Covers That Wow
Choosing the right art for a book cover is about as
important as naming your firstborn. It dictates not only the flavor of the
story, but genre, audience, and author brand.
If you have a good grasp of design (and Photoshop), the rest
is intuition and guts. You work out the nuts and bolts of a design with your
head, but to give a cover life, it requires the je ne sais quoi of
your heart.
Stock art license:
Boring stuff first. Scope out all the
various stock photo banks. There are a lot of them. Prices are pretty average
between them. But where you really have to pay attention is the licensing
agreement. Read it carefully. Then read it three or four more times. If you
still don’t understand it, write to the company and ask for an explanation.
The reason you want to understand the agreement is because
it will dictate how you can use the art license. Remember, you are buying the license
to use the art, not the art itself.
Genre: No matter what you write, choose art that suggests your genre. It doesn’t have to
hit you over the head. In most cases, subtle is stronger. But if it’s horror,
you want the reader to immediately perceive the horror element. The same goes
for romance, SF, fantasy, mysteries, or cross-genre.
Models: Choose models not because you find them
beautiful, but for the stories their expressions and body language tell. That
is my secret for choosing the models I use. Beautiful people are a dime a
dozen. Choose models that express emotion, attitude, or story.
Some authors don’t use people on their covers. Some like the
headless models. There are reasons for every variation. I prefer to use people on
my covers because psychologically, it makes readers feel more connected. I
learned this when I used to design advertising. Ads with people always had a
better response than those without.
Again, everything is subject to the needs of the individual
book. There is no right or wrong—just options.
Background: Funny thing about backgrounds. Sometimes the
most abstract imagery is all you need to give the suggestion of genre. A gorgeous sky is the easiest way to create drama.
But factory interiors are great for murder mysteries and apocalyptic fiction.
And architectural or geometric designs are nice backdrops for science fiction
and steam punk.
Chances are good you won’t need much of the background since
your model (or iconic focal point) will dominate the page.
The Extras: Don’t include a catalog of visual clues that
will mean nothing to the reader if he hasn’t yet read the book. The cover is an
emotional catalyst. It should intrigue and make us curious. A couple of
elements are cool. Too many chotchkies on a cover end up looking like old Aunt
Myra’s bedroom.
Branding: This is a post all to itself, but if you want
your cover to pull double duty, use elements consistently within a series. You
want readers to see a pattern between your books within a series.
Fonts: Another topic for a whole post. The simple
answer is don’t use a lot of different typefaces on one page. And unless the
title is the dominant feature on the cover (awesomely effective and minimal) go
easy with the special effects.
Melding the elements:
Think Vulcan mind meld + art. This is
where your Photoshop expertise does the heavy lifting. The difference between a
professional-looking cover and an amateur one is the ability to blend and marry
the various elements into one cohesive unit.
There’s more to a cover than slapping together two pictures
and a title. Many of my covers have twenty or more layers of special effects.
Special effects can be anything from drop shadows, fog, flares, glow effects,
transparencies, blurs, ghosting, or duplication to give it depth and texture. There
are dozens of other little things to give covers the illusion of dimensionality
too. Each cover is different. The real art is knowing when to use what.
Do you have any
questions about how to use art for covers? I’m here to help.
Bio:
Maria Zannini used to save the world from bad
advertising but now she designs book covers. A graphic artist for well over 30
years, she’s been designing layouts before Photoshop and digital font libraries
were invented. (We used India ink and
rulers back then.) Horrors!
Need a cover designed? Visit Book Cover Diva.
Her latest release is Mistress
of the Stone, from Samhain Publishing.
