As much as we like to say, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” It simply isn’t true. The cover is what draws a potential reader to click on the title or pick it up and read the blurb. Then the blurb should be good enough to convince the potential reader to buy it, and go from potential reader to reader. 

Last week my socials shared the cover to Bondwitch, and I would like to share how the cover was created.

 I started to create the cover in my mind when the list of potential publishers dwindled, and I thought I would be self-publishing; which meant I would have to figure out the cover. You can buy premade stock covers, but I wanted my cover to match my story, not just kind of match my story. So I knew that I was going to have to find an artist who could create what I wanted.

I have always loved the original cover to Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. The snow white hands offer the tempting red apple. Forbidden fruit equates to forbidden love. That cover captivated me when I was sixteen, and it still captivates me today. So, with the Twilight inspiration in my mind, I also wanted the idea of a hand holding something. I envisioned a hand holding floating spheres to represent water, fire, earth, and air. 

When I signed with The Wild Rose Press, the contract stated that the publisher pays for the cover art and has final approval of the cover art. I was perfectly fine with that because they’ve been in this business for at least seventeen years, so they know what they are doing. So, I pushed my idea onto the back burner and focused on editing my story. 

When it was time to do the cover art, I received an “Art Cover Information” form to fill out. The form asked me general questions about my story like the tone, the time period, the geographical setting. The form provided a list of TWRP artists and links to look at their previous work, then I could pick my top artist – but it wasn’t guaranteed they would be the one assigned to my book. I then got to provide links to book covers that matched the aesthetic I wanted emulated in mine. 

Then came specific questions to help create the deeper details of the art. And with those questions came some helpful statistics. According to research this is the order of cover components most likely to sell:

1. Covers without any people
2. Covers with just a male
3. Covers with a couple
4. Covers with just a female 

Research indicated that my vision of a hand holding elemental magic would work! (That isn’t to say the other covers are bad, because they aren’t. I simply felt validated that my original vision was a good one.)

Another bit of helpful advice the form gave me was to NOT request too much detail. I think it said to try to go for less than 5 components, perhaps only 3. The form explained that too much detail was hard to decipher on the thumbnail images that readers would be looking at online. 

With that helpful information, I decided to decrease the number of magical spheres. And this is what I requested:

What element do you consider most important: a visual representation of magic

High Pitch Concept: When a young witch’s powers are unlocked, her family’s enemies descend upon her community; forcing her to flee across the country and train in secret.

General vision: a feminine hand, palm up, a sphere that represents one of the elements (preferably fire) floating above the palm

The artist given my book was Jennifer Greeff, and my goodness, I think she did an amazing job! 

She gave me exactly what I asked for and then some. And I already have the gears turning in my brain for the covers for the rest of the series. 

What’s your favorite book cover? Why? (Or top three, if you’re like me, and you can’t choose only one to save your life.) Let me know in the comments!