November 20, 2024 • 42 mins
Unlock the secrets to crafting book covers that not only capture the eye but also embody the soul of your story. Join us with fiction author Rami Vance and Jake from J Kelly Design as we dismantle the myth that you can't judge a book by its cover. Discover how Rami's partnership with Jake revolutionized his career, particularly through the captivating design of "Setting Fires with Dragons," and learn why a well-designed cover is an essential element of your book’s success.
Explore the nuances of genre-specific cover design in a journey through fantasy and sci-fi landscapes. Learn how to tap into reader expectations by mastering the art of simplicity and clarity, drawing insights from Donald Miller's "Story Brand." We'll share the secret formula of "sell, tell, yell" to prioritize your cover elements, ensuring they leave a lasting impression and align perfectly with your target audience's desires.
Navigate the often-challenging waters of cover design feedback with professionalism and finesse. We’ll tackle the common pitfalls writers face when venturing into new genres and provide guidance on how to collaborate effectively with designers. Gain invaluable advice on maintaining mutual respect and understanding in these creative partnerships, helping you craft a cover that not only speaks to your readers but stands out in a crowded market.
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Here are some links that might come in handy:
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Must-watch episodes:
- SPS 044: Using A Free + Shipping Book Funnel with Anik Singal
- SPS 115: Using Atomic Habits To Write & Publish A Book with James Clear
- SPS 127: Traditional vs. Self Publishing: Which You Should Choose with Ruth Soukup
- SPS 095: The Five Love Languages: Selling 15 Million Copies with Gary Chapman
- SPS 056: How I Sold 46M Copies of My Self Published Book with Robert Kiyosaki
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, chandler Bolt here and welcome back to another
special episode of theSelf-Publishing School Podcast.
It is week two of the NaNoWriMoFiction Takeover.
That's right.
The podcast is getting takenover by the fictioneers, if you
can believe it, for the month ofNovember.
If you missed it, last week wehad an awesome session Go back
(00:26):
and watch it if you haven'talready with Steve Higgs, all
about seven-figure fiction.
So advice from a seven-figurefiction author.
Obviously, steve's supersuccessful has had a lot of
success with his fiction books.
It was a mind-blowing episode.
This week we've got anotherspecial guest, so we've got our
very own Rami Vance, aka AriVance, in the house.
A very successful fictionauthor runs the fiction program
(00:48):
here at selfpublishingcom.
And then we've got Jake, whoRami is going to intro in just a
second, a fellow SouthCarolinian which is a fun fact
and just an expert on fictioncovers.
So we're going to keep walkingour way through the core
elements of successful fictionthroughout the month of November
.
And we're going to keep walkingour way through the core
elements of successful fictionthroughout the month of November
and we've got four or fiveepisodes here.
(01:10):
So stay tuned.
Next week, go back to last weekif you haven't seen that yet,
and let's dive in.
So, rami, I'll pass it to you.
We can intro Jake.
And oh, one last thing I'llmention here y'all is Jake's
going to be doing somepresentation stuff.
So this is a great week toactually watch this on the
YouTube channel because there'sgoing to be some visuals.
(01:30):
Obviously, this is covers,fiction covers.
It's kind of hard to just speakabout that.
So check it out on the YouTubechannel.
Obviously, if you're justlistening to this, it's still
going to be helpful, but maybenot as much as if you can see
the visuals.
So that's all I got, rami, I'llkick it to you.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
All right.
So I just want to start off bysaying that everyone who's
listening here, your parents areliars, because they told us
never judge a book by its cover,and I can tell you right now
the cover is the most importantaspect of marketing your book.
If you don't get your coverright and I'm talking about
(02:07):
there's a lot of things to getright it's not just about pretty
covers.
In fact, I have a theory thatpretty covers don't sell.
It's more about like does thecover tell the reader what
they're going to get, and is itin line with what they want,
right?
And if you don't got that toget, and is it in line with what
they want, right, and if youdon't got that, you're dead in
(02:28):
the water.
And so I'm super excited becausemeeting jake and like working
with jake literally transformedmy career.
Um, jake, I owe him way moremoney than I've ever paid him.
Uh, sorry, jake, uh, I'll vimeoyou.
I don't know what you Americansuse, but yeah, but yeah, it is
absolutely true.
His covers transformed mycareer.
(02:51):
It started specifically with aseries called Setting Fires with
Dragons, where he so prior tothat, I had launched a book and
I had gotten a really greatcover and it was selling really
well.
But it was when Jake did thesetting fires for dragons covers
that things really kind ofstarted to grow and certainly
(03:13):
like got to give a shout out forkidnapping phoenixes and other
ways to dice cover Amanda.
That was amazing.
So without any further ado,jake, please walk us through
your mastery process.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
All right.
Well, thanks for first havingme on the podcast.
I'm humbled to be here.
I appreciate the kind wordsabout my work.
Ramya.
I've enjoyed working with youover I don't know how many years
now we've been working together.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Many, many many years , at least five.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Yeah, it's been a minute so I'll dive into my
slideshow First off.
My slideshow, or mypresentation, is called Badass
Book Covers 101.
And my business is called JKelly Design Badass Covers for
Badass Stories.
That's why all that kind ofgoes in together, and I've never
met anybody who didn't wanttheir cover to be called badass,
even if it was, you know, apoetry cover or a romance cover
(04:11):
like that.
I've never met anybody whowould turn down that compliment
and so, uh, I found that to bekind of my hook and how I kind
of operate and I hope that, uh,I hope that this presentation
kind of clarifies some some,some, some of the, the, the
pathway forward to get a reallycool book cover.
So we'll dive right in here.
I'm not sharing my screen, am I?
(04:31):
I am not.
Hey, you guys pay attention,I'm sorry.
All right, for the people athome who are audio listeners, it
doesn't matter, but for youfolks who are watching on video,
you might need to see my screen.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
So it's here now.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
All right, cool, sorry about that, I just dove
right in on my other monitordoing my slideshow.
You haven't missed these slides.
This is pretty much slidenumber one, aside from the intro
slide that says Badass Covers101.
But just starting off who I amand kind of, I guess, my resume,
so that you may be able to takewhat I say with some weight, I
have been designing book coversfor about 11 years now, and
(05:11):
eight years full-time, I thinkeight years full-time.
It kind of gets muddied inthere, but I've been designing
full-time for quite a while.
I've designed in pretty muchevery genre non-fiction and
fiction and so doing all thatmeans that I've made the
mistakes, I've seen the mistakesand I've seen the successes and
been a part of the successes,and thankfully I've been a part
(05:34):
of the latter more than theformer.
I have found my niche to be theurban fantasy, fantasy, sci-fi
area.
I really like cover art.
I really like doing characters.
I grew up drawing comic bookcharacters and just recreating
comic book covers that I sawbecause I liked them, and so I
really found that to be a nichefor me and so that's where I've
(05:56):
kind of put my efforts.
But this presentation, what I'mgoing to talk about.
I mean it can be applied toanything in any genre fiction or
nonfiction but I know you guysare focusing.
I mean it can be applied toanything in any genre fiction or
nonfiction but I know you guysare focusing on fiction here.
It can be applied to anyfiction genre.
Even though I am, you know, mybread and butter is sci fi and
fantasy.
You can put this anywhere.
The underpinning of what I'mtalking about can be applied
(06:17):
across the board in any genre.
I have designed probably closeto 2000 covers.
No-transcript people that I'm acover artist who live locally
(06:48):
around me because they just kindof look at me like I just said,
I eat grass for a living.
They have no idea what that isor that that's even a job.
So I've been real blessed to bein this and to find this area
and to be blessed with greatclients like Rami and many, many
others who continue to use myservices.
So all right.
(07:10):
So my presentation is verysimple my whole entire branding,
the whole entire process forcover design.
For me is a simple process andsimplicity kind of again
underpins will underpin theentire process and simplicity
kind of again underpins willunderpin the entire process what
(07:31):
I've learned over time doing somany covers is that a lot of
Authors kind of have the right,they have the right parts, but
they kind of have the wrongformula and so they plug in the
wrong things at the wrong timeand it can sometimes cause
clutter on a cover.
It can sometimes take a coverdown a pathway.
That's not that it doesn't endup serving the author in terms
(07:52):
of them hitting the marketplacecorrectly and that kind of stuff
.
So this is a kind of aformulate process that I use
over and over again to arrive atcovers that do sell well, do
perform well.
They get the author into themarketplace, into the genre
where they need to be, so thatthey can get in front of the
readers and be able to makesales and to grow their reader
(08:15):
base.
And the first part of thispresentation is the word sell.
All my three little words aresell, tell and yell.
And sell is the first one of myformula and what that basically
means is authors oftentimesapproach a cover design from the
(08:36):
author end of the story.
They know all the details, theyknow all the ins and outs
because obviously you've writtenthe story, you are very, very
familiar as an author witheverything about it and they
don't think in terms of a readerwho has no idea about the story
and doesn't and for lack of a,you know to be candid doesn't
(08:58):
care much about that story yetstory yet.
And so they don't approach itfrom that mindset of a reader
who has no idea, no investmentand no real thought toward that
story until they see that cover.
And so they approach it fromthe wrong end, if that makes
sense.
And so what I tell my authorsand how I try to approach my
(09:20):
cover design is let's start withthe reader first.
Who are we going for?
And this might seem very basicand very simple, but lot of
times authors, like I said, theyget off on the wrong path.
Right about here.
Um, if you're doing fantasy,obviously you're going for
fantasy, fantasy readers.
If you're going for urbanfantasy, urban fantasy, you're
going for romance, you're goingfor the romance readers, right?
Uh, it's really simple, um, but, like I said, it gets kind of
(09:42):
convoluted, uh, because authorstend to jump the gun and start
just trying to tell everythingabout the story on the cover and
they kind of skip the readerinvestment or the reader side,
the consumer side, of the coverprocess, because, as an author.
You've created a product andnow your book cover is
(10:02):
essentially your productpackaging for that story.
So you're a product packager.
That's what your cover ends upbeing.
So you need to make sure thatit appeals to the market, that
it is easily legible to themarket and that the market
you're aiming for, whateverreader base, whatever genre, can
understand and relate to thatproduct or that story.
So we start with the audience,and the best example that I can
(10:27):
give is a cereal aisle.
This is a really easy way forme to parallel this to authors
is if you're going to thegrocery store and you're going
for cereal, right, you alreadyknow what kind of cereal you
want.
Either you want sugary goodnessor you want the smart, healthy
(10:49):
type cereal.
And so in your mind, before youget to the cereal aisle, you're
already priming the pump inyour mind of what kind of cereal
you're looking for.
Now you may be lookingexplicitly for one cereal, maybe
Lucky Charms or whatever but ifyou know I'm going to go for
the sugary cereal, you knowyou're going to be looking for
the bright colors.
You're going to be looking forpossibly the cartoon characters.
(11:12):
You're going to be looking forthe loud packaging.
That's already in your mindbefore you even hit the cereal
aisle.
Same thing if you're going forthe healthy cereal, you're
already priming your pump inyour mind for that type of
cereal.
It's going to be minimalpackaging.
It's going to showcase theberries.
It's going to showcase cleandesign, minimal design to echo
(11:34):
the idea of it being healthy.
Now we know when we buy eitherone of these, that there's no
berries in the box.
We know there's no cartooncharacter in the box.
But this is product packaging.
This is meant to appeal to aspecific consumer and that's how
authors should approach theircover with the idea of I am
(11:55):
appealing to a specific consumerand I'm trying to get to them
and get their attention.
And so when you begin to thinkabout that, you start with your
reader base, first your reader,that buyer, and then you start
to plug in the elements of yourcover, which leads us to the
next part of the presentation,which is tell.
(12:16):
Right, you're telling yourstory.
You've written a unique storyin whatever genre it may be, and
now what you want to do is youwant to take that, those
elements, and plug those intowhat readers of that genre
expect to see.
So great example is fantasy,right, fantasy readers, like you
know a handful of I guess youmight say archetype or
(12:40):
overarching types of covers,right?
Either they like a smallsilhouette with a big epic
landscape, or they like to seethat character, that guy holding
the sword facing off againstthe dragon, or just him in some
sort of battle area or battletype situation.
These are common fantasy tropesthat we see in book covers.
(13:02):
Just like you have tropesinside of a genre, you have
tropes or trends in each genrewhen it comes to the cover, and
you should lean into thosetrends because they're going to
help position your cover in thatgenre so that readers can begin
to see and relate quicker tothat cover.
(13:25):
I read a book a while backcalled Story Brand by Donald
Miller.
I don't know if you guys everheard of it or not, but one of
the things that he says in thatstory, in that book, is he says
that consumers don't always buythe best product.
They buy the product that theycan understand the quickest.
Best product.
(13:47):
They buy the product that theycan understand the quickest, and
there's a lot of research andtruth to that.
And so when you are designingthat cover, either you're doing
it yourself or you're conveyinga cover brief to a designer.
Take that into consideration,into the sense that I have a
reader.
I want them to be able tounderstand that this is again
we're going to go with thefantasy genre because I love
(14:07):
fantasy.
I want them to understand thatA it's fantasy.
I want them to understand theunique elements of my story and
I want it to be easilyunderstandable.
That's so that they canunderstand it very quickly, so
it doesn't take a lot of time toprocess that cover and they can
decide whether they want toread more about the synopsis or
(14:29):
or if they're going to pass onthe cover and pass on the story
in the first place.
Take example, for for those ofyou that are listening audio,
you won't see this, but forthose of you that are watching
the video, the image I have here, right, we're just we're
telling the story.
There's a lot more that goes onin this story, in the brief that
I got from the client, but whenwe were done and we kind of
(14:49):
looked at the key elements ofthe story, it was, it was this
lady facing off against thisdinosaur like figure with magic
in her hand.
Those were the three elementsthat were kind of the main
talking points of this, or themain key elements of the story,
and I felt they were the onesthat we could showcase the
(15:10):
strongest so that we could putthem on the cover, so that
readers in this genre would beable to be able to see it,
process it and understand.
I want to know more about it,and what happens with authors is
, in my experience, especiallyfirst-time authors is they get a
lot of elements and they wantto just put them all on the
cover.
You know, I give the exampleall the time.
(15:33):
I got a brief a long time ago.
It was about this fantasy storyabout this clan of ogres who
were fighting the humans, butultimately it was the dark
wizard that was controlling theogres, and so the brief I got
was the client wanted the ogreto be standing over the hero
(15:53):
who's protecting his fallen loveinterest.
He's got his sword up in theair, the ogre is getting ready
to smash down his big club ontothe hero, but the ogre's face
facial expression is kind oftorn because he's not sure if
this is the right enemy or not.
And way back in the backgroundwe wanted to show a tower with
(16:14):
the dark wizard on it so that wecould convey that the dark
wizard was manipulating the ogreclan the entire time.
Like all these things, allthese elements, the author
wanted to just put all their puton the cover and while they are
true to the story, they're notnecessities for the cover.
All those parts don't have tobe on there, because when
(16:36):
readers are looking at theirnext purchase for a cover, when
they're scrolling Amazon, whenthey're scrolling and scanning
those thumbnails a cover whenthey're scrolling Amazon, when
they're scrolling and scanningthose thumbnails, that's when
that story brand quote comesinto play.
People will gravitate toward themessage they can understand the
fastest, more often than theone that might be the best
(16:57):
product or the more involved orwhatever, the one that they can
understand the quickest.
Because when you get into thatkind of stuff understanding
messages and trying to decipherimagery or text it ends up being
an effort on your mind.
You end up having to spendcalories in your brain to try
and process this, and so peopletend to go toward the path of
(17:20):
least resistance and they'regoing to want to go for the
cover that they can process thequickest.
And so when we were talking tomy client, we kind of boiled it
down to these elements and weamplified those elements.
And so that leads me to my nextand last slide, or my next part
of the last part of the formula, which is yell.
That creating a cover that canbe processed quickly really
(17:44):
comes into play, because ifyou're going to yell something,
you're not going to yell a giantlong string of text, right,
you're going to yell a shortcommand hey you, or hello, or
come over here.
You know it's going to be avery quick, very brief, very
loud statement, but it's goingto.
(18:05):
The key part is it's going tobe very, very short.
And so when I get a cover briefand I'm talking with the client
, the place I try to get us tois let's simplify this cover
down to its very basic elementsand then let's amplify those
elements and by doing that, itoften can lead to a very clear,
a very concise, a very own pointfor the genre cover and it will
(18:27):
allow that cover to beprocessed visually very quickly.
And the thing about it isauthors don't take this into
consideration, but peopleprocess thumbnails really
quickly, and authors themselves,you guys are consumers on
Netflix, on Hulu or even as areader yourself, and think about
(18:49):
how fast you give credence to acover or a thumbnail on Amazon
or a thumbnail in Netflix orHulu or wherever.
If you're not looking for aspecific show and you're just
looking for thumbnails totrigger you, you'll spend, like
it's like 0.05 seconds perthumbnail.
(19:10):
Netflix did a study on that afew years back and it was less
than a second was the arrived attime frame that consumers spend
on looking at thumbnails.
We process thumbnails, weprocess imagery so quickly and
you want to make sure that yourcover is clear enough and
(19:31):
concise enough that it can beprocessed very, very quickly so
that it can entice and hook areader to continue on to your
cover, to click on your link tofind out about your synopsis and
then get them to buy the book,to find out about your synopsis
and then get them to buy thebook.
And, like I said, what happensis a lot of authors, especially
first or second authors theywant to put so much on the cover
(19:57):
that it ends up muddying.
It ends up muddying the impactof that cover and they get lost
in these little details that areawesome.
I mean, there's nothing wrongwith necessarily having certain
things on a cover, but they getlost in these little details
that are awesome.
I mean there's nothing wrongwith necessarily having certain
things on a cover, but they getlost in these little details,
thinking that that's going to bethe hang up, that's going to be
the deciding factor of whetheror not a reader will click on
(20:17):
their story or not.
And when really it ends upbeing these one or two large
elements on a cover that thereader will decide I want to
know more or I don't want toknow anymore.
I'm going to go on and go tothe next one.
And if you get a cover that'svery cluttered and very
cluttered or just veryconvoluted, readers won't
process it.
They'll look at it.
(20:37):
I don't understand it.
I'm not trying to figure it out.
I'm clicking on to the next oneand then you've lost a
potential sale Again for theguys that, for the people that
are listening to audio, youwon't get this impact.
But on my next slide I've got aguy squaring off against a
dragon.
It looks like there's a lothappening in this cover, but
there's really not.
It's really just the soldierversus the dragon, with a very
(21:01):
atmospheric and, you know,contrasty background, with some
fire back there.
There's really not a lothappening.
And this cover really doesembody the idea of simplify and
amplify.
What was the main points ofthis story?
The sci-fi soldier versus thedragon.
That was the main overarchingelements that stuck out when I
(21:22):
read this brief.
Those were the two things thatI wanted to highlight.
I needed to put in nothing elseto create this cover and to
make it impactful.
And when you begin to do that,when you begin to really boil a
cover down to one or twospecific elements, you can
really pay a lot of attention tothose one or two elements and
make those elements very, veryimpactful so that they do stand
(21:44):
out, so that they are.
So they do stand out, so thatthey are memorable and that will
connect with your readers whenthey see that, uh, this is a
sci-fi.
This again, this, this image wehave up on screen right now is,
uh, it's sci-fi.
It's a sci-fi, uh story about,you know again, the soldier
versus the dragon right.
Um, and readers in that genrelove those two elements.
(22:04):
They love sci-fi soldiers andthey love a good monster, and so
we put those two on there and Isimplified it down.
I amplified those two elementsto be the main key points of the
story.
You can have other elements inyour cover, but they need to be
treated in a very tertiarymanner, not secondary, tertiary.
So you have the one primarylevel, you skip your secondary
(22:26):
level and anything else istertiary manner, not secondary,
tertiary.
So you have the one primarylevel, you skip your secondary
level and anything else istertiary.
If it makes it on there, it'sgreat, it does, it doesn't.
It's not that important.
It's one or two elements thatare your main selling point to
whatever genre you're going for.
They'll just be one or two keyelements that are the main
calling points that come fromyour story and so that can lead
(22:49):
you to a very strong andpowerful story if you follow
this formula and you follow itin that order sell, tell and
yell.
And I do have one more slidethat I do like to put in here,
and that is yell, yell, yell.
This is not really a part ofthe formula, because this
doesn't have anything to do withme per se, but one of the
(23:11):
things that I've seen authors dois they get their cover, they
put it on Amazon, they make apost on Facebook and then that's
it, and what you need to dothen as an author is take that
cover, which again, is yourproduct packaging.
That's your main image that isgoing to sell your product, and
you need to put it out whereveryou can, as much as you can.
(23:34):
You need to yell, yell, yellover and over and over again to
your potential audience.
If I remember right, I thinkit's six or seven or eight
points of contact a consumerneeds before they will decide to
investigate a product further.
The same is true for books.
It's the same process.
(23:55):
People need to see theseelements and familiar elements.
They need to see that samecover or that same image over
and over and over again, so thatit continues to get embedded in
their mind, so that they willeventually click on it and find
out more and and get you to thesell point.
And a lot of authors, they,they get it, they do a little
bit and then they just kind ofstop when they don't necessarily
(24:17):
get the results they thoughtthey might get.
You have to keep putting it outthere to remain fresh in your
readers and and potentialconsumers minds.
So so that's my, that's myformula, that's my approach Sell
, tell, yell and at the end ofthe day you'll end up with a
badass cover.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
So Amazing, amazing, amazing.
I got a bunch of questions.
I hope you don't mind.
You know, when you get a coverfrom a genre that you don't
necessarily know, because I knowthat even you and I have had
this experience where I wasdoing writing in areas that you
(24:59):
you didn't, you literally wereasking me questions on what is
this and stuff like that.
So how do you research it tofigure out what those elements
of cell tell yell is?
Speaker 3 (25:11):
You know it.
Just, it does depend on thegenre as far as it goes.
Some of them that I might notbe exactly familiar with.
I'm probably gonna pronounce itwrong, but I just I did that
cover for you a couple monthsago.
It's Wuxia.
How do you say that?
Wren, yeah, yeah, wren, butwhat, what, what, what, what.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Oh, oh yeah, sorry.
Yeah, I mean it's kind ofcolloquially known as
cultivation, cultivation.
Yeah, yeah, OK.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Cultivation.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
There, you go so.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
So yeah, I had to go and Google that, I had to kind
of dive into a little bit.
But you know, it's kind of aparallel genre or the covers
anyways do kind of parallel thefantasy genre and the sci fi
genres really well, parallel, uh, the fantasy genre and the
sci-fi genres really well.
And so I I needed to kind ofreevaluate how I frame things
and how I and how I showcasecertain things, um, to kind of
(26:02):
align it with the cultivation,you know, genre as far as it
goes.
So I mean, just, you know, Idive in and do some research uh
and kind of try to get a feelfor, uh, for what it is.
And one of the things about youknow, about cover designers in
general is, you know, most of us, especially if we're doing this
full time and this is what wedo we're usually visual
(26:24):
creatures and so we can processvisual data really quickly and
kind of understand.
Okay, this is kind of the trendof where I need to go, this is
the field of what I need to go,this is the field of what I need
to go toward really quickly.
And so I mean, you know, weneed to just do a little
research and typically we canget it down pretty quick.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and you nailed it on the
cultivation cover because youknow, like I was saying earlier,
pretty covers don't sell.
It's about hitting those tropesright, just to use that word.
Yeah, uh, right, and to hit theaudience.
So I actually like gave theoriginal cover you made because
you remember you did twoversions of it and then the
(27:04):
second cover you made to a bunchof other authors who work, who
write in cultivation as well,and yeah, they love the second
cover, like the second cover youtotally nailed, um, okay.
So then I guess, like, soobviously, like you know, every
author wants a great cover tosell their book, to really kind
of nail that piece of theirmarketing.
(27:25):
Um, now, not every author isgoing to be able to work with
you, right?
So you're busy, you're, you'renot the cheapest guy, all of
that stuff right now, I I don'tI will say to everyone listening
you should try to work with him.
I will also say that I schedulemonths in advance for any cover
I do with him.
(27:45):
So, um, but my question is islike so if they don't get to
work with you, they don't havethat like guarantee that this is
an amazing cover.
What should they be looking forto actually know that this
cover is worth?
You know, slapping on their bargreat question uh, you know,
(28:07):
that's it's.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
it's you mean in terms of like?
Are you talking about in termsof when they're looking for
another cover artist to hire, orjust when they have that cover
in their hand to know if this isone?
That's on point?
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yeah, I heard how do I hire a good cover designer and
how do I make sure that thecover that they're giving me is
good and on market so that thebook actually sells.
Okay, okay, yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Well, the first one, you know, finding a good cover
designer.
I would I would start withasking for recommendations.
Most of the authors that I knowthey're plugged into the,
they're plugged into someFacebook group already.
They're plugged into, you know,or they're on Reddit or they're
somewhere.
And I would say, ask forrecommendations.
(28:52):
And I would say, ask forrecommendations.
You're going to get people whoare going to be able to give you
some, you know, some real time,real experience with said cover
artists probably.
And they, and then you know,you'll probably get a whole
bunch of people who you knowgive you a wide range of
recommendations where you knowthey got it from Fiverr, or I
hired this guy specifically, orwhatever.
And then you know, you do yourdue diligence, you look at you,
(29:15):
you go and you look thoseresources up and again, you're
going to get a wide range of ofthe designers.
You're going to get a widerange of price points and that
kind of stuff.
You know it can be somewhattricky to navigate some of those
, some of those waters, trickyto navigate some of those, some
(29:35):
of those waters, um, but I would, you know, I would start there
and kind of evaluate, um,evaluate the cover artist from
there.
You know, if, if, if, if you'relooking for fantasy and you get
a link to somebody and andthey've got a bunch of stuff
that you don't really relate, abunch of cover that doesn't,
that don't really kind of speakto you in fantasy, they're
probably not going to be the oneyou want to work with.
You know, even if there was anauthor who said, oh, I love
working with so-and-so, but ifyou know that person doesn't
(29:58):
really focus in in fantasy,they're probably not going to
understand that genre very, verywell, to be able to hit it on
point.
So you want to make sure youfind a cover artist who has a
very not has a very in-depthportfolio in whatever genre
you're looking to write in.
As far as it goes, but, again,like I said, the price point is
(30:20):
going to vary depending on whereyou go.
I will say this you know thetried and true thing of you get
what you pay for does hold true.
Not that to say that you can'tfind a cover artist.
You know into the in the low100s or even you know in that
range in different places.
I used to charge 150 bucks.
That was my rate a long, long,long, long time ago, but now my
(30:44):
skill set has evolved since thatpoint to where it is now.
But that aside, I mean you canfind author.
You can find good people at anyprice point and you can find
bad people at any price point.
So I mean you can find goodpeople at any price point and
you can find bad people at anyprice point.
So I mean, take it into therecommendations, personal
recommendations, reach out tothose cover artists and one of
the things I'll tell you howfast do they reply to you?
(31:05):
How do they reply to you?
There's going to be a myriad ofthings that you're buying other
than just that artist's talent,of things that you're buying
other than just that artist'stalent.
You're buying thetrustworthiness of the artist,
the reliability of that artist.
There's other things that arebuilt in there that you need to
be aware of when it comes togetting your product to a final
(31:26):
point with an artist, but Iunderstand it can be sometimes
hard waters to navigate.
As far as it goes, all right,I'll kind of beat that horse.
I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
And then how to make sure that we're on point for the
genre.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
That's a really fantastic question because, well
, I'm not going to mention theauthor's name, but but I had an
author reach out to me Literallyabout three days ago and they
couldn't get.
They couldn't get in contactwith their cover artists.
They had done a cover art forabout a year.
It'd been about a year back andthey had a paperback layout
already.
The cover artists had doneeverything and they were like
(32:03):
you know, the cover artists dida great, a great layout for the
cover.
I love the cover, but now I'vewent back and reedited it and
I've lost 200 pages.
I can't get in touch with them.
Can you fix this paperback forme so that I can get it to the
right format?
And I didn't have time and Ididn't want to fool with it
(32:24):
anyways.
But they said I love this cover, the co-authors did a great job
.
And then I looked at it and Ithought no, they didn't.
I thought immediately thiscover is not going to do
anything for this author, and soI understand that that is a
real concern.
I would, number one ask forfeedback.
And that's a minefield in andof itself.
But take the cover, ask forfeedback.
(32:46):
Do not look for the outliercomments.
Look for the general trend ofthe comments you get from that
feedback.
It's multiple eyes.
Nothing wrong with gettingmultiple eyes on it to give them
your feedback.
Let them talk to you and seewhat it says, see what a group
of people might say.
Make sure, wherever you do toget that feedback, make sure
(33:08):
it's a trusted source.
So if you go onbookcovercritiquecom and there's
5,000 people on there and youpost your cover up, that's not
going to be a good place to getfeedback.
You need to make sure that thepeople that you are getting
feedback from have a vestedinterest in your success so
they're not going to pullpunches with you.
(33:28):
It's not going to be your wifewho goes oh, I love it, and she
has no idea what a good coverlooks like.
It needs to be people that aregoing to give you valued
feedback because they haven'tinvested in.
They want to see you succeedtoo.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
And so they're not going to let a cover get by.
that doesn't meet the mark, youknow, and and so, um, that's
where I would start with those,those two things, and I think,
honest feedback, and they'realso in your genre or interested
in your genre, right, I don'tknow fiction as well as you guys
do, but on the nonfiction sideof things, one of the biggest
mistakes I see people make istaking advice from people who
(34:03):
aren't, or critiques from peoplewho aren't in their target
market and it's just not reallyrelevant because they're not in
your target market.
I want to go lightning round.
We're kind of right up at timehere.
I'm going to ask a finalquestion.
Then I'll go around the horn toyou, rami, to ask a final
question.
Mine would be Jake, what do yousay to the people who cause Rami
I hear you talk about in ourfiction program and in full-time
(34:26):
fiction, tier ones writing tomarket, meeting genre
expectations, all that stuffwhich is directly in line with
making sure your cover is togenre, and all that stuff?
What do you say, jake, to theperson who's like, yeah, but I'm
super creative and I got anidea that's outside of the box
(34:47):
and I don't want to be in thebox on genre.
What's your take on that?
Speaker 3 (34:52):
uh, yeah, that's gonna be called the black swan,
right um mentality.
That's where, you know, theblack swan stands out above all
else.
Uh, you know what happens tothe black swan?
It usually gets killed by thewhite swans and that's the short
answer.
I mean, hey, listen, you mayhave an idea that that, that,
that that creates a cover trend,that you know that that catches
(35:15):
fire and that sells millions ofcopies.
The chances of you having thatis about the chances of you
winning a lottery.
That's what it boils down to.
It's risky, believe me.
I've had clients who wouldn'tlisten to me at all and they
wanted it their way and theypaid me right off the cliff.
You know, as far as it goes.
I mean I'll do it.
(35:36):
But I mean I will try my bestto get them lined up.
But you know, the Black Swansoften get killed, unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Yeah, I think like one of the big mistakes that
young writers make like I seethis with students all the time
is they'll go out and they'llget this like beautifully
illustrated cover.
They'll spend like three, fouror $5,000 sometimes on this
beautifully illustrated cover.
That is to the spec of whatthey wanted, and my thought when
(36:07):
they bring it to me is, oh,that's going to make a nice
desktop wallpaper, but it's notgoing to sell anything, right,
so okay, so I guess that's my.
My last question to you then isyou know you kind of addressed
like the price ranges that youngwriters can find and stuff like
(36:30):
that, but when they are gettinga bad cover from a cover
designer, how do they like, howdo they tactfully send feedback
for those changes like, orsimply just say, this sucks and
I need to move on right, likehow you know, because a lot of
times I find that young writersget stuck with terrible covers
(36:51):
because they're too embarrassedto give feedback or push back
right.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Um, I mean, uh, my, my thought, my or my advice
there is be tactful, uh, berespectful.
You know, as far as it goes, uh, you know it, does they bad
covers happen, uh, and sometimes, you know, uh, they can happen
for various reasons, whether thedesigner doesn't get it, the
prop doesn't get the, doesn'tget the idea, or maybe maybe the
skill set's not there and the.
You know they can happen forvarious reasons, whether the
designer doesn't get it, theprop doesn't get the idea, or
maybe the skill set's not thereand the.
You know the author or clientsrealize and this is not the
person for the job.
You know different coverartists will have different, you
(37:25):
know different, I guess,protocols for that.
You know, if you get to a pointwhere the author's like, you
know you're not giving me whatI'm looking for, you know, then
you know most, most coverdesigners are going to be like
well, you owe me so much moneyfor my time involved or whatever
.
And you know let's.
You know we'll, we'll, we'llpart ways that if they're
(37:45):
professional, most of themshould handle it in a
professional way.
But you are giving feedback, youknow.
So when you do approach thatfeedback that will be very
sensitive.
Think about how.
You know you, as an author,want to get feedback.
When you want somebody to giveyou your story right, you don't
want them to be like man, thissucks.
You know most people don't wantto hear that.
They want to hear somethingtactful.
You know this is notpositioning you well here.
Yada, yada, yada.
(38:06):
And so I would just say betactful and be respectful and at
the end of the day, this is abusiness man.
We should be professionals onboth sides of the keyboard
designer and author and soyou're going to have people who
don't follow that, of course,but as long as you maintain your
professionalism, you should beable to navigate those waters.
As far as it goes, I love itwell, this has been awesome.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
And, rami, something about you and them South
Carolina boys.
Huh, you're just surrounded byus.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
It's got to be the accent.
It's got to be the accent.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Jake, this has been awesome.
As we wrap here, where canpeople go to find out more about
you, your work, all that goodstuff?
Speaker 3 (38:48):
jcalebdesigncom is my website, so that's letter J,
the word Caleb and the worddesign all strung togethercom.
You can find me on any of thesocial medias and, like I said,
I do this full time, all thetime, and so feel free to reach
out to me through any of thosemodes if you so desire.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Love it.
Jcalebdesigncom.
Amazing, it'd been anotherawesome episode.
Guys, join us back here nextweek.
Uh, for the fiction NaNoWriMotakeover of the podcast.
Uh and uh, if you're interestedin checking out what we do at
selfpublishingcom and thefiction department, rami and the
team do an incredible job.
We've got full-time fictiontraining, fundamentals of
(39:30):
fiction and story training allthat stuff Go to
selfpublishingcom.
Forward slash fiction book acall with the team.
We're happy to chat about yourfiction work and how we might be
able to help atselfpublishingcom.
Forward slash fiction Fellas.
Thank you, guys Appreciate you.
Thanks for having me.
Hey, chandler Bolt here and welcome back to another
special episode of theSelf-Publishing School Podcast.
It is week two of the NaNoWriMoFiction Takeover.
That's right.
The podcast is getting takenover by the fictioneers, if you
can believe it, for the month ofNovember.
If you missed it, last week wehad an awesome session Go back
(00:26):
and watch it if you haven'talready with Steve Higgs, all
about seven-figure fiction.
So advice from a seven-figurefiction author.
Obviously, steve's supersuccessful has had a lot of
success with his fiction books.
It was a mind-blowing episode.
This week we've got anotherspecial guest, so we've got our
very own Rami Vance, aka AriVance, in the house.
A very successful fictionauthor runs the fiction program
(00:48):
here at selfpublishingcom.
And then we've got Jake, whoRami is going to intro in just a
second, a fellow SouthCarolinian which is a fun fact
and just an expert on fictioncovers.
So we're going to keep walkingour way through the core
elements of successful fictionthroughout the month of November
.
And we're going to keep walkingour way through the core
elements of successful fictionthroughout the month of November
and we've got four or fiveepisodes here.
(01:10):
So stay tuned.
Next week, go back to last weekif you haven't seen that yet,
and let's dive in.
So, rami, I'll pass it to you.
We can intro Jake.
And oh, one last thing I'llmention here y'all is Jake's
going to be doing somepresentation stuff.
So this is a great week toactually watch this on the
YouTube channel because there'sgoing to be some visuals.
(01:30):
Obviously, this is covers,fiction covers.
It's kind of hard to just speakabout that.
So check it out on the YouTubechannel.
Obviously, if you're justlistening to this, it's still
going to be helpful, but maybenot as much as if you can see
the visuals.
So that's all I got, rami, I'llkick it to you.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
All right.
So I just want to start off bysaying that everyone who's
listening here, your parents areliars, because they told us
never judge a book by its cover,and I can tell you right now
the cover is the most importantaspect of marketing your book.
If you don't get your coverright and I'm talking about
(02:07):
there's a lot of things to getright it's not just about pretty
covers.
In fact, I have a theory thatpretty covers don't sell.
It's more about like does thecover tell the reader what
they're going to get, and is itin line with what they want,
right?
And if you don't got that toget, and is it in line with what
they want, right, and if youdon't got that, you're dead in
(02:28):
the water.
And so I'm super excited becausemeeting jake and like working
with jake literally transformedmy career.
Um, jake, I owe him way moremoney than I've ever paid him.
Uh, sorry, jake, uh, I'll vimeoyou.
I don't know what you Americansuse, but yeah, but yeah, it is
absolutely true.
His covers transformed mycareer.
(02:51):
It started specifically with aseries called Setting Fires with
Dragons, where he so prior tothat, I had launched a book and
I had gotten a really greatcover and it was selling really
well.
But it was when Jake did thesetting fires for dragons covers
that things really kind ofstarted to grow and certainly
(03:13):
like got to give a shout out forkidnapping phoenixes and other
ways to dice cover Amanda.
That was amazing.
So without any further ado,jake, please walk us through
your mastery process.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
All right.
Well, thanks for first havingme on the podcast.
I'm humbled to be here.
I appreciate the kind wordsabout my work.
Ramya.
I've enjoyed working with youover I don't know how many years
now we've been working together.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Many, many many years , at least five.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Yeah, it's been a minute so I'll dive into my
slideshow First off.
My slideshow, or mypresentation, is called Badass
Book Covers 101.
And my business is called JKelly Design Badass Covers for
Badass Stories.
That's why all that kind ofgoes in together, and I've never
met anybody who didn't wanttheir cover to be called badass,
even if it was, you know, apoetry cover or a romance cover
(04:11):
like that.
I've never met anybody whowould turn down that compliment
and so, uh, I found that to bekind of my hook and how I kind
of operate and I hope that, uh,I hope that this presentation
kind of clarifies some some,some, some of the, the, the
pathway forward to get a reallycool book cover.
So we'll dive right in here.
I'm not sharing my screen, am I?
(04:31):
I am not.
Hey, you guys pay attention,I'm sorry.
All right, for the people athome who are audio listeners, it
doesn't matter, but for youfolks who are watching on video,
you might need to see my screen.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
So it's here now.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
All right, cool, sorry about that, I just dove
right in on my other monitordoing my slideshow.
You haven't missed these slides.
This is pretty much slidenumber one, aside from the intro
slide that says Badass Covers101.
But just starting off who I amand kind of, I guess, my resume,
so that you may be able to takewhat I say with some weight, I
have been designing book coversfor about 11 years now, and
(05:11):
eight years full-time, I thinkeight years full-time.
It kind of gets muddied inthere, but I've been designing
full-time for quite a while.
I've designed in pretty muchevery genre non-fiction and
fiction and so doing all thatmeans that I've made the
mistakes, I've seen the mistakesand I've seen the successes and
been a part of the successes,and thankfully I've been a part
(05:34):
of the latter more than theformer.
I have found my niche to be theurban fantasy, fantasy, sci-fi
area.
I really like cover art.
I really like doing characters.
I grew up drawing comic bookcharacters and just recreating
comic book covers that I sawbecause I liked them, and so I
really found that to be a nichefor me and so that's where I've
(05:56):
kind of put my efforts.
But this presentation, what I'mgoing to talk about.
I mean it can be applied toanything in any genre fiction or
nonfiction but I know you guysare focusing.
I mean it can be applied toanything in any genre fiction or
nonfiction but I know you guysare focusing on fiction here.
It can be applied to anyfiction genre.
Even though I am, you know, mybread and butter is sci fi and
fantasy.
You can put this anywhere.
The underpinning of what I'mtalking about can be applied
(06:17):
across the board in any genre.
I have designed probably closeto 2000 covers.
No-transcript people that I'm acover artist who live locally
(06:48):
around me because they just kindof look at me like I just said,
I eat grass for a living.
They have no idea what that isor that that's even a job.
So I've been real blessed to bein this and to find this area
and to be blessed with greatclients like Rami and many, many
others who continue to use myservices.
So all right.
(07:10):
So my presentation is verysimple my whole entire branding,
the whole entire process forcover design.
For me is a simple process andsimplicity kind of again
underpins will underpin theentire process and simplicity
kind of again underpins willunderpin the entire process what
(07:31):
I've learned over time doing somany covers is that a lot of
Authors kind of have the right,they have the right parts, but
they kind of have the wrongformula and so they plug in the
wrong things at the wrong timeand it can sometimes cause
clutter on a cover.
It can sometimes take a coverdown a pathway.
That's not that it doesn't endup serving the author in terms
(07:52):
of them hitting the marketplacecorrectly and that kind of stuff
.
So this is a kind of aformulate process that I use
over and over again to arrive atcovers that do sell well, do
perform well.
They get the author into themarketplace, into the genre
where they need to be, so thatthey can get in front of the
readers and be able to makesales and to grow their reader
(08:15):
base.
And the first part of thispresentation is the word sell.
All my three little words aresell, tell and yell.
And sell is the first one of myformula and what that basically
means is authors oftentimesapproach a cover design from the
(08:36):
author end of the story.
They know all the details, theyknow all the ins and outs
because obviously you've writtenthe story, you are very, very
familiar as an author witheverything about it and they
don't think in terms of a readerwho has no idea about the story
and doesn't and for lack of a,you know to be candid doesn't
(08:58):
care much about that story yetstory yet.
And so they don't approach itfrom that mindset of a reader
who has no idea, no investmentand no real thought toward that
story until they see that cover.
And so they approach it fromthe wrong end, if that makes
sense.
And so what I tell my authorsand how I try to approach my
(09:20):
cover design is let's start withthe reader first.
Who are we going for?
And this might seem very basicand very simple, but lot of
times authors, like I said, theyget off on the wrong path.
Right about here.
Um, if you're doing fantasy,obviously you're going for
fantasy, fantasy readers.
If you're going for urbanfantasy, urban fantasy, you're
going for romance, you're goingfor the romance readers, right?
Uh, it's really simple, um, but, like I said, it gets kind of
(09:42):
convoluted, uh, because authorstend to jump the gun and start
just trying to tell everythingabout the story on the cover and
they kind of skip the readerinvestment or the reader side,
the consumer side, of the coverprocess, because, as an author.
You've created a product andnow your book cover is
(10:02):
essentially your productpackaging for that story.
So you're a product packager.
That's what your cover ends upbeing.
So you need to make sure thatit appeals to the market, that
it is easily legible to themarket and that the market
you're aiming for, whateverreader base, whatever genre, can
understand and relate to thatproduct or that story.
So we start with the audience,and the best example that I can
(10:27):
give is a cereal aisle.
This is a really easy way forme to parallel this to authors
is if you're going to thegrocery store and you're going
for cereal, right, you alreadyknow what kind of cereal you
want.
Either you want sugary goodnessor you want the smart, healthy
(10:49):
type cereal.
And so in your mind, before youget to the cereal aisle, you're
already priming the pump inyour mind of what kind of cereal
you're looking for.
Now you may be lookingexplicitly for one cereal, maybe
Lucky Charms or whatever but ifyou know I'm going to go for
the sugary cereal, you knowyou're going to be looking for
the bright colors.
You're going to be looking forpossibly the cartoon characters.
(11:12):
You're going to be looking forthe loud packaging.
That's already in your mindbefore you even hit the cereal
aisle.
Same thing if you're going forthe healthy cereal, you're
already priming your pump inyour mind for that type of
cereal.
It's going to be minimalpackaging.
It's going to showcase theberries.
It's going to showcase cleandesign, minimal design to echo
(11:34):
the idea of it being healthy.
Now we know when we buy eitherone of these, that there's no
berries in the box.
We know there's no cartooncharacter in the box.
But this is product packaging.
This is meant to appeal to aspecific consumer and that's how
authors should approach theircover with the idea of I am
(11:55):
appealing to a specific consumerand I'm trying to get to them
and get their attention.
And so when you begin to thinkabout that, you start with your
reader base, first your reader,that buyer, and then you start
to plug in the elements of yourcover, which leads us to the
next part of the presentation,which is tell.
(12:16):
Right, you're telling yourstory.
You've written a unique storyin whatever genre it may be, and
now what you want to do is youwant to take that, those
elements, and plug those intowhat readers of that genre
expect to see.
So great example is fantasy,right, fantasy readers, like you
know a handful of I guess youmight say archetype or
(12:40):
overarching types of covers,right?
Either they like a smallsilhouette with a big epic
landscape, or they like to seethat character, that guy holding
the sword facing off againstthe dragon, or just him in some
sort of battle area or battletype situation.
These are common fantasy tropesthat we see in book covers.
(13:02):
Just like you have tropesinside of a genre, you have
tropes or trends in each genrewhen it comes to the cover, and
you should lean into thosetrends because they're going to
help position your cover in thatgenre so that readers can begin
to see and relate quicker tothat cover.
(13:25):
I read a book a while backcalled Story Brand by Donald
Miller.
I don't know if you guys everheard of it or not, but one of
the things that he says in thatstory, in that book, is he says
that consumers don't always buythe best product.
They buy the product that theycan understand the quickest.
Best product.
(13:47):
They buy the product that theycan understand the quickest, and
there's a lot of research andtruth to that.
And so when you are designingthat cover, either you're doing
it yourself or you're conveyinga cover brief to a designer.
Take that into consideration,into the sense that I have a
reader.
I want them to be able tounderstand that this is again
we're going to go with thefantasy genre because I love
(14:07):
fantasy.
I want them to understand thatA it's fantasy.
I want them to understand theunique elements of my story and
I want it to be easilyunderstandable.
That's so that they canunderstand it very quickly, so
it doesn't take a lot of time toprocess that cover and they can
decide whether they want toread more about the synopsis or
(14:29):
or if they're going to pass onthe cover and pass on the story
in the first place.
Take example, for for those ofyou that are listening audio,
you won't see this, but forthose of you that are watching
the video, the image I have here, right, we're just we're
telling the story.
There's a lot more that goes onin this story, in the brief that
I got from the client, but whenwe were done and we kind of
(14:49):
looked at the key elements ofthe story, it was, it was this
lady facing off against thisdinosaur like figure with magic
in her hand.
Those were the three elementsthat were kind of the main
talking points of this, or themain key elements of the story,
and I felt they were the onesthat we could showcase the
(15:10):
strongest so that we could putthem on the cover, so that
readers in this genre would beable to be able to see it,
process it and understand.
I want to know more about it,and what happens with authors is
, in my experience, especiallyfirst-time authors is they get a
lot of elements and they wantto just put them all on the
cover.
You know, I give the exampleall the time.
(15:33):
I got a brief a long time ago.
It was about this fantasy storyabout this clan of ogres who
were fighting the humans, butultimately it was the dark
wizard that was controlling theogres, and so the brief I got
was the client wanted the ogreto be standing over the hero
(15:53):
who's protecting his fallen loveinterest.
He's got his sword up in theair, the ogre is getting ready
to smash down his big club ontothe hero, but the ogre's face
facial expression is kind oftorn because he's not sure if
this is the right enemy or not.
And way back in the backgroundwe wanted to show a tower with
(16:14):
the dark wizard on it so that wecould convey that the dark
wizard was manipulating the ogreclan the entire time.
Like all these things, allthese elements, the author
wanted to just put all their puton the cover and while they are
true to the story, they're notnecessities for the cover.
All those parts don't have tobe on there, because when
(16:36):
readers are looking at theirnext purchase for a cover, when
they're scrolling Amazon, whenthey're scrolling and scanning
those thumbnails a cover whenthey're scrolling Amazon, when
they're scrolling and scanningthose thumbnails, that's when
that story brand quote comesinto play.
People will gravitate toward themessage they can understand the
fastest, more often than theone that might be the best
(16:57):
product or the more involved orwhatever, the one that they can
understand the quickest.
Because when you get into thatkind of stuff understanding
messages and trying to decipherimagery or text it ends up being
an effort on your mind.
You end up having to spendcalories in your brain to try
and process this, and so peopletend to go toward the path of
(17:20):
least resistance and they'regoing to want to go for the
cover that they can process thequickest.
And so when we were talking tomy client, we kind of boiled it
down to these elements and weamplified those elements.
And so that leads me to my nextand last slide, or my next part
of the last part of the formula, which is yell.
That creating a cover that canbe processed quickly really
(17:44):
comes into play, because ifyou're going to yell something,
you're not going to yell a giantlong string of text, right,
you're going to yell a shortcommand hey you, or hello, or
come over here.
You know it's going to be avery quick, very brief, very
loud statement, but it's goingto.
(18:05):
The key part is it's going tobe very, very short.
And so when I get a cover briefand I'm talking with the client
, the place I try to get us tois let's simplify this cover
down to its very basic elementsand then let's amplify those
elements and by doing that, itoften can lead to a very clear,
a very concise, a very own pointfor the genre cover and it will
(18:27):
allow that cover to beprocessed visually very quickly.
And the thing about it isauthors don't take this into
consideration, but peopleprocess thumbnails really
quickly, and authors themselves,you guys are consumers on
Netflix, on Hulu or even as areader yourself, and think about
(18:49):
how fast you give credence to acover or a thumbnail on Amazon
or a thumbnail in Netflix orHulu or wherever.
If you're not looking for aspecific show and you're just
looking for thumbnails totrigger you, you'll spend, like
it's like 0.05 seconds perthumbnail.
(19:10):
Netflix did a study on that afew years back and it was less
than a second was the arrived attime frame that consumers spend
on looking at thumbnails.
We process thumbnails, weprocess imagery so quickly and
you want to make sure that yourcover is clear enough and
(19:31):
concise enough that it can beprocessed very, very quickly so
that it can entice and hook areader to continue on to your
cover, to click on your link tofind out about your synopsis and
then get them to buy the book,to find out about your synopsis
and then get them to buy thebook.
And, like I said, what happensis a lot of authors, especially
first or second authors theywant to put so much on the cover
(19:57):
that it ends up muddying.
It ends up muddying the impactof that cover and they get lost
in these little details that areawesome.
I mean, there's nothing wrongwith necessarily having certain
things on a cover, but they getlost in these little details
that are awesome.
I mean there's nothing wrongwith necessarily having certain
things on a cover, but they getlost in these little details,
thinking that that's going to bethe hang up, that's going to be
the deciding factor of whetheror not a reader will click on
(20:17):
their story or not.
And when really it ends upbeing these one or two large
elements on a cover that thereader will decide I want to
know more or I don't want toknow anymore.
I'm going to go on and go tothe next one.
And if you get a cover that'svery cluttered and very
cluttered or just veryconvoluted, readers won't
process it.
They'll look at it.
(20:37):
I don't understand it.
I'm not trying to figure it out.
I'm clicking on to the next oneand then you've lost a
potential sale Again for theguys that, for the people that
are listening to audio, youwon't get this impact.
But on my next slide I've got aguy squaring off against a
dragon.
It looks like there's a lothappening in this cover, but
there's really not.
It's really just the soldierversus the dragon, with a very
(21:01):
atmospheric and, you know,contrasty background, with some
fire back there.
There's really not a lothappening.
And this cover really doesembody the idea of simplify and
amplify.
What was the main points ofthis story?
The sci-fi soldier versus thedragon.
That was the main overarchingelements that stuck out when I
(21:22):
read this brief.
Those were the two things thatI wanted to highlight.
I needed to put in nothing elseto create this cover and to
make it impactful.
And when you begin to do that,when you begin to really boil a
cover down to one or twospecific elements, you can
really pay a lot of attention tothose one or two elements and
make those elements very, veryimpactful so that they do stand
(21:44):
out, so that they are.
So they do stand out, so thatthey are memorable and that will
connect with your readers whenthey see that, uh, this is a
sci-fi.
This again, this, this image wehave up on screen right now is,
uh, it's sci-fi.
It's a sci-fi, uh story about,you know again, the soldier
versus the dragon right.
Um, and readers in that genrelove those two elements.
(22:04):
They love sci-fi soldiers andthey love a good monster, and so
we put those two on there and Isimplified it down.
I amplified those two elementsto be the main key points of the
story.
You can have other elements inyour cover, but they need to be
treated in a very tertiarymanner, not secondary, tertiary.
So you have the one primarylevel, you skip your secondary
(22:26):
level and anything else istertiary manner, not secondary,
tertiary.
So you have the one primarylevel, you skip your secondary
level and anything else istertiary.
If it makes it on there, it'sgreat, it does, it doesn't.
It's not that important.
It's one or two elements thatare your main selling point to
whatever genre you're going for.
They'll just be one or two keyelements that are the main
calling points that come fromyour story and so that can lead
(22:49):
you to a very strong andpowerful story if you follow
this formula and you follow itin that order sell, tell and
yell.
And I do have one more slidethat I do like to put in here,
and that is yell, yell, yell.
This is not really a part ofthe formula, because this
doesn't have anything to do withme per se, but one of the
(23:11):
things that I've seen authors dois they get their cover, they
put it on Amazon, they make apost on Facebook and then that's
it, and what you need to dothen as an author is take that
cover, which again, is yourproduct packaging.
That's your main image that isgoing to sell your product, and
you need to put it out whereveryou can, as much as you can.
(23:34):
You need to yell, yell, yellover and over and over again to
your potential audience.
If I remember right, I thinkit's six or seven or eight
points of contact a consumerneeds before they will decide to
investigate a product further.
The same is true for books.
It's the same process.
(23:55):
People need to see theseelements and familiar elements.
They need to see that samecover or that same image over
and over and over again, so thatit continues to get embedded in
their mind, so that they willeventually click on it and find
out more and and get you to thesell point.
And a lot of authors, they,they get it, they do a little
bit and then they just kind ofstop when they don't necessarily
(24:17):
get the results they thoughtthey might get.
You have to keep putting it outthere to remain fresh in your
readers and and potentialconsumers minds.
So so that's my, that's myformula, that's my approach Sell
, tell, yell and at the end ofthe day you'll end up with a
badass cover.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
So Amazing, amazing, amazing.
I got a bunch of questions.
I hope you don't mind.
You know, when you get a coverfrom a genre that you don't
necessarily know, because I knowthat even you and I have had
this experience where I wasdoing writing in areas that you
(24:59):
you didn't, you literally wereasking me questions on what is
this and stuff like that.
So how do you research it tofigure out what those elements
of cell tell yell is?
Speaker 3 (25:11):
You know it.
Just, it does depend on thegenre as far as it goes.
Some of them that I might notbe exactly familiar with.
I'm probably gonna pronounce itwrong, but I just I did that
cover for you a couple monthsago.
It's Wuxia.
How do you say that?
Wren, yeah, yeah, wren, butwhat, what, what, what, what.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Oh, oh yeah, sorry.
Yeah, I mean it's kind ofcolloquially known as
cultivation, cultivation.
Yeah, yeah, OK.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Cultivation.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
There, you go so.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
So yeah, I had to go and Google that, I had to kind
of dive into a little bit.
But you know, it's kind of aparallel genre or the covers
anyways do kind of parallel thefantasy genre and the sci fi
genres really well, parallel, uh, the fantasy genre and the
sci-fi genres really well.
And so I I needed to kind ofreevaluate how I frame things
and how I and how I showcasecertain things, um, to kind of
(26:02):
align it with the cultivation,you know, genre as far as it
goes.
So I mean, just, you know, Idive in and do some research uh
and kind of try to get a feelfor, uh, for what it is.
And one of the things about youknow, about cover designers in
general is, you know, most of us, especially if we're doing this
full time and this is what wedo we're usually visual
(26:24):
creatures and so we can processvisual data really quickly and
kind of understand.
Okay, this is kind of the trendof where I need to go, this is
the field of what I need to go,this is the field of what I need
to go toward really quickly.
And so I mean, you know, weneed to just do a little
research and typically we canget it down pretty quick.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and you nailed it on the
cultivation cover because youknow, like I was saying earlier,
pretty covers don't sell.
It's about hitting those tropesright, just to use that word.
Yeah, uh, right, and to hit theaudience.
So I actually like gave theoriginal cover you made because
you remember you did twoversions of it and then the
(27:04):
second cover you made to a bunchof other authors who work, who
write in cultivation as well,and yeah, they love the second
cover, like the second cover youtotally nailed, um, okay.
So then I guess, like, soobviously, like you know, every
author wants a great cover tosell their book, to really kind
of nail that piece of theirmarketing.
(27:25):
Um, now, not every author isgoing to be able to work with
you, right?
So you're busy, you're, you'renot the cheapest guy, all of
that stuff right now, I I don'tI will say to everyone listening
you should try to work with him.
I will also say that I schedulemonths in advance for any cover
I do with him.
(27:45):
So, um, but my question is islike so if they don't get to
work with you, they don't havethat like guarantee that this is
an amazing cover.
What should they be looking forto actually know that this
cover is worth?
You know, slapping on their bargreat question uh, you know,
(28:07):
that's it's.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
it's you mean in terms of like?
Are you talking about in termsof when they're looking for
another cover artist to hire, orjust when they have that cover
in their hand to know if this isone?
That's on point?
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yeah, I heard how do I hire a good cover designer and
how do I make sure that thecover that they're giving me is
good and on market so that thebook actually sells.
Okay, okay, yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Well, the first one, you know, finding a good cover
designer.
I would I would start withasking for recommendations.
Most of the authors that I knowthey're plugged into the,
they're plugged into someFacebook group already.
They're plugged into, you know,or they're on Reddit or they're
somewhere.
And I would say, ask forrecommendations.
(28:52):
And I would say, ask forrecommendations.
You're going to get people whoare going to be able to give you
some, you know, some real time,real experience with said cover
artists probably.
And they, and then you know,you'll probably get a whole
bunch of people who you knowgive you a wide range of
recommendations where you knowthey got it from Fiverr, or I
hired this guy specifically, orwhatever.
And then you know, you do yourdue diligence, you look at you,
(29:15):
you go and you look thoseresources up and again, you're
going to get a wide range of ofthe designers.
You're going to get a widerange of price points and that
kind of stuff.
You know it can be somewhattricky to navigate some of those
, some of those waters, trickyto navigate some of those, some
(29:35):
of those waters, um, but I would, you know, I would start there
and kind of evaluate, um,evaluate the cover artist from
there.
You know, if, if, if, if you'relooking for fantasy and you get
a link to somebody and andthey've got a bunch of stuff
that you don't really relate, abunch of cover that doesn't,
that don't really kind of speakto you in fantasy, they're
probably not going to be the oneyou want to work with.
You know, even if there was anauthor who said, oh, I love
working with so-and-so, but ifyou know that person doesn't
(29:58):
really focus in in fantasy,they're probably not going to
understand that genre very, verywell, to be able to hit it on
point.
So you want to make sure youfind a cover artist who has a
very not has a very in-depthportfolio in whatever genre
you're looking to write in.
As far as it goes, but, again,like I said, the price point is
(30:20):
going to vary depending on whereyou go.
I will say this you know thetried and true thing of you get
what you pay for does hold true.
Not that to say that you can'tfind a cover artist.
You know into the in the low100s or even you know in that
range in different places.
I used to charge 150 bucks.
That was my rate a long, long,long, long time ago, but now my
(30:44):
skill set has evolved since thatpoint to where it is now.
But that aside, I mean you canfind author.
You can find good people at anyprice point and you can find
bad people at any price point.
So I mean you can find goodpeople at any price point and
you can find bad people at anyprice point.
So I mean, take it into therecommendations, personal
recommendations, reach out tothose cover artists and one of
the things I'll tell you howfast do they reply to you?
(31:05):
How do they reply to you?
There's going to be a myriad ofthings that you're buying other
than just that artist's talent,of things that you're buying
other than just that artist'stalent.
You're buying thetrustworthiness of the artist,
the reliability of that artist.
There's other things that arebuilt in there that you need to
be aware of when it comes togetting your product to a final
(31:26):
point with an artist, but Iunderstand it can be sometimes
hard waters to navigate.
As far as it goes, all right,I'll kind of beat that horse.
I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
And then how to make sure that we're on point for the
genre.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
That's a really fantastic question because, well
, I'm not going to mention theauthor's name, but but I had an
author reach out to me Literallyabout three days ago and they
couldn't get.
They couldn't get in contactwith their cover artists.
They had done a cover art forabout a year.
It'd been about a year back andthey had a paperback layout
already.
The cover artists had doneeverything and they were like
(32:03):
you know, the cover artists dida great, a great layout for the
cover.
I love the cover, but now I'vewent back and reedited it and
I've lost 200 pages.
I can't get in touch with them.
Can you fix this paperback forme so that I can get it to the
right format?
And I didn't have time and Ididn't want to fool with it
(32:24):
anyways.
But they said I love this cover, the co-authors did a great job
.
And then I looked at it and Ithought no, they didn't.
I thought immediately thiscover is not going to do
anything for this author, and soI understand that that is a
real concern.
I would, number one ask forfeedback.
And that's a minefield in andof itself.
But take the cover, ask forfeedback.
(32:46):
Do not look for the outliercomments.
Look for the general trend ofthe comments you get from that
feedback.
It's multiple eyes.
Nothing wrong with gettingmultiple eyes on it to give them
your feedback.
Let them talk to you and seewhat it says, see what a group
of people might say.
Make sure, wherever you do toget that feedback, make sure
(33:08):
it's a trusted source.
So if you go onbookcovercritiquecom and there's
5,000 people on there and youpost your cover up, that's not
going to be a good place to getfeedback.
You need to make sure that thepeople that you are getting
feedback from have a vestedinterest in your success so
they're not going to pullpunches with you.
(33:28):
It's not going to be your wifewho goes oh, I love it, and she
has no idea what a good coverlooks like.
It needs to be people that aregoing to give you valued
feedback because they haven'tinvested in.
They want to see you succeedtoo.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
And so they're not going to let a cover get by.
that doesn't meet the mark, youknow, and and so, um, that's
where I would start with those,those two things, and I think,
honest feedback, and they'realso in your genre or interested
in your genre, right, I don'tknow fiction as well as you guys
do, but on the nonfiction sideof things, one of the biggest
mistakes I see people make istaking advice from people who
(34:03):
aren't, or critiques from peoplewho aren't in their target
market and it's just not reallyrelevant because they're not in
your target market.
I want to go lightning round.
We're kind of right up at timehere.
I'm going to ask a finalquestion.
Then I'll go around the horn toyou, rami, to ask a final
question.
Mine would be Jake, what do yousay to the people who cause Rami
I hear you talk about in ourfiction program and in full-time
(34:26):
fiction, tier ones writing tomarket, meeting genre
expectations, all that stuffwhich is directly in line with
making sure your cover is togenre, and all that stuff?
What do you say, jake, to theperson who's like, yeah, but I'm
super creative and I got anidea that's outside of the box
(34:47):
and I don't want to be in thebox on genre.
What's your take on that?
Speaker 3 (34:52):
uh, yeah, that's gonna be called the black swan,
right um mentality.
That's where, you know, theblack swan stands out above all
else.
Uh, you know what happens tothe black swan?
It usually gets killed by thewhite swans and that's the short
answer.
I mean, hey, listen, you mayhave an idea that that, that,
that that creates a cover trend,that you know that that catches
(35:15):
fire and that sells millions ofcopies.
The chances of you having thatis about the chances of you
winning a lottery.
That's what it boils down to.
It's risky, believe me.
I've had clients who wouldn'tlisten to me at all and they
wanted it their way and theypaid me right off the cliff.
You know, as far as it goes.
I mean I'll do it.
(35:36):
But I mean I will try my bestto get them lined up.
But you know, the Black Swansoften get killed, unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Yeah, I think like one of the big mistakes that
young writers make like I seethis with students all the time
is they'll go out and they'llget this like beautifully
illustrated cover.
They'll spend like three, fouror $5,000 sometimes on this
beautifully illustrated cover.
That is to the spec of whatthey wanted, and my thought when
(36:07):
they bring it to me is, oh,that's going to make a nice
desktop wallpaper, but it's notgoing to sell anything, right,
so okay, so I guess that's my.
My last question to you then isyou know you kind of addressed
like the price ranges that youngwriters can find and stuff like
(36:30):
that, but when they are gettinga bad cover from a cover
designer, how do they like, howdo they tactfully send feedback
for those changes like, orsimply just say, this sucks and
I need to move on right, likehow you know, because a lot of
times I find that young writersget stuck with terrible covers
(36:51):
because they're too embarrassedto give feedback or push back
right.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Um, I mean, uh, my, my thought, my or my advice
there is be tactful, uh, berespectful.
You know, as far as it goes, uh, you know it, does they bad
covers happen, uh, and sometimes, you know, uh, they can happen
for various reasons, whether thedesigner doesn't get it, the
prop doesn't get the, doesn'tget the idea, or maybe maybe the
skill set's not there and the.
You know they can happen forvarious reasons, whether the
designer doesn't get it, theprop doesn't get the idea, or
maybe the skill set's not thereand the.
You know the author or clientsrealize and this is not the
person for the job.
You know different coverartists will have different, you
(37:25):
know different, I guess,protocols for that.
You know, if you get to a pointwhere the author's like, you
know you're not giving me whatI'm looking for, you know, then
you know most, most coverdesigners are going to be like
well, you owe me so much moneyfor my time involved or whatever
.
And you know let's.
You know we'll, we'll, we'llpart ways that if they're
(37:45):
professional, most of themshould handle it in a
professional way.
But you are giving feedback, youknow.
So when you do approach thatfeedback that will be very
sensitive.
Think about how.
You know you, as an author,want to get feedback.
When you want somebody to giveyou your story right, you don't
want them to be like man, thissucks.
You know most people don't wantto hear that.
They want to hear somethingtactful.
You know this is notpositioning you well here.
Yada, yada, yada.
(38:06):
And so I would just say betactful and be respectful and at
the end of the day, this is abusiness man.
We should be professionals onboth sides of the keyboard
designer and author and soyou're going to have people who
don't follow that, of course,but as long as you maintain your
professionalism, you should beable to navigate those waters.
As far as it goes, I love itwell, this has been awesome.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
And, rami, something about you and them South
Carolina boys.
Huh, you're just surrounded byus.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
It's got to be the accent.
It's got to be the accent.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Jake, this has been awesome.
As we wrap here, where canpeople go to find out more about
you, your work, all that goodstuff?
Speaker 3 (38:48):
jcalebdesigncom is my website, so that's letter J,
the word Caleb and the worddesign all strung togethercom.
You can find me on any of thesocial medias and, like I said,
I do this full time, all thetime, and so feel free to reach
out to me through any of thosemodes if you so desire.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Love it.
Jcalebdesigncom.
Amazing, it'd been anotherawesome episode.
Guys, join us back here nextweek.
Uh, for the fiction NaNoWriMotakeover of the podcast.
Uh and uh, if you're interestedin checking out what we do at
selfpublishingcom and thefiction department, rami and the
team do an incredible job.
We've got full-time fictiontraining, fundamentals of
(39:30):
fiction and story training allthat stuff Go to
selfpublishingcom.
Forward slash fiction book acall with the team.
We're happy to chat about yourfiction work and how we might be
able to help atselfpublishingcom.
Forward slash fiction Fellas.
Thank you, guys Appreciate you.
Thanks for having me.
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