Leilanie Stewart

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been tinkering with the cover design for my forthcoming novel, the sequel for The Buddha’s Bone. I’m currently doing a proof read after making the amendments that my editor suggested, and since I find hard copies easier to read, I’ve printed another paperback. For the cover, I decided to use a design that I like, but won’t be using on the final published version, as it’s a bit too literary and not psychological enough. Rest assured you’ll be seeing all versions of the cover design in another post once it’s published.

Thinking of cover designs got me searching back through my Canva Pro drafts for old versions of my published books. It was fun perusing earlier cover ideas for my Belfast Ghosts trilogy, and recalling the reasons why I decided against using each one. Want to have a look? Here you go:

Despite the saying ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’, it’s pretty fair to say that everybody, in fact, does judge a book by its cover. As an indie author I don’t have a big PR team to promote my book: it’s up to me to design, as best I can, an attention grabbing cover. I’m happy with the final designs for The Blue Man, The Fairy Lights and Matthew’s Twin and the proof is in the pudding: all three have sold really well. Would they have sold as well if I had used the earlier versions that I eventually decided against? I’m pretty sure my sales wouldn’t have been as strong, as those covers weren’t as eye-catching, either on their own, or together in the trilogy. The colours weren’t as bold, making the titles fade more into the background rather than standing out. Graphics need to catch a customer’s eye in less than a second, I’d say; at least, that’s about how long it takes me to decide if a book looks interesting or not.

What do you think? What makes a book cover stand out? What factors about the design make you decide whether or not to stick it in your basket?