Tag: book covers

How Important Is a Book Cover?
Books · My Thoughts · Ranching

How Important Is a Book Cover?

Larada Horner-MillerLeave a comment
Three Southwest Book Covers

A book cover? Important? I’ve often heard, “Don’t judge a book by its cover!” Today authors know that a cover can determine the fate of a book. Let’s look at the first three book covers I created.

IngramSpark, a leading self-publishing company, suggests 7 Book Cover Design Tips

  1. Give readers a sneak peek of what’s to come.
  2. Let the reader know the book’s genre.
  3. Introduce your protagonist.
  4. Set the right tone.
  5. Follow the rules of design in a way that makes sense for your genre.
  6. Pay attention to the details.
  7. Have a distinct style.

https://www.ingramspark.com/blog/book-cover-design-basics

So much goes into the design of a a successful book cover, and I had no idea when I first started this journey. I created what I like, not thinking about what the reader liked.

My First 3 Book Covers

For my first three books, I created the covers.

This Tumbleweed Landed 2014

This Tumbleweed Landed Book Cover

This being my first book, I created the cover on Amazon’s createspace.com and thought it was beautiful. Excited with my first book, I loved everything about it.

In 2014, Lin and I spent a memorable spring afternoon on the dirt road going out to our ranch, trying to photograph a tumbleweed. The piercing cold spring wind had blown them around recently and lodged them into the fence posts. Yes, there were lots, and we took lots of pictures. I will never forget going through those photos and the awe I felt of the pictures he took, and then this one came up and I knew it was perfect. It had a tumbleweed locked into the barbed wire with an old wooden fence post and in the background Mesa de Maya, a landmark noted by Spanish invaders on early maps.

I liked the cover I created, but someone who reviewed the book identified a problem. The box around the title blocked out the tumbleweed. After looking closely, I realized how true that was!

In 2014, I didn’t realize the importance of a subtitle. This book has no subtitle on the book cover; it does on the Amazon website description I added later.

After ten years of researching and training, I plan on having the cover redesigned to feature the tumbleweed.

When Will Papa Get Home? 2015

When Will Papa Get Home? Book Cover

Again, I created the cover for my second book, When Will Papa Get Home?, on createspace.com too. On the cover, I featured a photograph I took of the homestead house that’s featured in this book.

The book cover generator on createspace.com in 2015 had limited templates. I liked the one I selected: it featured the homestead photo, and in the background, it had the photo, too, but I don’t think anyone realized what was in the background.

Again, I didn’t include a subtitle on the cover, and this book desperately needed one because this is an immigration story, but the title doesn’t say that.

So, readers, be looking for a redesign for this cover later this year.

Let Me Tell You a Story 2016

Let Me Tell You a Story Book Cover

I chose a simple cover for the re-release of my third book, Let Me Tell You a Story. In 1992, my dad, mom and I collaboratively published this for my dad’s 75th birthday. He dictated to Mom the story of how my granddad put our ranch together during the depression when many homesteaders were losing theirs, then I word- processed it and laid out the book, adding pictures. Then Dad selected the picture for the book cover—him on his favorite horse, Rusty. We printed enough to give to everyone in our family, and I printed twenty-five extra copies to read in my literature and language arts classes in Denver, Colorado.

After publishing the other books about my country roots and life, I wanted to get Dad’s retelling granddad’s story out to the world, so I re-released it. Again, I published it on createspace.com and used their template for the book cover.

I’m not sure if I will redo this cover—I like its simplicity; however, you can’t easily read my name or my dad’s as authors, so it probably does need to be redone!

How important is a book cover? Can you judge a book by its cover? In today’s hurried world, the visual representation of the book must catch the reader’s eye. So, yes, it’s vital to the success of the book.

Next week, I’ll share the next four book covers and why I moved to a professional company to do the last two.

Hair on Fire: A Heartwarming & Humorous Christmas Memoir - book cover

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Self-Publishing—How Difficult is it?
Book Production · My Books · My Thoughts · Writing

Self-Publishing—How Difficult is it?

Larada Horner-Miller5 Comments
Woman looking at books—self-publishing

As a self-publishing author, I usually do most of the tasks to publish a book. It isn’t easy, but I love it. I write the book. Next, I have always hired a professional editor because I know it’s impossible for me to distance myself enough from my work and not make mistakes. Because of my computer skills, I love laying out the cover, and I have done four of my six books. In self-publishing A Time to Grow Up: A Daughter’s Grief Memoir, I paid someone to do the cover, but I suggested the total layout and added to it.

Also, I do the interior layout with Vellum, a Mac program that creates the print version and four e-book formats. I also enjoy this part because it lets me express myself creatively in how the book’s interior looks.

See how my current book has gone! My new book, Coronavirus Reflections: Bitter or Better? has been hanging on the edge of being published for several weeks. After reading and studying many marketing books, I decided this time I would pay to have the cover done, and that’s been the hold-up. They asked me to send all the parts for the cover in one email and here’s what they required:

  1. Trim size/page size (5X8, 6X9, etc.)

2. Paper type (cream or white)

3. Exact page count of your fully finished formatted manuscript (to determine spine width)

4. Back cover text (the book description usually works for this)

5. Short author bio and picture (this is optional, and please make sure any picture you send for the back cover has a resolution of 300dpi or higher)

6. Your publishing venue (Ingram Spark, KDP, both… if Ingram Spark, please also send the ISBN)

6.5. If you want an Ingram Spark hardcover, would it be a case laminate, dust jacket, or jacketed case laminate?

Normally, when self-publishing, I do everything for the book and am in total control. Then I have total control of the timing. The book cover company I hired for this book finished the e-book cover about three weeks ago, and I liked it.

Then I had a delay with the book description for the back cover of the book which I never write. With my first book, someone advised me to never write my own book description—that I was too close to the work. So, I always hire someone to do it. Recently I was traveling, and she was too, so we had delays because of that. Then she missed the meaning of the book at first, so we had several rewrites. So, this delay held up the cover getting done. Finally, she got the message from the book and wrote an acceptable description.

Then, off to the book cover layout company with all 6.5 items listed above. I provided pictures I wanted used, so I created a Drop Box shared folder. When they did the first paperback cover, the front was easy—it was the e-book cover. They had lots of trouble with the back cover.

I shared a picture with them in Drop Box of Lin’s gorgeous garden for the back cover because I loved the whole idea that so many people adopted gardening and an appreciation of nature during the pandemic. This book addresses a hard topic, so I wanted that positive result reflected in the cover.

After waiting and waiting, I emailed the representative of the company, and he said he emailed it to me three days before—I never received it. So, he resent it. First cover they sent me to approve had no picture on the back cover—it was a bland back cover with only the book description, my picture and a super-short bio.

Then, we started the revision process that took several days—much longer than necessary. When they added the garden picture to the back cover, they overlaid a green shade over it, so you couldn’t see the garden clearly.

So, I asked them to fix that, and they did after several days. Finally, they sent me three choices. Here are two of them. My husband, Lin liked one; I liked the other. Help me select the cover for this book by responding in the Comments section below.

TWO BOOK COVER CHOICES

Choice #1 has the green overlay of the garden. Choice #2 has a colored picture in the background of the Lin’s garden. Vote for one!

Choice #1 – Green overlay
Choice #2 – No green overlay—Colorful

In my future of self-publishing, I don’t know if I will hire someone else to do the cover. If I don’t, I would avoid the frustration of working with an outsider and the expense. But I like the two choices provided for this book, because it looks professional and they did creative things I would not have! What a dilemma!

Are you self-published? How do you handle the stress of self-publishing? AND BE SURE TO VOTE ON WHICH BOOK COVER I SHOULD USE—#1 OR #2? (Scroll below to the Comment area and respond about which cover you liked and your self-publishing experiences.)

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~Pre-Order My New Book, Coronavirus Reflections: Bitter or Better? To be released in August. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdJNjMivaCzk2YcNWHGMoxG4FPsfVEqEQEzYbcYr4tX9cDPVQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

Flippo in the sand—self-publsihing
Flip for Flippo!

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