Your Book Cover (Part Two) the Book Marketing Element You Don’t Want to Skip - Special Design Discount
Countdown to Book Launch: #2 - the making of a book cover
My book with co-author Julie Murkette releases Sept 2023. When it comes to book marketing, I practice what I preach. It is April 2023, five months before pub date. Launch date diary posts document our pre-launch activities with resources and tasks for your use in your own book marketing.
Book Cover: Diary Entry #2, Part One of Two
Continued from the Part One where I detail why your book cover IS book marketing and what to make sure you will get from a hired book cover designer.
My co-author Julie and I, hired two designers to come up with ideas for our book cover. For less than $500 we had two designers coming up with ideas. We wanted to compare and contrast the ideas to make sure we were electing the perfect book cover design. Our plan was two get two designer’s ideas, share the cover with BETA readers and then decide on a final cover. Both designers were fantastic, affordable and easy to work with.
The first book cover designer was MiblART. The second was ILMC.
More book cover designer ideas can be found at this link, by Reedsy. Although I have not used Reedsy for book cover design, their “marketplace” seems well-vetted.
Design #1
MiBlART came to us with an eBook cover idea. To save money, we ordered the eBook only cover design choice. Remember, we were looking for different concepts. Before beginning the project, the MibLart folks had some questions for us - what the book was about, who we were trying to reach, etc. Here is the cover they came up with:
Pretty cool, right? MiblArt mentioned that they wanted to try Vector with this cover. We agreed to try it. It’s kinda trendy and certainly makes the point, right? “Seen and Sold” - binoculars, book, exchange of cash. I had mentioned the colors green and yellow - branding - to match the graphics that will be in the book. It certainly IS a professionally designed cover.
Design #2
We turned to the next book designer company, ILMC or I Love My Book Cover. (Stay tuned at the bottom of the post - the owner of ILMC has offered a special discount for my readers!)
I signed up for a book cover (print and eBook) to get another design cover concept idea. Again, ILMC chatted with me (through email) about what we were trying to accomplish with our cover. I shared our color scheme and some of the interior graphics. Here was ILMC’s first cover concept:
You can see where ILMC created a professionally designed cover with the elements of the graphics that I use in the book (and on substack posts). The yellow, green and gold is there as well as the “tear-off” note look.
The Opinion of Beta Readers
Julie and I sent both images to friends and colleagues (beta readers) who we thought would be interested in the book, were good with design, or who would simply care enough to give us an honest opinion.
Beta readers (or lookers in this case) liked the ILMC cover over the Miblart design, but weren’t complete sold on the ILMC cover.
Both designs are fantastic in professionalism but the ILMC design was closer to what the beta readers thought Get Your Book Seen and Sold IS - which is, in their words, a professional resource for writers. Beta readers felt that Get Your Book Seen and Sold is a Writer’s Book Marketing Guide, a special and treasured resource that they will keep on their shelves to remind them of their journey from author to - author and book marketer.
Enter Richard Dreyfus
So we were getting closer to what we wanted but couldn’t pull the trigger on the design. I felt a little like Richard Dryfus in Close Encounters of the Third Kind where he is obsessed with recreating an image in his head of a mountaintop put just can’t get it right - he tries drawing it, painting it and carving it in mashed potatoes until he finally decides to create it in mud in his living room. I was obsessed with creating the right book cover, too.
I decided to take a page out of Mr Dreyfus’s playbook and create what I thought would work. I spent fours hours on the following.
Finally, I felt that I had captured what we were trying to share with Get Your Book Seen and Sold. I emailed this above pic off to Julie… she loved it…. and then to ILMC who put our vision into reality.
Ta Dah! This is the book cover for Get Your Book Seen and Sold and we love it!
Summary for Book Cover Design
To create YOUR book cover, remember to enlist a few Beta readers “lookers” who will give you honest feedback on your design. The overwhelming comment that Julie and I got was that the book needs to be understood from the cover to be a professional resource - we wanted something fun, creative, a colorful, yes… but “professional resource” and “a treasured book on an author’s shelf” came through again and again. Finally, make sure that your cover Informs, Entertains, Entices, and Brands as we discussed in Part One of this article topic!
ILMC Special Discount for Subscribers
For Get Your Book Seen and Sold Substack subscribers, ILMC, I Love My Book Cover - has offered a special 25% off for any product or service they offer… use code CW25 at check out - this is not an affiliate link for me, simply a discount offer to extend to you!
Thanks for reading and subscribing and if you like one of the other covers that we didn’t pick, leave a comment and tell us why! If you are getting great ideas for my substack, please consider sharing it with other writers you know who want to write a book and learn about book marketing. I thank you!
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