Episode 211: 6 Tips For Working With Cover Designers

The Pulp Writer Show

In this week's episode, we offer six tips for working with cover designers to create a great cover for your book.

TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 211 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is July 26th, 2024 and today we are discussing six tips for working with cover designers. Before we get to our main topic, we'll have an update on my current writing and audiobook projects and then Question of the Week.

I am currently editing Half-Orc Paladin. I'm almost done with the first phase of editing and so we are on track to have the book come out in early August sometime, if all goes well. I'm not sure if it's going to be the first week or the second week of August, but we will see how things go. Once Half-Orc Paladin is out, my next project will be Shield of Conquest. I'm going to follow up on Shield of Darkness right away and I'm about 2,000 words into that. After Shield of Conquest, the next two books I write will be Ghost in the Tombs and Cloak of Illusion. Then at that point, the year will almost be over. 2024 is just flying by, and so then I'll decide what I will work on next once I get to the end of those three books. So Half-Orc Paladin and then Shield of Conquest, Ghost in the Tombs, and Cloak of Illusion.

In audiobook news, Wizard-Thief, as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward, is done and it is currently working its way through the approval process at Audible and the other sites. You can actually get it at my Payhip store right now if you don't want to wait. Otherwise, it should be on Audible and the other audiobook stores within a few weeks. Recording is also under underway for Stealth and Spells Online: Leveling (and that will be narrated by CJ McAllister again) and Shield of Darkness, which will be narrated by Brad Wills. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects.

00:01:45 Question of the Week

And now let's switch over to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is designed to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question: if you want to get a coffee, where is your favorite place to go get it? The inspiration for this week's question was that I needed to do some necessary errands and so to bribe myself to do them, I got a coffee to drink along the way.

Justin says: I'm hypersensitive to caffeine, so the elixir of life (as my wife calls it) is off limits unless I need to stay up a night or two. Decaffeinated coffee has never managed to interest me. Herbal teas are my hot drink of choice. My wife considers Starbucks coffee burnt but would stop at McDonalds for some.

JD says: I was just thinking of making a coffee when I saw this. Whenever I go out for coffee, I prefer to try an independent coffee shop over any of the big chains. I drink black coffee with no sugar and have never enjoyed a cup from any of the big chains. McDonald's coffee isn't too bad. I usually get an espresso from there when my son wants to go. Now I best get around to putting the kettle on.

Perry says: Can't stand the taste of coffee. Don't like tea, either. Water or juice for me.

Michael says: I have a local coffee guy near me who also happens to be an amazing baker, which means I can get a cookie, too.

That's some good thinking.

Catriona says: generally at home with my Nespresso machine. Out- well, I moved to Thailand 10 months ago and don't have a car (driving is crazy here and their version of Uber is very cheap), so it tends to be individual coffee shops near shopping centers. Before that home in Hong Kong -Pacific Coffee.

Gary says: the best coffee is made at my house. When I am not at home, then definitely Kona dark roast from QuikTrip.

Barbara says: Tastings in Subiaco, about 60 kilometers from home. If we have to go to Perth, we always stop at Tastings for coffee, but I can't see anyone not in Western Australia coming that far for a coffee.

Bonnie says: never been a fan of Starbucks, has always been Dunkin’ here in Maine, though not going so much with money tight. Now, dark roast from the Ks.

Becca says: I only really get coffee to go when I’m visiting my best friend in Tucson. Then we often go to Crema, a nice family-owned place.

Tammy says: Farmhouse coffee and ice cream or Tim Hortons when I need something delivered.

Jesse says: I used to go to a place called Baltimore Coffee (not actually in Baltimore) and buy unground beans to bring home. Pandemic made me a snob for grinding my own coffee (sorry, “enthusiast”).

Cheryl says: my kitchen is my favorite place for coffee. Plain old instant coffee.

Jenny says: firstly, Kwik Trip for life. Secondly, iced dirty chai from Scooters or Bigby or Caribou.

Jerry says: Kwik Trip is convenient and easy, but every time I go there for coffee, I end up getting a honey bun, doughnuts, or something else I'm not supposed to have. My favorite coffee is when I brew myself with freshly ground beans.

I can definitely feel Jerry's pain when it comes to buying snacks one does not need.

BV says: a place called Scooters.

Mike says: well, I might be older than most and grew up in the Southwest. Dunkin’ was pretty much all there was back then, so you go with what you grew up with.

And finally, Juana says: Red Owl.

For myself, you heard my answer, one you've heard mentioned already. My favorite place is to get a coffee from Kwik Trip, which is a regional gas station chain located in the central Midwest. Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts, and McDonalds are all too complicated for me. I just want to press a button and have acceptable coffee come out of a tube. Kwik Trip meets that need.

00:05:00 Main Topic of the Week: 6 Tips on Working with a Cover Designer

Now on to our Main Topic of the Week: 6 tips on working with a cover designer. The reason for this is that if you're an indie author and you're publishing your book, you really want an attractive cover. I have gotten to the point where I do nearly all of my covers myself in Photoshop. However, it took a lot of practice and a long time to get there. I took a Photoshop course during the pandemic in 2020 when there wasn't much else to do and I've been practicing continually since then. Before that, I almost always hired out my covers. The reason I started learning to do covers myself was partly interest and partly necessity because I write so much. I usually publish between 10 and 12 books a year and some of the really good cover designers you have to book out like nine months to a year in advance. If I decide on the drop of a hat to write a book like Half-Elven Thief, it's going to be hard to get a cover for that because you have to schedule so far out in advance.

So for myself, it's advantageous to be able to do my own covers to an acceptable degree because I write so much. However, most people don't write as much as I do and don't have time to take a Photoshop class, so it is advantageous to work with a cover designer and it is a good idea to know how to best conduct oneself and work professionally with a cover designer. So with that in mind, here are 6 tips for working with cover designers.

#1: Manage your expectations of what a cover will be like. First, it's important to understand that your book cover isn't exactly meant to recreate a scene in the book. It's designed to give readers just enough of a feel what the book is like to want to learn more. With that in mind, being really creative and innovative in book covers isn't always or even frequently rewarded, because readers are comfortable with cliches in book covers because it helps them to know the book is similar to ones they have enjoyed in the past (for example, science fiction book covers with a planet and spaceship on the cover). I've written before and talked before about how my Silent Order series started selling much better once I finally gave up on character-based covers and had covers with a planet and a spaceship in close proximity. It's not that big a deal if things are slightly different on the cover than they are in the book, like a character has black hair instead of brown.

Major differences such as Anne of Green Gables being blonde or Elizabeth Bennett from Pride and Prejudice holding a cell phone are important to avoid, however, unless you're writing a reinterpretation of Pride and Prejudice set in the 1980s or the modern day or something, but that is again part of choosing the appropriate cover for your genre. All the cover needs to do is to communicate the author, the title, and the genre, and it should be done as simply and as attractively as possible. So that is the primary thing to bear in mind when working with the cover designer. The book needs to communicate the author, title, genre, and do it as simply and as attractively as possible.

#2: Research covers in your genre before contacting the cover designer. This will help you learn the trends and cliches in your genre and see what types of images, styles, and fonts are successful. It helps the cover designer if you can share a few covers of existing books as examples of font or style that you like. For example, every time I hired out a cover back before I started doing my own, one of the things the cover designer would always ask is pick, you know, 5 to 10 covers whose look you like and that have the style and feel that you want for your book. This isn't to, you know, rip off these covers or to steal their look, but to get an eye for what is considered acceptable conventions for covers within the genre of the book you are writing.

#3: How to find a quality cover designer? A random person on Fiverr or your relatives are probably not wise choices (unless one of your relatives happens to specialize in ebook cover design), so you're probably better off seeking out a reputable cover designer. How to find one? Well, cover designers are often credited at beginning of the book or on authors’ websites, if you find one that you like. Reputable cover designers will almost always have an online portfolio or website or be able to provide a link to one where you can look over their work. The best cover designers usually specialize in specific genres. Not always, but this is often the case. Be wary of one who claims to be able to do any genre unless you can see examples of them indeed doing works in any genre.

Understand the going rate for cover designers and offer a fair price. There's often a graduated scale where a cover designer’s lowest fee will be for just the ebook cover, but with added things. You can also add in the audio cover or the paperback and hardback covers and sometimes social media images based around the cover and optimized for the preferred resolutions of Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and so forth. Often the cover designers will have their rates listed on their website. Don't try and lowball them. That doesn't work and will make you enemies. Also understand what deadlines are realistic and professional, like requiring someone to have a cover out the next day is not a good idea. As I mentioned before, some of the really good cover desires are booked up for quite a length of time in advance, and so you may need to schedule several months or even a year in advance and make sure you have a clear expectation of how long that's going to take before you reach out.

#4: Make it easy for the designer to understand your goals. Often experienced designers will send you over what's called a brief, which is essentially a questionnaire about what you're looking for in the book cover. As you mentioned earlier, this is where you would share sample covers from similar books that are helpful. Specific fonts and style requests are also good to include at this stage in the process. Do not expect your cover designer to read the entire book. For obvious reasons that is not going to work out. Some serious designers do upwards of 500 covers a year and there simply isn't time to read 500 books in a year, which is why you need to be as detailed and precise as possible in the brief or questionnaire stage, because obviously the designer is not going to have time to read the entire book. Specify what you need and any deadlines. This is where you want to make clear what you're paying for in terms of ebook, audiobook, paperback covers, and so forth. Be sure to communicate in writing and be clear and polite in how you communicate with designers. You are essentially hiring a skilled professional to do a job for you, so you want to communicate respectfully and professionally as you would with any skilled professional.

#5: Write a good brief. This directly follows into making it easier for the designer to understand your goals. The brief will give basic information such as title, author, desired formats, and some brief information about the genres, characters, etcetera. Keep the information about characters, genre, and plot to a paragraph maximum and be sure also to provide information about any major visuals like swords in the series all emit white fire, make her hair brown hair, etcetera, but expect that it may not be crucial to making the cover.

#6: Communicate well. Communicate openly and clearly. I'll just think of how much of the difficulty of the human condition could be avoided if we could all just communicate openly and clearly. In the specific context of cover designing, make sure that you get cost, timeline, and services in writing and seek out specifics on all of these before committing to work on them. If the designer has their own intake form or brief style, fill it out instead of just sending them your own notes. That makes it easy to give the designer exactly the information he or she will need to make the cover and will let you not waste time providing irrelevant information. If the book is part of a series or future series, it's a good idea to share that with the designer, because if everything goes well, that may mean future work.

The first version they will send you is not the final offer. You should get a draft version of the cover and usually it will be what you need. If anything major needs to be changed, you might have to renegotiate, but minor changes are usually pretty easy to do. Be sure to explain any changes you need politely and concisely. Don't nag the designer before the agreed upon deadline. You know, sending emails every day asking for progress updates is a waste of everyone's time. Don't check in before the agreed upon deadline.

Finally, it's a good idea to trust their advice, especially if they are experienced. New authors in particular sometimes have an affliction where they have the way the cover looks in their head and they want the cover to look like that, but they are they aren't experienced enough to know that making the cover that way would be a bad idea and best avoided. If you're hiring a skilled professional, it's generally best to trust their advice, especially if they have more experience than you do. Unless the designer is suggesting something egregious, like something totally out of character for your genre (which probably is not going to happen), it is best to heed their advice.

Be sure to review the cover carefully before finalizing. Check carefully for any typos, make sure your name and the book title are spelled correctly, and make sure that it looks nice in every size. It should ideally look good full size and it should also look good in thumbnail because that is where a majority of readers are going to see the cover- in thumbnail.

Two more things to keep in mind. Most cover designers will not use generative AI. Some of them do. A significant majority of them are strongly opposed of it to it because of the unsettled ethical and legal questions around the use of generative AI. If that is a concern for you, you may want to check if the cover designer uses generative AI to source any of the images they will use for the cover. Those who do should be open and clear about it, and those who do, if you request they won't, then obviously, if they're professional, they won't.

It's also might be a good idea to check where your designer will source these stock photos for the cover. Very often most book covers are made of combining stock photos available from reputable stock photo sites like Adobe Stock, Dreamstime, Getty Images, and so forth. Those are licensed for commercial use and that's okay. You probably want to make sure that the coverage designer will not source any photos from free photo sites because the often the sourcing of the photos available on free photo sites and not licensed stock photo sites like Adobe Stock and Getty Images is because there are less legal protections for any photos uploaded to free photo sites. So while it's not likely you would get sued if you use a misattributed photo from a free stock photo site, it is within the realm of possibility. Best to avoid that.

Finally, one last question to consider, especially for fantasy and science fiction, is if it is worthwhile to pay for custom artwork instead of relying on a combination of stock photos or 3D models from sites like DAS or Unity. You can do that if you want. You're probably not going to make your money back because custom artwork is very expensive. Bear in mind that a cover designer isn't going to provide custom artwork for you unless you pay for it yourself, so that is something to bear in mind. You can probably get by using stock photos, because a skilled designer can combine those and make them look good.

So that's it for this week. I hope you found that useful for working with cover designers. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwriter.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.