Judging A Book By Its Cover Part 3 Does your cover reflect you?

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Personally, I think a cover should not only reflect what the book is about, but also give the reader a glimpse of the writer. No matter how different your cover is, it, like your writing style, it should be “you” Whether it’s your logo or author picture on the back, there should be something that sets you apart from anyone else. Maybe your hand written signature under the blurb, or a tagline next to your logo, something about your cover should reflect your style and who you are. I go into Walmart, CVS, Rite-aid, and Kmart and always take a quick browse through the books. (Kmart always has a better selection then the other three. I could spend some time there 🙂 ) Anyway no matter where I shop for books the first thing I see are the Harlequin novels. You can spot them a mile away. Why? Because their covers haven’t changed over the years. Yes, different titles, different authors, but the overall style is the same as it was 30 years ago. Which is great for Harlequin, it’s their style, their brand, their…But not so much for the author to shine through. I love some of the independent author and cover designer’s covers. They stand out from the rest. Many are unique in their own way. They say, “Hey, look at me!” And then we are judging the books by their covers. Oops 🙂 My bad. Anyway, what I want to do today is tell you a little bit about my covers and then I’m going to ask 20 authors to tell me about their covers. So here goes…

Kyle & Kelly was written so I could experience self publishing. I wanted to see what all was involved. From formatting to creating the cover to marketing. The title “Kyle & Kelly, The Perfect Party Planner” Reveals actually quite a lot about me. If I ever had a little girl her name was going to be Kelly Ann and no I’m not a party planner, but I do design and create party sets. I used a createspace template and the colors reflect me in the fact that I’m a fall person. I love warm colors, browns, tans, oranges, greens,etc. To me they represent warmth and comfort. Just imagine curling up on a crisp autumn day with a book. The photo also came from createspace and signifies a party for two. 🙂

“The Good Dr. Grant” Personally, I love this cover! Once again it was a template from createspace, but the beautiful dog is a photograph I took of my son’s dog, Sandi. Isn’t she beautiful? She is the sweetest dog you could meet. I tried different colors for the cover. Black, blue, green, but ended up with the purple because I think it makes the photo stand out. Now why is there a dog on the cover, you ask. Well, Dr. Grant is a veterinarian and where I came up with the title is beyond me. It just popped into my head one day.

“Chris’ Journey Turning Different Corners” Book 1 “Her Journey Begins” My son helped me put this cover together. I took the picture of the corner over by my dad’s and then I took a picture of the clouds and my son combined the two and changed the names on the street signs to “Hope and Despair” I went with the gray scale for the effect of the despair in Chris’ life. All 4 books in the series will feature corners of some kind.

This is the cover for book 2 in the Chris series, “A Corner for Life” Once again I took the photo for the cover and my son changed the names on the signs to “Heart and Soul” I had thought about doing this one in the gray scale also, but decided against it. I wanted to show that there are good things happening in Chris’ life.

This is the tentative cover for book 3 of Chris’ Journey “Moving On, Coming Back” It’s not quite finish yet and then again I may change it to something different entirely! 🙂

Well that’s the covers I have so far. I will be revealing a new cover and releasing, (hopefully) a novelette on the 15th of October (My niece’s birthday) And am in a quandary about the first cover for the new series I am working on and I hope to have out the first book sub- titled “Alexiah”, so we will see. 🙂 I’m trying to decide should all 5 books in the series have the same basic  cover with subtle differences or should each cover be totally different. I know the backs of the books will have different covers each relating to the individual book. What do you think? 

Okay here’s the deal, I am looking for 20 book covers to be featured on my blog. You’ll get a mini promo with a link to either your blog, website, or amazon. If someone designed your cover, they’ll get a mention with a link to their site. All you have to do is tell me about your book cover. Where did you come up with the title? Why did you choose the colors, pictures, or graphics that are on the front cover? Is there a hidden meaning in the overall effect? Did you design your cover? Did someone else design your cover? No blurbs. Those will be discussed in part 4 of “Judging A Book By It’s Cover.”

I’ll do 4 blog posts of 5 covers each. You can send the info about your cover to kkrafts58@gmail.com I look forward to hearing from you. And I just found this article about book covers here. http://ezinearticles.com/?Kindle-and-eBook-Cover-Art:-Working-With-a-Designer&id=7306754

• Posted in: Book Covers ♦ The Good Dr Grant ♦ Uncategorized
• Tagged: book covers, books, chris' journey, corners, dogs, kyle & kelly, series, the good dr grant