Creating Cover Art for My Book (5 Steps)

The cover is the first thing people see about your book. You want it to grab attention and set up an expectation of what the book is about. I am so glad the Press gave me the opportunity to contribute art for the cover of my forthcoming poetry collection Stones Hold Water. Many publishers don’t give you this choice.

When I say cover art, I mean the image for the front of the book. Layout, lettering, sizing, finish of the book cover will still be done by the Press. Once I knew the book cover would be collaborative, I started work on it.

Step 1: Research Book Covers

I looked at hundreds of book covers just to get a sense of what elements attracted me about them and what didn’t. What made a book cover compelling and what made it blah? What kind of book covers were usual in my genre? I found out anything goes. Some cover images have no relevancy to the title, others are closely tied. Some covers are allusive, others are literal. The ones I like best are those that have a sense of movement, a story behind the image. Researching book covers helped me understand what I liked and disliked about cover art.

Step 2: Develop the Concept

It took me months to solidify my vision for the cover art. I divided my concept into 3 areas:

Title: I must have gone through 400 – 500 images (if not more) of stones on beaches, stones under water, stones above water, stones on riverbanks, big boulders, pebbles in streams, colored stones, monochromatic stones, stacked stones, you name it. This gave me lots of ideas about angles at which you can shoot landscapes, color palettes, balancing the hardness of stones with the softness of water, perspective, etc.
Themes: Since the poems in my collection have South Asian flavor, I wanted cover art that spoke to the culture. With a thematically-diverse collection, I picked a couple of themes that I could build my vision around and that could anchor the image.
Story: I love covers that have a sense of mystery, story, and are ambiguous enough to be interpreted multiple ways. When creating my cover art, I wanted to capture a mood, a sense of drama, create interest in what the image is about, could be about.

Step 3: Custom or Existing Art?

Once I solidified my concept, I looked around to see if there was existing art that spoke to my vision. Since I was fairly specific with what I wanted, I didn’t really find it and decided to go for a custom cover. I’m not a fan of stock photos on book covers.

Step 4: Medium

Next step was deciding what medium I wanted for the cover art. Drawing? Painting? Photograph? I decided I wanted the cover image to be a photograph because I thought it would best capture my idea with vivid realism. I also thought a photograph would show up better in the specifications I had received from the press.

Step 5: Executing the Vision

I collected pictures of the kind of lighting I wanted, the angles I wanted, the framing, color palette, props so I could reference them when explaining my vision to a professional photographer. The other important thing for shooting the cover art was finding the right location where natural light, weather, setting aligned in glorious synchronicity. We had a short window, about 30 minutes to get the shots because we wanted the time between first light and sunrise. Finally, we took multiple shots from different angles.

My vision translated beautifully. I’m happy with the image I sent to the press and look forward to seeing how it will look as a cover after lettering, sizing, layout.

Tips:

Find out the requirements for the cover from the Press. Dimensions? Finish? Tonality?
Give yourself plenty of time. You will brainstorm, tweak, reject any number of ideas before you settle on THE ONE. Give yourself months to brainstorm and execute unless you have a very strong, fully formed vision to begin with.
Finally, everyone may not like your cover art. That’s ok. You can’t please everyone. This is your book and as long as you’re happy with the cover, that’s all that matters.