My daughter has done many of my covers, but she was unavailable for this one. I thought I might go it on my own, and I created some mockup covers.
My mockups were okay, but still not quite right. I knew I needed a professional touch to tweak it. I found fonts I wanted to use, and sent them to a cover designer.
Here is the final cover:
It's not hugely different, but it has more of a finished quality to it. I kind of prefer the clarity of my cover, but overall the second one is better. What do you think? One or two?
The thumbnail is by far the most important size for an ebook cover, because that's what shows up in Amazon's "also bought" and bestseller lists and those are what drive sales. The ideal way to compare two covers is side by side at a size that's about half of what you've got now. If you use the Small setting in blogger, you'd be looking at it in closer to the right size.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that your cover (the top cover) is going to be the stronger thumbnail image. The pretty print across the top of the bottom cover will get completely lost in a thumbnail, the soft text will be harder to read, and the gradient will look muddy. For a print book, the bottom cover might be the better cover, but for an ebook thumbnail, the top cover should work better. In my opinion, anyway.
(I guess I should say that my opinion is based on ten years spent working as an acquisitions editor for a publisher of books on graphic design, so it's a well-educated opinion, but not a designer's opinion. That said, most designers aren't marketers and a book cover needs to function as a sales tool, not simply a polished image. And I'm not sure that most professional designers have transitioned to thinking in thumbnails yet, so I mean no reflection on your designer's skills by my comments. It's a nice cover, just not a great thumbnail.)
I like the top one better, but I get what you're saying about the finished look of cover 2.
ReplyDeleteIf you go with cover 2, I think your name should be bigger. I'm not a huge fan of scripts on covers as they are not immediately readable to everyone. This one isn't too bad, though.
Wyndes and Anon, I had similar thoughts. The text is hard to read even with the larger image.
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