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Book cover design playlist:
Whether you’re designing your book cover yourself or you’re hiring someone to design your book cover, it’s important to understand what makes a book cover good, and what makes it bad. At the end of the day, readers do judge a book by it’s cover, so don’t miss out on sales just because the book cover design isn’t right. In a previous video, I talked about five book cover mistakes all authors are making, but today we’re going to be talking about five more mistakes you may be making and how to avoid them.
0:00 – Intro
1:56 – Re-creating a scene
4:32 – Thumbnail test
6:06 – Test is flat
8:48 – Color palette
9:27 – Hierarchy
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NON-FICTION BOOKS – – – – – – – – – –
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FICTION BOOKS – – – – – – – – – –
→Read a free book, Change of Flight:
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→I am Mercy:
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→Mr. Moon's Big Move:
FIND ME ONLINE- – – – – – – – – –
Content for writers: @mandilynnwrites
Content for readers: @authormandilynnbell
MY FAVORITE TOOLS- – – – – – – – – –
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Mandi Lynn published her first novel when she was seventeen. The author of multiple books, Mandi spends her days continuing to write and creating YouTube videos to help other writers achieve their dreams of seeing their books published. Mandi is the owner of Stone Ridge Books, a company that works to help authors bring their books to life through cover design and digital book marketing. She is also the creator of The Book Launch Planner, a planner designed to help authors publish and market their books. When she’s not creating, you can find Mandi exploring her backyard or getting lost in the woods.
DISCLAIMER: This video and description contain affiliate links. By purchasing a linked product or service, Mandi Lynn will receive a small commission at no additional fee to you.
#bookcoverdesign #selfpublishing #bookcover
Title: 5 More Book Cover Design Mistakes You Need to Avoid!
Search terms: how to design a book cover, book cover design tutorial, how to make a book cover
Thank you for the video. I am just now appreciating how color coordinated your book shelf is. That’s so pretty!
Thanks so much! I find it so much more fun to organize by color!
I always struggle deciding because dystopian fantasy is that middle ground between fantasy and survival dystopian. Half my genre is object based, and the other half is person based. And half are light colored and the other half is dark. 😅
I have gone both ways on my books, in terms of choice between an actual scene from the story or something more abstract. The first novel had a pretty detailed illustrated scene cover, plusses for it included that it definitely gave off the science fiction vibes and two most important characters in full-frame and in thumbnail. Minuses; it’s overall pretty dark, arguably accurate to the themes. And it’s cramped and busy, once the title comes in. I also did something pretty retro, in keeping with a classic era scifi story, I had a miniature blurb sentence right on that cover, like something from a trade paperback in the drugstore rack.
Second book, went another way, used public domain photography of a posed model, then zhuzhed it up a bit in an image editor for the comp. Plusses: strong two color theme (teal and blue is so over-used but cliche’s happen for reasons), the human face on the cover is in massive closeup, expressing fear and grim determination, perfect for the story. There’s a joke hidden in the title and cover; I figure that a reader that “gets it” right away is exactly my kind of reader, everyone else won’t figure it out for a few chapters. The person on the cover is NOT the main POV character, she’s just one of an ensemble cast. But i felt her face and look hit so strongly, the entire trilogy will be variations of her. This led me to re-think the writing, going forward, making little additions and improvements to my plot lines and character insights that will pay off more over the trilogy, so a reader won’t feel cheated that they bought a story based on the cover image and got something unexpected instead. A cover choice, driving character development, seems weird and backwards, don’t it? But I like it.
I enjoy all of your videos. Very interesting ❤❤❤❤