Design theory

August 17, 2022

16 Reasons Your Self-Published Book Cover Is Terrible

Have you searched Amazon for something to read and been smacked in the face by badly Photoshopped covers? Seen book covers so muddy they're an indistinguishable mess? Wondered if your favorite author is being held hostage by an evil book cover designer?
February 10, 2020

How to design a book cover

This post by Kathryn Rosa Miller is a fantastic, in-depth look at the process of designing a book cover, from developing the initial concept to final […]
October 5, 2019

7 Mistakes of Amateur Book Cover Designs

What makes a book cover look professional, besides 10 years of graphic design experience? Here are 7 mistakes that amateurs make when creating book covers. All […]
August 6, 2019

What would you like to know about book cover design & illustration?

I’d like to know what you guys want to know! Drop a comment below, or if you’d rather remain anonymous, here’s a Google form that doesn’t […]
June 10, 2019

5 Fantasy Book Covers for Inspiration

Having a hard time finding creative inspiration for your fantasy book cover? Here's five book covers that might help.

July 1, 2018

How to spot if a cover is self-published

There is one major giveaway that says "Hello! I'm self-published!" on a cover. And I've been wondering for quite some time why it's so common--and why I've occasionally been guilty of it myself! I think I've found the answer!

June 7, 2018

“So why do you crop the heads off your models?”

If you look through the romance genres on Amazon, you've probably noticed tons of covers with models positioned so their heads are cropped off by the edge of the book, or turned away from the viewer. What's up with that?

June 22, 2015

Designing a Series Look: Zoe Chant Part II

In last week's post, I talked about being commissioned to create a cover template for Zoe Chant's paranormal shifter romances, her requirements, and researching her genre. As a prolific writer, she would be using several designers to create her covers, and needed a template that she could give to each designer to make sure that all her books looked like Zoe Chant books.

June 15, 2015

Designing a Series Look: Zoe Chant, Part I

If you're publishing a series, you want readers to identify books at a glance as belonging to that series. This is a bit easier to do if you've got one designer doing all the covers, but what if you've got more than one?