- There are three questions your book cover needs to answer.
If you want help to create the most appealing
and marketable non-fiction book cover,
then you're in luck.
This video is for you.
(upbeat music)
Hey there, I'm Julie the Book Broad of Book Launchers.
Every month, except for July and August,
we host deep-dive training sessions.
These are Saturday sessions
where we work on helping you write your book,
dive into a subject for in-depth training
like interviewing experts or talking about marketing.
If it's something that's gonna help you
on your non-fiction author journey, we cover it.
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So head over to booklaunchers.com
and get on our launch letter newsletter list
so you get invited to the next one.
In the meantime, you can enjoy a snippet
from our March training session,
where Melissa Sobey, our production supervisor,
took you through three questions your book cover
should answer with examples.
Take it away, Melissa.
- These are the three questions we feel
really target your reader.
And that very first rule is the most important
in the entire book production process is,
what is the reader looking for?
What is your ideal reader looking for?
So you've heard Julie talk about what your hook is
on so many videos and so many presentations and posts
and things like that.
So your hook plays a big part in this as well.
When you're thinking about the problem
in the hook of your book,
what is the problem you're identifying there?
Think about, if you're writing a book,
let's say, about real estate like Matt Picheny,
is the problem,
the investment side of it is the problem.
The people side of it, is it a combination of those things?
- This is Matt Picheny's book.
We talked about it in the minutes
before this video recording
as she discussed having a subtitle that sells your book
to your ideal reader and showcases your hook.
For Matt, his book just isn't another real estate book.
He's taken his cool theater background
and integrated it into this book
and addressed the core problem he found in real estate,
which was people saw real estate investors
as slum lords and greedy,
but he sees real estate as something that can be profitable
and improve communities and help the people
who live in the buildings and properties.
You get that from his title,
"Produce Passive Income,
Write Your Own Story,
and Direct Your Dollars Toward Positive Change."
And so his title and subtitle speak to his reader,
and his cover starts to allude to the problem he is solving
and the interesting way he's solving it.
But Melissa has a cool example in it as well.
So let's go back to her.
- This book is,
this has a great title and subtitle.
There's lots of keywords in here.
But Sam Nix, his book deals with empowering teachers
so that they can have a classroom full of students
that are actually accomplishing something wonderful
and reaching their full potential as students
and in general as they go on from high school
and into college and into their careers
like things that they can take with them
throughout their whole life.
And he's coming at it from an administrator's point of view.
And he's looking at it,
"How am I as an administrator passing the baton
to my teachers so that my teachers can then pass the baton
to the students?"
And so it's a very interesting image story
that he's putting together.
We really loved this cover.
It was difficult to get it exactly like this.
There were a lot of little tricks and tips
that our cover designer had to put together
to make that happen.
But it was very much worth it in the end.
- One thing Melissa says here
that I've never really talked about with you is,
what is the story you're telling on the cover?
I think that's a great perspective.
Now the next question.
- So the second question is,
does the cover reveal part of the method?
So in other words,
do you have a specific diet that you're a proponent of?
Is there a step-by-step process that you endeavored
or you are putting together for the reader
on how to obtain wealth,
things like that?
Is there there something in your book,
in your hook of your book that is showing
what the steps are to get to the result
of that you're promising?
So for the next slide,
I know I changed this one at the last minute so,
oh, yes, Odille and Steve.
So this is a fantastic book.
I love this book.
I love this couple.
They are just super passionate and wonderful people.
And what they have written together is a book
about transforming childhood memories.
And so when we were sitting down to talk with them
about their cover,
there was this idea of really focusing
on a childlike idea,
a childlike design.
And this design is obviously,
it's a little bit cartoonish but in an artistic way.
And there's a child there grabbing
onto a string of heart balloons.
And it just gives you this feeling of like,
"Oh, that's very sweet and very joyful
and like kind of hopeful and all of that mixed together."
And it's very parallel to what their methods are
that they're sharing with you in the book.
And so it's a very artistic way to show
what their method is.
I love this title.
I love this couple.
I love this book.
(Melissa laughs loudly)
- One other book we talked about later in this deep dive
that has a really illustrative cover
of the method is one called "Hacking Chemo"
by Martha Tettenborn.
Martha was on the live,
so it was fun having her hold it up.
That cover does such a great job
of revealing the method contained inside the book.
Okay, back to Melissa for question three.
- So question three,
does it make a promise to the reader or offer a result?
So again, going back to the hook, what are you,
in your hook, what are you telling the reader
that they will gain from your book by the end of the book
or even just in the process of reading it?
And so for the next slide,
this is one of our favorites, Guy Blaise.
He wrote something before this
and then got a bunch of letters in from the readers.
And this book is him answering those letters.
And it's wonderfully put together, it's hilarious.
It's sometimes shocking.
It's sometimes, you know,
it's a really well done book.
And most of it is the advice that he received
from his grandmother, his French grandmother.
And so it's a beautiful book.
It's very well written.
And when we went to put this cover together,
he really wanted to show that this was about reconnecting
or strengthening the bond that you have
in your relationship.
And so we found these beautiful photos
of couples in Paris.
Like this is one of the neighborhoods in Paris,
and we put several of those together.
Some of the iconic architecture were some of the options
that we showed him.
But ultimately, we came back to this one
because it just has that feeling of intimacy
and that feeling that we were hoping to convey
with the results that you could get from reading this book.
- Isn't Melissa awesome?
I love my team at Book Launchers so much,
and I learn every time we do one of these trainings.
And the next book she talked about was one
where I found out my team is thinking about something
that I hadn't even really considered.
Smash that thumbs-up button in celebration
of what I'm sure you've already gained from this video
and from Melissa.
But wait, there's more.
What Melissa goes into next is talking about combinations.
Maybe your cover tells the story,
reveals the method and the solution,
or maybe it teases the problem and the method.
Your cover may do more than one thing
as this next example shows.
- It seems simple.
It doesn't really look like a story.
But when you get into what the book is about,
Darby is telling us like there is a conflict for leaders.
Some people are much more management-oriented,
and some people are much more vision-oriented.
But what happens when you combine the two?
It makes you a lot stronger.
So it doesn't have those,
ideas don't have to be a conflict.
These things, when they come together,
can actually illuminate your ability to lead others.
And so that's kind of what this cover story is about.
And I put a little bullet point down there
that not just the imagery tells the story
but the color combination and the text tells a story,
like leader is the main focus of this title.
It catches you right away.
It's the light bulb
and the word leader are the first things you see,
and they're starkly contrast in color
from the red to the white.
So it's a fun way to show
like even a simple image can communicate
some of these ideas.
- Now here's the piece I didn't even know
my team was helping our clients with.
Jaqueline Kyle, our production manager,
jumped in and shared an absolutely golden tip.
Check this out.
- Something to be aware of,
looking at light bulbs,
they're very popular on covers for non-fiction books.
Anything technology, illuminating,
we get a lot of requests for light bulbs and puzzles.
Puzzles are really difficult
to be able to create an emotion around.
Light bulbs, though, have an interesting problem going on
that in 10 years, no one's gonna really remember
that that's what a light bulb looks like.
They are changing rapidly.
So if you are going to do like a light bulb on your cover,
you need to think about, you know,
10 years from now,
do you wanna use the new style light bulb
or how do you want it to create the longevity of your book?
- Now it would not be a complete discussion
of book covers if we didn't touch
on putting your beautiful face on the cover.
My simple solution to any author
who wants to be on the cover is to suggest they visit
the top 10 of their category
and see if any other authors are on the top 10 there.
If nobody else has their face on the cover,
it's a really good indication your face
should not be on your cover either.
But Melissa does a great breakdown
and also has an example of how you could be the exception
and what to do to be that exception.
- If you're wanting to be on your cover,
do a stock image search.
See if there's something out there that would be relevant.
So this one, I put jump kick
because this could be relevant
for maybe a book about getting your energy back
or maybe a book about kicking butt in business
or things like that.
There's some general ideas that can be applied
to look for these stock images
but not just for images where you want to put yourself
in the place of the stock image.
Take a look at stock images before you go down the route
of cover design in general.
Find some some terms, some ideas, some images
from stock images that you can share with your designer
and say, "Hey, I really like this feel,
but I wanna personalize it
by doing this, this, or this."
- We also talked about text-based covers,
using text to tell the story and stand out.
Here are a couple examples of text-based covers
that do a great job of telling the story
and drawing attention.
Okay, now one last thing on choosing your book cover.
When you wanna make sure you have something
that's going to stand out but fit into your category
or you're choosing between two different designs,
put it in a top 10 lineup.
We did that with "Self‑Publish & Succeed."
And the choice was so obvious we could no longer ignore
the yellow cover.
- You want your book to stand out?
You want it to be the first thing that people see
when they look at these thumbnails on Amazon?
And in this case, this actually really helped us pick
the final design for Julie's book.
And I think she's told this story before,
but she was not leaning towards yellow.
Yellow was not her favorite.
(Melissa laughs loudly)
And then when we put it in the top 10,
it stood out so starkly against the rest of them
that it was undeniable,
that this was gonna need to be the cover.
So we were all blown away
when we saw this top 10 put together and thumbnail list.
We were like, "Oh yeah, it's gotta be the yellow."
- Phew, that was an intense training on book covers.
Thank you to Melissa Sobey for her prep
and for the great examples she showcased here.
And if you're thinking,
"Man, I need that awesome Book Launchers team
to help me with my book,"
well, it would be our pleasure.
Connect with us at booklaunchers.com/application.
Take a couple of minutes to tell us about your book idea
and the help you need.
And we'll set up a call or send you resources
to support you forward.
Now if you're wondering how to make sure your title
and subtitle are set up for success,
this video is a must.
And if this video has you anxious
to finish writing your book
but you really don't wanna do anymore typing,
well, that video right here, not that one,
this one (laughs) is on writing without typing.
And it's exactly what you need to watch.
Both are guaranteed good time.
So click on over, and I'll see you there.