Yep, Changed a Book Cover Again

As so often happens when I'm discussing book covers, like I did the other day, I find one of mine that really irks me. That happened with The Diner Girl. That book's cover was the most frustrating one I'd ever created, because I simply couldn't find an appropriate image. I looked in all the usual places ~ Pixabay, Pexels, Canva itself ~ and nothing conveyed my vision. I ended up buying a nine-dollar image from iStock, which was "okay", not ideal.

My problem with all these sites is that nearly every image is posed. I don't want some grinning jackass representing a story that isn't all fluffy clouds. Frankly, those pictures make the models look vacuous. Here I am a at job I hate, but I'm deliriously happy! Photogs, don't have your models stare directly into the lens and beam! It's actually kind of creepy. The process of scrolling through these photos was enough to make me want to contact the sites and impart some common sense advice. But I know I would be ignored, so I wouldn't bother. There are no ideal image licensing sites for book covers that are free or near-free. I generally do well with the choices I'm given, and sometimes those choices are perfect.

What bothered me most about The Diner Girl's cover was that it didn't "shine". Not literally, but it presented as dull, lifeless:

Not to mention that the title font color clashed with the image. I was going for a neon effect, but overall, the cover screams amateur. Looking to replace it, I browsed the usual photo sites, and grew more and more discouraged. Search terms matter, of course, but which are the right keywords? The obvious ones didn't cut it. I tried "diner waitress", "waitress behind counter", "cafe waitress", "server". I even tried simply "diner" and found a few cool diner signs, but I need to have a woman on the cover, not a neon sign or diner stools, of which there were plenty. 

I finally narrowed my Canva choices down to about seven non-grinning women, then went to iStock and impulsively paid for an image I thought might work, but even when I cropped it, the portrayal still wasn't right. That was money down the drain.

A word about the models (and sorry if you're offended by my bluntness): The woman has to be attractive, but not too attractive. She needs to be an everyday woman, not an idealized version that's off-putting to readers who are looking for a realistic depiction. On the other hand, she can't be, for lack of a better word, ugly. There is a photographer on Pixabay who I'm guessing uses his girlfriend as his model. The site has tons of images featuring this woman, and she's just not attractive. I'm not a raving beauty, either, but I'm not posing for pictures. I found a few possibles on Canva, but ultimately the models were a bit too plain.

The image I finally settled on still isn't perfect. The woman looks a bit older than my MC, but on the plus side, she at least looks sane.

Title font and its placement came next. Because of the image, there was only one logical spot to place the title. I don't like to use a smaller picture with a border around it, because that negates its impact, so I always drag the image so it encompasses the whole frame. I realize that a book's title should ideally be at the top, but sometimes that's just impossible. In those cases, I go for overall look. I also ditched the neon lettering idea. It might have worked in the original if it was truly a neon sign with the title lit up, but there was no way to accomplish that. I experimented with fonts until I found one that wasn't too fancy, but wasn't plain, and also wasn't crazy. All Canva's fonts aren't appropriate for books; customers create a lot of different projects with Canva, so there are very thin fonts and fat ones and everything in between. Bottom line, when viewing the book image as a thumbnail, the title has to be clear and genre-appropriate.

As for color, Canva does suggest font colors that match the colors in the image, which is handy. Trying, for example, to match shades of blue by chance is very hit and miss. Ultimately for this one, white worked the best against the brown apron.

The title placement left very little room for my name, but I managed to squeeze it in, and in a different font style. David Gaughran advises a relatively plain font for the author name and I agree.

Here is what I came up with:

 

This cover pops. Bright, not dull colors. She's doing her job, not giddily, and I prefer to not have my cover models looking straight into the camera. The background can pass for a diner. (i.e., it's not a wood fireplace, tablecloths and candles.) The font works and its unusual placement doesn't bother me at all. 

I'm describing my process in the hope that it might help someone who's looking to design their own covers. It's not a slapdash exercise. Obviously, a lot of elements have to be taken into consideration. When I designed the original cover for The Diner Girl, I'd already been doing it for a while, and look how badly I did! You probably won't get it right the first time or the tenth time, but the more you experiment and if you take every aspect of the layout into consideration, you'll eventually get one that pleases you.