Changing Your Book Cover

Guest post
by Shoshanna Evers

So let’s say you’ve written an amazing book. You’ve had it edited, proofed, formatted it perfectly (or paid someone to do so), and your blurb is stellar.

The book gets some 5 and 4 star reviews. Readers like it! It’s good! So why isn’t it selling?

Look closely. Assess your book cover. Does your cover honestly, without a doubt, sit on the virtual shelf with all those Big 6 covers and shine?

Maybe it does. Maybe your cover is perfect. But maybe, just maybe, the cover you made yourself—or that your friend who knows how to work Photoshop or whatever made for you—isn’t working.

Here are some suggestions for your book cover:

• Make sure your title and author name are BIG and legible in thumbnail size.

• Make sure the image is simple enough to be conveyed in thumbnail size, and in black and white.

• Is the contrast good? Dark red letters on black are hard to read in B&W. All gray goes mushy. White edges get lost on Amazon.

• Try adding a glow or a drop shadow to your text to make it stand out

• Does the book tell what genre the story is? Make sure your cover attracts readers who want to read your genre.

• And, when all else fails, the beauty of self-publishing is that we can change our minds, and change our book covers. Upload a new cover and see what it does for your sales. Can’t hurt!

Now, here’s where the problem lies. If you’re anything like me, you like to do things now, not a week from now, or three weeks. And you don’t have hundreds of dollars for a professional custom cover lying around.

Sure, you could take a stock photo and add text to it, but chances are some other author had the same idea…and is using the same stock photo.

That’s why I co-founded a new website, SelfPubBookCovers.com, where artists can upload their premade book covers, and authors can customize the covers and download them instantly. The cover is removed from the site when the author buys it, so it’s one-of-a-kind. And this has never been done before!

While we’re still in the beta-testing stage, from the over 1000 covers and the many authors purchasing covers since we launched in February 2013, I think we’ve hit on something good. Something that can give all indie authors the chance to have an amazing, professional cover instantly.

An awesome cover is almost as important as an awesome book, at least in the getting-readers-to-buy stage. People really do judge a book by its cover, so make sure your cover rocks!

Oh and by the way, you can get a free PDF download of Successful Self-Publishing: How We Do It (And How You Can Too), an anthology of advice and inspiration from bestselling indie authors, when you visit SelfPubBookCovers.com.

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Shoshanna Evers is a critically-acclaimed romance author. She co-founded SelfPubBookCovers.com with graphic designer Rob Sturtz by keeping what indie authors need and what artists want in mind. Launched in February 2013,  the site is already revolutionizing the self-publishing industry, establishing itself as the place to go for a one-of-a-kind professional book cover at a fair price, with many covers starting at just $69.