The Word Cloud

I enjoy designing the dustjacket of a book; I find it very relaxing and often considerably less demanding than actually writing the novel. Above you will see the dustjacket for TOR Assassin Hunter, my latest young adult novel. I think it’s pretty eyecatching. If you agree then below is the general plan of how I put it together. I hope it helps.

Firstly, I use Serif PagePlus 9.0. It will do pretty much 95% of what Photoshop will do and you can buy it on the net for about ten pounds. Photoshop will set you back a few hundred! Check it out. It’s very user-frendly and for such a low price you can’t go far wrong. They also do a very cheap web design software, Serif Webplus 10, which I also used to design www.felicitybrady.co.uk and www.thewsa.co.uk.

So now you have your software and you have spent a few days playing with it and you know what it can do. Now you must find a picture for the cover. Personally, I think a jacket with just one very powerful image on it is the most eyecatching. A crowded jacket just looks, well, crowded! So I decided the type of image I needed; in the case of TOR Assassin Hunter I wanted a picture of my hero, Tor, a 26 year old mercenary from the 1870s. Now, if you happen to be self published you probably have a very limited budget, so I simply went on Google Pics, put in ‘mercenary’ in the Search Box and on page 7 or so, I discovered the pic I wanted. I then contacted the illustrator and asked (begged) if I could put it on my cover. She was happy for me to do so and I, in return, put her name and webpage in the book; plus I will send her a free copy or two in February!

Next, I needed a short but sweet quote for the front of the book, so I sent a PDF of my book to a few lit mags and bloggers and I managed to get this: ‘So many twists, I felt dizzy’ from a lit. blogger down in New Zealand. This, I think, is very important. It needs to be simple and basically tell the ‘would-be’ reader that your book is f****** wonderful. For example, on the cover of my book, Felicity Brady and the Wizard’s Bookshop, there is simply the word ‘Spellbinding!’

The last bit of the puzzle is the blurb and for a bit of advice on this, see my other blog ‘Blogs, A Marketing Tool’.

Now you can start to put the jigsaw together.

Let’s start with fonts: the type, the size, the colour. TOR Assassin Hunter is set in 1870 so I wanted an oldish-looking font and I finally settled on High Tower Text. The size, well, I think ‘GO BIG!’ Simply the author’s name and the title of the book big and bold on the front; totally unmissable. Remember, your book will probably be selling on the internet so it needs to look good thumbnail size too. Finally colour. Well, TOR is a mercenary battling assassins so I went for red, a yummy bloody colour.

When designing your cover try not to forget the spine. It is the bit of the book that most browsers will first see on a shelf. I try not only to put the title and author’s name on it, but also a pic; in the case of TOR, a sword with a flower wrapped around it (my hero is not only a mercenary but he’s a botanist too!)

Now for the small stuff.  A price is handy, on the back of a paperback or on the inner front flap of a hardback’s ductjacket. I also put there ‘Children/Young Adult’; it helps parents, particularly dads, who can be a bit crap. And don’t forget the ISBN Number!

But the most important thing of all is ‘feedback’. Let lots of people see the cover prior to your book being published and try to listen to what they have to say. Often difficult, I know, but it is a little embarrassing if the title of your book is spelt incorrectly on the front cover.

Ok, that’s all for now. Next week: editing!