Book Cover Design Secrets You Can Use To Sell More Books?

In this course our class is learning different elements and programs of graphic design. We are learning these skills and concepts for various reasons, but it all comes back to one thing: to sell. Whether it is selling a product or service, graphic design is used to promote it and create more sells. It is something repeatedly stated by Derek Murphy, author of Book Cover Design Secrets You Can Use to Sell More Books. In this book he discusses how the right design cover through his experience, simplicity over complexity, and use of stock images. Derek Murphy wrote this book to help amateur authors and book cover designers with simple strategies to increase their book sales. Murphy starts the book by addressing the issue of what constitutes
In Murphy’s experience the best way to get the attention of readers is to have a simple cover. For example for young adult books have a partial portrait of someone with a city underneath, the colors are quite vibrant and the font is a little fanciful to catch the eyes of young readers ().However, this is style doesn’t fit all genres, a non-fiction book or a science-fiction novel wouldn’t work with a young adult cover. Murphy discusses the best way to make an effective cover is to emulate those that are best-sellers. Many would consider this to be copying and being unoriginal, but Murphy argues that if an author wants their book to sell it should look like it belongs with the best sellers (Murphy). Furthermore, an effective book cover conveys the emotion of the story on the cover. In the case study Short Fuses by Stephen Leather. The original cover depicted a masked man with dynamite, a gun, the title, and the author’s name. The cover was revamped at the end of the first month with a few changes. The revamped cover had the same elements the difference was changing the position and the image of the thief to be fully facing the reader, the dynamite was also changed from being held by the thief to being next to the thief. These changes made the cover more engaging and suspenseful, it evokes excitement. While these were complete
It is the same in book cover design, if there is a beautiful image of person or landscape it has been used more often than not. While for many this would mean searching for a new image and possibly settling for something less than ideal, Murphy takes a different approach. Murphy acknowledges that many stock images are often used; however, it is more of a question of how it is used. If the books are from different genres than it has less chance of knowing it was the same stock image. However, if there is a book that uses the same stock image for the same genre, so long as your cover is the most effective and professional looking, your book should sell more than the other books using the same image. Murphy demonstrates this by showing various book covers using the same image of a woman with a birdcage, depending on the landscape and font, along with the image determines the effectiveness of the cover (Murphy). The use of stock images also has limitations such as, being unable to find a specific gun for an action or suspense novel. Murphy asserts that while an effort should be made about the images it is because the reader hasn’t read the book wouldn’t care for what type of gun is on the cover just so long as the cover is