readers. I didn’t want that. Honesty is the best policy when it comes to designing and choosing the right graphic for any book — SEETHINGS is a thriller-styled novel.

It sounded like a simple process (and easy now that it’s done), but my decisions didn’t come quickly — and black wasn’t my first choice either. It wasn’t even my second or fifth. It took time to experiment with many wrong backgrounds and image overlays (titles too) to find out what worked. The earlier versions were white, cream, and beige. Getting it to go towards a dark theme took time to figure out.

Mock Ups

It’s hard to believe, but here’s the earliest scratch-out idea that began the book graphic process:

Although naive, the first mock-up was something imagined shortly after completing the third draft. It stayed with me until I got closer to publishing it:

A picture of a teddy that’s holding a SIM card — a symbol of the novel’s story. It shows the toy bear with a bracelet hanging from its wrist. From the bracelet hangs a small charm — a SIM card from a phone. It’s worlds away from the endgame cover, but this was the starting image of what became a long process of cover failures.

Although the link to that part of the story is evident to anyone who’s read the book, this image sends the wrong signal to those who haven’t. A cutesy cover like this looks child-friendly. Trust me when I say that the content that follows it isn’t. (Some adults would struggle with it.)

This is why it’s important to print these ideas out, hold them in your hands for a while, and let time mature them into a lifelike representation of how they sit in real time and space.

Being Adaptable

Several attempts were made to work the teddy bear into the scene, but none satisfied. I canned the teddy idea altogether and switched to another key element of the narrative — the storm!

It shows a nighttime scene with trees, grass, and a lightning bolt zigzagging through the foliage. The image said much about the book, but it proved difficult to use. It was messy, especially when placing a title over the bright parts (notice the letter ‘N’ vanishing). I tried shifting the graphic, blocking out parts, adding drop shadows, etc., but when I did, I lost key parts of the lightning. I moved on.

After doing titling research with some beta-readers, using a simple single-shot layout, I became hooked on the idea of using a simplified version of lightning (one bolt, more sky). It felt right — without the trees and grass, the abundance of dark space around the bolt gave me the flexibility to fit words anywhere. The trick was finding the right lightning-bolt shape (the one I used in the mock-ups was low-res and not mine). I had a few of my own, but none worked. I went back to designing an entirely new graphic.

It’s a long leap, isn’t it?

The storm component is still there, but it shares space with other important elements of the story.

Adult Themes

The story isn’t just about rain, lightning bolts, teddy bears, SIM cards and bracelets. The greater narrative is about sex, murder, intimacy and deception.

I found some old photographic material in my archive library (I used to be a pro-photographer) and placed an image of a woman’s chest on the screen. This one made better sense. I digitally added (a necklace) a crucifix to the neck (another key symbol of the story) and coloured it red. It worked, but there was one element still left to go. I wanted that storm. I opted for a single raindrop. The evolution of the cover was complete.

Nine years after I sat down to write SEETHINGS, this cover appeared on the shelves.

People scroll through online book catalogues and will stop when something catches their eye. If they are into Thrillers and Dark Fiction of any kind, this cover (and title) should stand out and get them to do just that. That’s what I call the book reaching first base. I truly hope my book gets its chance to play the game right and be found by someone special like you!

–Michael (Dark fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)