So I’m back to the process of putting together the pre-release info for my next book, Hope Is A Six Letter Word (provisional release date April 15th), hence the awful pun in the post title. I have my isbn assigned now, so it can start to show up, my draft blurb being tweaked, and onto the next phase of the cover design.
I always send those proto designs to a variety of people for their views, and got wonderful feedback. It’s a plus and a minus that many of the options appealed to different people, but balancing marketing, thumbnail attractiveness, fit with the tone etc I’ve now narrowed down to the image to be developed. You can see where we’re up to in the above image, with the basic graphic agreed, but no final decision on font or colour yet. These are what I’m working on with the designer right now, and hopefully we’ll get there very soon.
Two things that are worth a mention though. First, one of the reasons some of the earlier designs got rejected weren’t because I didn’t think they’d look great on a book, which they would, but because my primary marketing tool is Amazon, where the thumbnail image is everything to get attention, and some I could see as great on a paperback don’t work the same as a smaller image. Second, you need to think about the size (trim) of the potential paperback. KDP has a set ration for thumbnail images (1.6/1), but choosing a slightly larger paperback means the cover of that needs to be approximately 1.52/1 instead. This means whichever cover I choose needs to work at both sizes, so there needs to be an area which can be cropped without damaging the image. I have a great designer who will take this into account and give me versions that work as both, but if you’re doing this yourself, or ordering a cover design, make sure you specify it can work at all the required ratios, otherwise you’ll need to do some unfortunate editing that might ruin the layout.
I’ll keep you posted how we go.
Stay safe,
Kit