A Tale of Two Covers

How I Tried

Hello Friends,

I am in the middle of releasing a new book: Karmic Robot's Guide to Self-Publishing.

In it, I present, as briefly as possible, the steps that an author can take to turn their manuscript into a published book. In one chapter, I discuss covers.

I write:

In publishing, a book's cover is its most important element in terms of attracting readers. Readers do judge a book by its cover. They look to see if it's in the genre they like to read, if it's interesting and unique, and if it inspires them to click on it or pick it up.

And this is true. A cover can generate rocketing sales or keep a book grounded with mediocre performance.

Yeah, So?

I go on to say that Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), the platform that I recommend, has its own cover design tool, and that I am going to use it for the cover of this latest book.

For all of my past books, I've used the same cover designer from fiverr.com. I am incredibly lucky that I found her. She does an amazing job for a reasonable price and is great to work with. But, in self-publishing, often you want to change things, and the cover is one of those things. Every time I need a cover change, I have to go back to her. So, I figured I'd give doing it myself a whirl.

I used Canva for the front image. Then, I grabbed my logo and came up with some text for the back. After two hours of pulling my hair out (not cool, since I don't have a lot of hair to begin with) and a bucket-full of compromises, I managed to generate the cover you see below:

This is the cover I went to press with. Lame-o!

Hmmmm. Well, That's Something.

The fact I didn't tell anyone that my book was available made me realize I hated the cover. It was just blah. And I really detested the experience of using the KDP Cover Creator.

The main issue with it is that it only has a few layouts, and those layouts are not dynamic. The act of moving an image, the reading robot dude on the back cover (my logo) for example, makes it completely disappear. The little guy has to go exactly where he is placed, and with the exact size.

I also despised manipulating the text for the back cover. The tool’s formatting process is really twitchy. Whenever I tried to manipulate it, the entire content would disappear. Eventually, I gave up and let it do what it wanted.

I did publish the book with this cover. Being completely unsatisfied, I reached out to my designer to give her a crack at it.

She exceeded my expectations:

I never would have come up with the design she created.

In my book, I provide free options for every part of the publishing process. Some things are worth paying for.

I wanted to try the KDP Cover Creator for this book. I say that in a future revision, I will describe how it went. I still will, but I am waiting for some more feedback before I release a second edition (wink, wink… some feedback).

Your cover is important. Anytime you publish a book, you are creating a product. You want that product to dazzle. I think my designer did a great job.

I'm making the ebook version of Karmic Robot's Guide to Self-Publishing available for free to the people on my emailing list. If you grab a copy, I would love some feedback. This is a limited time offer. I'm still making some tweaks to the cover with my designer. In a few days, I'll have the new final paperback cover and I'll remove the free link. If you find it helpful, please let me know.

Thanks!

Happy reading, happy writing, and happy publishing.

David