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Six Common Book Cover Design Mistakes

Six Common Book Cover Design Mistakes

Don’t undermine your great writing with a poorly designed book cover. Read on for six common mistakes! 

Your book cover’s impact can’t be understated. It’s the first thing readers see when shopping their next read and as a first impression your cover becomes a crucial marketing tool. 

Poorly designed covers lose sales and potential readers. A strong cover connects on an emotional level, urging a reader to open your work and start reading. 

And it’s not just the front cover that counts (though that’s what readers see first); the spine and back cover deserves the same thoughtful consideration and have their own elements and design rules as well.  

Here are some things to keep in mind as you’re thinking about your book cover: 

5 common book cover design mistakes to watch out for

Creating their own covers 

Book cover design is an art and a learned skill, so, if possible, you want a team of professionals on your side: graphic designers, illustrators and photographers. Cover Kitchen says: “Creating an effective book cover design boils down to artistic strength and creative strategy. Our team of professional book designers is trained to develop compelling concepts curated to your genre, the personality of your book, and the interest of your readers—all with the goal of driving sales.” If your budget doesn’t include a book cover design team, study books in your genre and create the best one possible. 

Link to related book cover article here

Ignoring the competition

As T.S. Elliot said, “Good writers borrow; great writers steal.” Obviously, you’re not going to copy anyone, but get online and hit the bookstore and study covers in your genre. Get inspired, but don’t get too wild: While you always want to be original and interesting, don’t ignore time-tested rules of book cover structure: You’re not recreating the wheel!

Too complicated

Don’t try to cram too many design elements onto your cover or you’ll undermine the main idea you want to communicate. Simple design applies here: if you pack too many elements on a cover, your message is lost, the cover looks sloppy and cluttered, confusing potential readers who will look elsewhere. 

Illegible text

Most books are bought online and viewed with a thumbnail-sized cover. Make sure your cover is easily readable; you want clean typefaces, but not boring ones, and don’t mix up many different fonts. Keep your titles reasonably short, this goes for subtitles, too.

Poor quality and weak images

People are visual! While text is an important marketing tool, it’s axiomatic that powerful visual elements grab eyeballs and generate clicks. When creating your book cover, you need striking, high-quality, high-resolution images and illustrations. Readers scrolling a page should stop and engage when they see your cover, so find or create the perfect images matched with strong color choices that convey the personality and genre of your book, and always ensure that you’re not using copyrighted work.

Mismatched cover to content

Your cover must convey a true aspect of your genre and narrative. Don’t try to use design to reel a reader in and then disappoint with a bait and switch. Your book cover must honestly impart the proper tone of your writing, tripping an emotional switch that pulls a reader in and creates expectations (that are later fulfilled). 

 

Great writers leave it all on the page, don’t undercut your chances for success with a weak or poorly designed book cover. Your cover is your most important marketing tool, even more important than a book funnel, so make sure you work with a great design team who understands your needs, your genre and book design essentials!

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How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method

In the world of novel writing, there are planners and there are pantsers.

Planners don’t put pen to paper until they know who their protagonist is, where they’re going, and where they end up. Hell, some won’t start until they know their protagonist’s blood type, how they take their coffee, and their least favorite cousin.

Pantsers—as in fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pantsers—dive into the white void of the blank page without so much as a map or a decent pair of hiking shoes. The trails they blaze may lead them to caverns of untold story treasure—or straight into a pit of stalagmites and scorpions from which they will never return.

But what if we were to tell you there’s a third method of writing: the snowflake method? It’s wildly popular because it simplifies the outlining process and gives writers a strong springboard for the novel.

If you’re curious about how the snowflake method can help you build your novel, this is the article for you. In this blog, we’ll give you: 

  • A rundown of how the snowflake method works
  • Examples of the snowflake method using stories you already know
  • Templates you can use to start making your own snowflake outline 

We recommend downloading the templates now so you can review them as you read through this article. If you follow our advice, you’ll have everything you need to start outlining your next novel.

Definition of the snowflake method

Created by author, physicist, and self-proclaimed “computer geek” Randy Ingermanson, the snowflake method is a way to build a complex novel from a very simple idea. (Ingermanson says it’s based on a theoretical geometric shape known as a Koch snowflake.)

What begins as a summary sentence grows into the story itself—plot, characters, and all. And the best part is, since everything is based on a core idea, all the details therein feel connected and intentional and organic. Better still, the snowflake method doesn’t bog down the writer with minutia and discursions that won’t ever make it to the final cut.

Who needs the snowflake method?

The snowflake method is for planners and pantsers who want to try a different approach.

Planners tend to rely on linear roadmaps—think Campbellian monomyth, Kurt Vonnegut’s story shapes, Pixar’s famous formula for movies that make your parents cry. And while these are time-tested successes, maybe the planner is looking for a nonlinear organization tool that challenges them in ways these methods don’t.

Pantsers don’t play by the rules, but sometimes rules are what make the game. Experimentation without limit might produce a manuscript quickly, but what about cohesion? Great ideas told eloquently does not a story make. The snowflake method is a tether that grounds the pantser astronaut. It’s all the joy of exploration and none of the risk of drifting into space.

But most of all, the snowflake method is for the author of a million bright ideas and zero published novels. Sound like anyone you know?

Before we start outlining your novel

As we work through the following steps, take heed:

Don’t rush: Some steps take an hour, some a week, and some take even longer. If you speed through, you defeat the purpose of the snowflake method, which is, in part, to focus your attention on what matters in your story and ignore what doesn’t so you won’t waste time.

Go back if something feels wrong: If an area of your story lacks conflict or a character falls flat, it’s not a total loss! Go back a step and try to fix the problem there. Every step builds off the last, but that doesn’t mean you can’t reverse course and adjust as needed. 

Challenge yourself: The story you have in your head may not look like the story you have on the page. But the truth is, the story you have on the page is the story. So when the snowflake method takes you to foreign waters, try to go with the flow.

Step 1: Start with a sentence

Estimated Time: One hour or more

Like it or not, every story needs an elevator pitch.

In a single sentence of fifteen words or fewer, write what your story is about. Ingermanson recommends spending as much as an hour crafting the perfect sentence. After all, this is the particle from which your story snowflake will take shape.

Here are examples of one-sentence summaries of stories you might know:

  • A private detective investigates a murder aboard a transcontinental train. (Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express)
  • Seven friends contend with a monstrous foe that feeds on children. (Stephen King’s It)
  • Two stoners get into a world of trouble while going out for hamburgers. (Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle)

At this stage, you don’t need too many details—names, etc.—but you do want to set the stakes. What does your protagonist have to lose?

  • A bloodthirsty evil hunts a pirate crew as they search for an ancient treasure.
  • A nervous high school freshman gains the power to talk to inanimate objects.
  • A poor man goes to ridiculous lengths to inherit millions from a dying uncle.

In each of these examples you have a general idea of the cast of characters, the central conflict, and what’s at stake.

Pro tip: Though we omitted it from our examples, build your sentence around the word must. What must your protagonist do? Detective Poirot must find the murderer. The Losers Club must defeat Pennywise before he kills the children of Derry, Maine. Harold and Kumar must get to White Castle because … it’s White Castle and, man, are those burgers delicious.

Step 2: Grow your sentence into a paragraph

Estimated Time: One hour or more

After you have your perfect one-sentence summary, build it out to a paragraph of three to five sentences.

Again, this is not the place to add too much detail, but aim for a clear beginning, middle, and end. We recommend sticking to Ingermanson’s rule of fifteen words or fewer per sentence.

As an example, let’s use the story of Stephen King’s It again:

An evil presence is murdering children in the small town of Derry, Maine. The force, known as It, often appears as an evil clown, though the beast can also manifest as rivers of blood, a frightening house, or a leprous beggar. Most adults seem unable to see or understand It, but a group of outcast children band together to force it into hiding. Years later, when It returns from its hibernation, the group reunites as adults and returns to Derry to take down It once and for all. 

Step 3: Create basic character descriptions

Estimated Time: One hour per main character, a half hour per supporting character

In a separate document, compose a list of characters in your story. Start with your protagonist and antagonist, and then concoct a few minor characters.

Focus only on their motivations, but don’t write too much. A few words is all you need for now.

  • What do they want?
  • How do they plan to achieve it?
  • What’s standing in their way?
  • Once they overcome their obstacle, what have they learned? How have they changed?

Let’s take our made-up story about a high school freshman who talks to inanimate objects. He’s a ball of anxiety and just wants to fit in. Obviously mouthy lockers and chatty textbooks make him stand out—or rather, his reactions to them do. There’s his obstacle.

Does he try to ignore them? He might try to at first, but probably won’t work for long. Does he then have to break a curse that gives him this power? How can he do that when he has to cram for pre-calc? Perhaps his antagonist is a parent, or a school faculty member like a teacher or principal, or a nosy custodian, any of whom might think he’s on drugs or has fallen in with a bad crowd …

You get the idea.

But don’t move on to the next step until you understand, at least generally, where you want the arcs of each character to end. (Check out our guide on creating a strong character arc.)

Step 4: Turn your plot paragraph into a page

Estimated Time: Three to five hours

Set your characters aside and go back to your one-paragraph summary.

The first sentence is your Act One. Your second sentence is Act Two (or perhaps a major event that throws your character into Act Two). Separate these sentences and expand each of them into paragraphs of their own.

Besides hitting your one-page mark, you should focus on conflict—conflict between the protagonist and antagonist, conflicts between minor characters, and obstacles literal and figurative standing in your protagonist’s way. Here’s where you should also think about major events in the story—complications, disasters, twists, explosions, screw-ups, mistaken identities, and so on.

Step 5: Write a page for each character 

Estimated Time: Up to two days

Now it’s time to write one-page descriptions of your protagonist, your antagonist, and maybe even a supporting cast member or two. For everyone else, write about half a page.

Spend a little time on physical descriptions, but the bulk of this work should center on the character’s perspective throughout the story. You’re essentially writing it from their perspective.

This is a valuable and often overlooked aspect of good storycraft that both planners and pantsers get wrong. Have you ever read a story that felt like the supporting cast or the villain just went into a closet until the protagonist needed to square off against them? This is the cure. It also helps you incorporate your secondary characters more closely with the plot and the world-building.

Step 6: Expand your plot page to four pages

Estimated Time: Up to a week

What was once a sentence became a paragraph. What was once a paragraph became a page. Now the page becomes something more.

Return to the paragraphs you expanded in Step 4, the ones you turned into a full page of plot. Expand those paragraphs even further, until each of your paragraphs becomes its own page.

Don’t try to cram this work into a single evening. Take a few days to ruminate on the movements of your story, on whether the scenes you’re crafting have an ebb and a flow of tension.

  • Does the opening page launch your readers into the story and introduce the stakes enough?
  • Do your middle pages play against the major conflict of the story?
  • Does your last page feel like a resolution worthy of your whole novel?
  • Do your characters feel believable, relatable, and distinct?

Step 7: Craft full character profiles

Estimated Time: Up to a week

Planners, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for. You want to really dig into your cast of characters? Now’s the time.

Read through your four-page synopsis and make lists of your characters: your protagonist and antagonist in one column, your supporting characters in another, and perhaps a third for important tertiary characters. Then, incorporating the one-page descriptions, go through your characters one by one and write down every detail you can think of—everything from their backstory to their likes and dislikes to their unique skills to what drives them to be a part of the plot.

Have fun with it. Throw in simple favorites—color, food, pastime, music—even if you don’t think these trifles will come up in the story. You never know! What if a supporting character has a serious sweet tooth and passes a bakery during a crucial moment. Will the smells of cinnamon buns distract them from the task at hand, and will that distraction lead to (highly readable) chaos? The choice is yours, but nothing is too silly or outlandish, as long as you end up with well-rounded, believable characters.

Step 8: Organize a scene sheet

Estimated Time: Up to a week (or more)

You’ve got your four-page plot synopsis and your stack of character profiles. Now, use our template to begin plotting out your scenes. Our story about the telepathic teen will look something like this:

POV Character: Novels with more than one point of view (POV) are popular and exciting when done well. Examples from popular literature include Cloud Atlas, The Testaments, and The Power. 

If your novel has more than one POV, use this column to name which character is the POV for each scene. If your novel has only one POV, you can skip or delete this column.

Scene Details: In this column, you can copy and paste sentences from your synopsis that pertain to each scene. It’s important to note that by “scene,” we don’t mean chapter. We mean a small event in the plot of a story. A chapter might have two or three scenes, maybe more.

Extra Details: Make this spreadsheet your own by adding anything else you’d like to track. Here are a few ideas for extra columns you could add:

  • Character arcs: to track scenes that correspond with events important to individual characters.
  • Settings: to explore how the where affects what happens in each scene.
  • Page length: to estimate how much a scene takes up in the greater story.

But Invisible Ink Editing, the pantsers moan, why bring spreadsheets into this?

Spreadsheets are the perfect tool for plotting the beats of your story into scenes and chapters. Far too often, we receive manuscripts with chapters that end in weird places or low points, like when you watch a movie on cable TV with all its shoehorned commercial breaks, when these chapters should end with mini-cliffhangers, hints at what’s to come, and anything else that propels the reader forward. 

Finally, after your spreadsheet is filled out, use the column all the way to the left, titled Chapters, to group your scenes into different chapters. For now, go with what feels right. If three or four scenes take place in a single setting, perhaps that’s one chapter. Or maybe something big happens while the protagonist is in this setting, so that event is where one chapter ends and another begins.

Step 9: Build out your scene details (or start drafting)

Estimated Time: As long as it takes

Once you have your scene sheet completed, you’re ready to start writing your novel. You can do this in any word processor of your choice. Keep all of your snowflake worksheets on hand, as you’ll want to pull from them to flesh out your writing. 

Instead of forging ahead, planners may wish to commune with their inner pantser by exploring the scenes in prose: What might the protagonist see in the city square when she goes to meet the captain of the guard? What does the mysterious science teacher keep on his desk? What sorts of conversations might the main characters have about trade relations between Gorthax’s second and third moons?

Pantsers have been patient long enough. They will probably want to launch into the first draft. And having done some basic planning, which shouldn’t have felt like planning at all, they will know where they’re going and a good idea of how to get there.

Now that you’ve read through the process of the snowflake method, it’s time to start outlining your novel. Fill out the form below, and we’ll email you free templates to kickstart the process.

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7 simple tips for writing a better book blurb

So, you’ve finished writing your manuscript—congratulations!—and you’re following all the prescribed next steps. You’ve gotten feedback from beta readers, and had your book professionally edited and proofread. You even have a plan for distribution once your novel hits the (e-)bookshelves.

You’ve got a marketing plan, too. There’s just one little piece of it left, but somehow it has you cowering in a corner.

The dreaded book blurb.

There are plenty of common fears among writers, but writing a book blurb is way up there on the list of daunting tasks. How do you convince readers—in just a few hundred words—that your book is the one they should read next? Knowing it’s an essential piece of your marketing package can make it even more stressful.

After helping dozens of self-published authors produce stellar book blurbs for their novels, I’ve compiled a set of seven simple tips for writing a blurb that will be sure to lure readers new and old.

1. Hook your reader and reel them in.

“You think you know the truth. The truth is you know nothing.”
Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben

“In the heart of Trenton, N.J., a killer is out to make sure someone gets his just desserts.” —Turbo Twenty-Three by Janet Evanovich

“The traffickers. The drug dealers. The smugglers. They know what it takes to get a gun into Morocco, and so does Detective Laafrit.”
Whitefly by Abdelilah Hamdouchi

What do the quotes above have in common? They all happen to be opening lines from blurbs of books published in 2016, but more importantly, they all make me want to keep reading. Not every great book has a great hook on the cover (trust me, I’ve looked at a lot of them). But when you’re self-publishing your novel, a strong hook can do wonders for catching readers’ interest. Even if it’s not as pithy as Harlan Coben’s, your blurb should open with an enticing tidbit—at least, enticing enough to get the reader to move on to the second line.

A fishing pole being cast into a body of water

2. Focus on the main character(s).

Fiction readers love great characters, and a blurb is your first opportunity to introduce your readers to your protagonist. The bulk of your blurb should focus on the protagonist (and what’s happening to them). If you find yourself talking about minor characters, especially in the opening lines, your blurb probably isn’t living up to its potential. Does your novel include dual POVs? Then both your protagonists should make an appearance!

Keep in mind, we don’t want your main character’s whole life story—just a basic outline that shows why the protagonist (or what’s about to happen to them) is intriguing. It’s even possible to have your whole blurb focus on a main character, if the story itself is heavily character-driven.

3. Don’t summarize.

This is probably the most common blurb-related mistake I see as a book editor. As you sit down to write your blurb, it’s only natural to be thinking about all the ins and outs of your story. So you start typing away, and before you know it, you have a summary chock-full of plot points and details. Here’s the problem: if I can get the whole story from the blurb, why would I bother to open the cover?

Give your readers only the most important nuggets they need to understand what makes the book worth reading—never reveal the twist, the grand finale, or the entire arc of any character.

4. Cultivate mystique.

My best advice when it comes to writing a book blurb is to think of it like a teaser or a movie trailer. Rather than telling readers what to expect in any great detail (see No. 3), use this opportunity to entice them to start reading in the first place.

Imagine potential readers skimming blurbs for books in the same genre as yours, trying to find the next novel they want to sit down with. Beyond that catchy hook you’ve written, what makes your book the most intriguing? Once you have a good sense of that, don’t state it outright—use creative language to hint at what the reader will want to find out. Apply the principle of show vs. tell to your blurb, just as you did to your prose.

Spooky stairs leading into a dark basement.
What’s down those stairs? Don’t give it away!

5. Embrace the drama.

Writing your book blurb is a good excuse to go a little over the top. Be hyperbolic! Use metaphor! Many book blurbs start or end on a question (e.g., Will they be able to solve the mystery before time runs out?).

The following blurb for Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train uses a tight two-paragraph structure with a catchy lead-in before each, a bit of hyperbole, and a hypothetical question to wrap things up:

EVERY DAY THE SAME

Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning and night. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. Jess and Jason, she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

UNTIL TODAY

And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel goes to the police. But is she really as unreliable as they say? Soon she is deeply entangled not only in the investigation but in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?

In short, it’s dramatic—but not so dramatic that I roll my eyes and click away. That’s the sort of balance you’re aiming to strike.

6. Keep it short and sweet.

In most cases, your blurb should be between 200-300 words. With nonfiction or self-help books, where you really need to sell your reader on what they’re going to get out of it, you can get away with a longer blurb. If you’re already a well-known writer, your blurb might be a bit longer too, since you may include some promotional quotes and praise that your work has received. But, newbie writers, beware: calling your book a “page-turner” or yourself a “gifted storyteller” in your own promotional blurb might make you come off more pompous than professional.

7. Consider your blurb in a marketing context.

If you’re going the traditional publishing route, the team at your publisher should have this covered. But what if you’re self-publishing? Perhaps you’re tackling marketing all on your own, or you’ve enlisted the services of a private marketing consultant. Either way, your marketing team isn’t exactly gigantic, so you’ve really got to do your due diligence.

Ask yourself these questions:

  • Does my blurb convey the right mood for the novel?
  • Do the blurb and the cover (and my other marketing materials) go together thematically?
  • What styles of blurbs are other authors in my genre writing?

A little market research—aka reading other blurbs on various e-book retailers—can help you make sure you’re (a) not copying anyone else and (b) keeping in line with your readers’ expectations. After all, when it comes down to it, the point of your book blurb is to, well, sell your book!

I hope these seven writing tips are just what you need to start or finish an amazing book blurb for your upcoming novel. If you’re still having trouble getting it right, or you want a fresh pair of eyes on your copy, Invisible Ink Editing can help! Click here to learn more about our blurb editing service, or send us an email with questions anytime.

—Leah Wohl-Pollack, Senior Editor