The Importance of your Book Cover

With the rise in popularity of eBook publishing, I am starting to notice that some authors don’t pay much attention to the book cover for their novels. Even if you publish an eBook and not a paperback version, I think it is still important to have a professional, attractive front cover as part of your promotional material.

I am still more inclined to look at a book based on the front cover even if I am browsing on my Kindle. There is something intriguing about cover art, when you can scrutinize the images and colours, and see how they relate to the story they advertise. Truthfully I rarely even glimpse at an eBook with no professional cover, because to me that means the book itself is likely to be poorly written and produced with very little care to grammar and presentation.

Aside from the opinions of your target audience, there are other reasons why you should invest in some professional artwork. This is your masterpiece. It is your legacy to the world, and will be around forever once you release it into the market. You might still decide to have paperback copies produced in the future, or indeed it may finally attract that lucrative deal from a big publishing company that we all secretly covet. Doesn’t your book deserve to be well presented? Yes, it does!

Fortunately for me, Mirador Publishing designed and created the artwork for my debut paranormal romance novelLove Hurts (A Redcliffe Novel). They have also done the same for my upcoming sequel Love Kills (A Redcliffe Novel). Everything was shown to me before publication, and it was my final decision as to how my book would be presented. I also had some pretty firm ideas about the actual images I wanted to see, and luckily, my ideas were almost identical to those of my publisher.

One thing I did not initially consider was the colour of my book. When I look at the sections for paranormal romance or sci-fi and fantasy in my local bookshops and library, I see rows of books that are largely black or dark coloured. They represent all the dark, mysterious, horrific stories about vampires, werewolves, witches, shape shifters and any number of other mythical creatures and monsters that lurk in the authors’ imaginations.

I was quite surprised when Mirador presented me with the artwork for Love Hurts (A Redcliffe Novel). The book cover was bright orange! It was bold, it was cheerful, and actually, it really works! I like the fact that my books stand out on the shelves. Yes I write paranormal romance, dark fantasy, urban fantasy, whatever hybrid genre of horror you want to use for description. But my stories are colourful. They are about the intricacies of being in love, and of how it differs between humans and non-humans.

I now have an idea for the colours of my books throughout the Redcliffe series, and in my mind they look brilliant! The colours will alter in correlation with the story. It is very clever, and totally appropriate. The orange colour of Love Hurts (A Redcliffe Novel) signifies the new beginnings for our heroine Jessica Stone. She is a warm, friendly, confident person, and her world is about to be turned upside down. There are flashes of red in the colour of my book cover, which suggest the danger and drama that lurks beneath the pages.

So there we have it. I hope this has given you something to consider when you finish editing your novel and come to prepare it for publication. There are far more things to think about than simply writing the story. When we self-publish, we take on the role of author, advertiser, promoter, artist and creative director. There are lots of variables, and we must bring them all together in order to properly share our wonderful works of art with the world.

For more information about my Redcliffe Novels, see my website http://www.catherine-green.co.uk and join me on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Catherine-Green-Author/2549777145...