#401 – Designing Book Covers for the Digital Reader with Jake Clark

want to stay on that piece of how you work with authors a little bit actually because i think that's so interesting that you have to sort of maybe present them something that they weren't expecting and like veering away from what they're telling you about the story but just curious about how you work together and like do you have tips for authors like what's really helpful for them to actually provide to their cover designer

yeah i mean as far as it goes i mean every cover designer's gonna probably want different things you know and for that so there will be a little bit of subjectivity but for me An author can bring, I want to hear their ideas.

I do want to hear what they want to have on a cover because sometimes there's elements on there that they mentioned that, hey, we probably should focus on.

But it really depends on the market that they're going for.

And one of the ways that I, and this is something I've developed in the last year or so, is I'll tell my client to stop.

and not think about this as a book cover.

Because we look at book covers like they're pieces of artwork or they're representative of the story, which they are these things, or they can be those things, but you first need to look at it like it's a product packaging.

You've got a story that you've written, and now you need that story wrapped in a product package, and you need to deliver that to a market.

And when you say those words like that, most of the time, authors, it causes them to pause and go, I don't know anything about product packaging or taking something to a market, especially if they're a new author.

Now, if they've been in the game for a while, they're going to probably know some of this stuff, even if they don't frame it in those terms.

but when you say those words it causes a jarring you know thing where they go i don't know anything about that and so then you can kind of get a a gap in there and say okay well now that's what we're going to do we're going to take this product this story you've written take it to the market let's look at what the market is looking for let's look at the market like what what do they need what the readers in that market are attracted to one of the one of the easy metaphors i gives is if you're in the in the cereal aisle at a grocery store you know and even before you get to imagine you're a consumer even before you get to the cereal aisle and you're wanting you know lucky charms or you're wanting just a sweet sugary sugary goodness cereal well you already know in your head what you're looking for you're looking for bright colors cartoon characters you know whatever if you're looking for healthy cereal you're looking for cleaner packaging you know berries and strawberries and banana chunks or whatever you're looking for all those these things are going to trigger that in your mind and so you need to take that same mentality to the book cover because the readers in the market have that same approach like if it's a fantasy reader they're going to be looking for certain things that are going to trigger their fantasy, you know, their fantasy reaction.

And so you can lean into those things from your own story to be able to, you know, connect with those readers.

And so that's kind of an easy way to look at it to kind of when I start boiling things down to the things that need to be on the cover, so.

That perfectly segues to our next question, which is, like you mentioned, readers have a preconceived notion of what they're looking for in a cover.

Like you said, if they're looking for a fantasy book, guy with a sword.

If they're looking for romance, less guy with a sword, probably.

So how do you balance fitting in the tropes and readers' expectations while still getting the covers to stand out on the shelves, either digital or in the real world?

Exactly.

Yeah, that's going to be the – I have found it to be kind of a very – fine line to toe because if you go too far into what a reader expects, you're probably going to end up having a cover that really looks like other covers, almost to the point where you could just swap titles with another author and nothing would be any different.

One of the great tropes I can give you is urban fantasy, the girl in the leather jacket and the blonde or brown hair.

Those things are great and maybe we can lean into that, but if we're going to do that, we need to present her in a way that makes her stand out and you can do that a whole bunch of different ways that can cause you to have kind of your own individual identity with it whether that's how you frame her how you light her maybe the different styles or typography we use but you can you can there's a lot of different little little levers that you can pull back and forth that kind of will keep you in the field of what readers expect, but also because of how you've presented the concept, allows you to stand out in a way that the other people don't.

And so that's where, like I said, the Badass Covers from Badass Stories kind of came in, because I try to punch up my covers in a way that, you know, they do look nice, they look like they fit the genre, but they also stand out because of how they're presented to the reader.

How would you balance it if an author came and wanted to do like, hey, I want to like this.

Nobody's ever done this sort of cover in this genre before with that.

Would you sort of meet in the middle or would you gently sway towards like you have to stick a little bit within your genre expectations?

want to stay on that piece of how you work with authors a little bit actually because i think that's so interesting that you have to sort of maybe present them something that they weren't expecting and like veering away from what they're telling you about the story but just curious about how you work together and like do you have tips for authors like what's really helpful for them to actually provide to their cover designer

yeah i mean as far as it goes i mean every cover designer's gonna probably want different things you know and for that so there will be a little bit of subjectivity but for me An author can bring, I want to hear their ideas.

I do want to hear what they want to have on a cover because sometimes there's elements on there that they mentioned that, hey, we probably should focus on.

But it really depends on the market that they're going for.

And one of the ways that I, and this is something I've developed in the last year or so, is I'll tell my client to stop.

and not think about this as a book cover.

Because we look at book covers like they're pieces of artwork or they're representative of the story, which they are these things, or they can be those things, but you first need to look at it like it's a product packaging.

You've got a story that you've written, and now you need that story wrapped in a product package, and you need to deliver that to a market.

And when you say those words like that, most of the time, authors, it causes them to pause and go, I don't know anything about product packaging or taking something to a market, especially if they're a new author.

Now, if they've been in the game for a while, they're going to probably know some of this stuff, even if they don't frame it in those terms.

but when you say those words it causes a jarring you know thing where they go i don't know anything about that and so then you can kind of get a a gap in there and say okay well now that's what we're going to do we're going to take this product this story you've written take it to the market let's look at what the market is looking for let's look at the market like what what do they need what the readers in that market are attracted to one of the one of the easy metaphors i gives is if you're in the in the cereal aisle at a grocery store you know and even before you get to imagine you're a consumer even before you get to the cereal aisle and you're wanting you know lucky charms or you're wanting just a sweet sugary sugary goodness cereal well you already know in your head what you're looking for you're looking for bright colors cartoon characters you know whatever if you're looking for healthy cereal you're looking for cleaner packaging you know berries and strawberries and banana chunks or whatever you're looking for all those these things are going to trigger that in your mind and so you need to take that same mentality to the book cover because the readers in the market have that same approach like if it's a fantasy reader they're going to be looking for certain things that are going to trigger their fantasy, you know, their fantasy reaction.

And so you can lean into those things from your own story to be able to, you know, connect with those readers.

And so that's kind of an easy way to look at it to kind of when I start boiling things down to the things that need to be on the cover, so.

That perfectly segues to our next question, which is, like you mentioned, readers have a preconceived notion of what they're looking for in a cover.

Like you said, if they're looking for a fantasy book, guy with a sword.

If they're looking for romance, less guy with a sword, probably.

So how do you balance fitting in the tropes and readers' expectations while still getting the covers to stand out on the shelves, either digital or in the real world?

Exactly.

Yeah, that's going to be the – I have found it to be kind of a very – fine line to toe because if you go too far into what a reader expects, you're probably going to end up having a cover that really looks like other covers, almost to the point where you could just swap titles with another author and nothing would be any different.

One of the great tropes I can give you is urban fantasy, the girl in the leather jacket and the blonde or brown hair.

Those things are great and maybe we can lean into that, but if we're going to do that, we need to present her in a way that makes her stand out and you can do that a whole bunch of different ways that can cause you to have kind of your own individual identity with it whether that's how you frame her how you light her maybe the different styles or typography we use but you can you can there's a lot of different little little levers that you can pull back and forth that kind of will keep you in the field of what readers expect, but also because of how you've presented the concept, allows you to stand out in a way that the other people don't.

And so that's where, like I said, the Badass Covers from Badass Stories kind of came in, because I try to punch up my covers in a way that, you know, they do look nice, they look like they fit the genre, but they also stand out because of how they're presented to the reader.

How would you balance it if an author came and wanted to do like, hey, I want to like this.

Nobody's ever done this sort of cover in this genre before with that.

Would you sort of meet in the middle or would you gently sway towards like you have to stick a little bit within your genre expectations?