How I Chose the Perfect Book Cover (1): Lessons for Indie Authors

Three traditionally published crime thrillers, all featuring a photograph of a woman on the cover.

Cover designs similar to the style Get Covers came up with, used for commentary purposes.

How I Tried (and Failed) to Design My Own Book Cover

Relatively late into the manuscript process of my new Christmas gangland thriller No Way To Live, I continued to tinker with my own designs for the book cover.

Early DIY book cover design for Christmas gangland thriller No Way To Live

Version 1: a fairy lights-decorated Glock. Not my finest hour!

Like many indie authors, I need to focus on keeping book design costs low. I’d at least graduated from ‘Cutesy Christmas Crime Caper,’ complete with a Glock decorated with Christmas tree lights to a dark picture of a street with a Christmas tree. I liked that one better because it felt more true to the novel – more noir. But none of them looked professional. I’ve shown three attempts, but there were several more – all of them as bad!

Alternate noir-style book cover concept for No Way To Live by Anthony Addis

Version 2: The darker, more noir attempt. A slightly blurred image of Market Street in Douglas, Isle of Man.

Version 3: Complete with an AI generated image of Billie. I would never have used it, but was just brainstorming. But then I remembered – Billie doesn’t even appear in the scene depicted here! Anyway, since I took this photograph, the building with all the lights has become the Isle of Man’s first ever Wetherspoons!

The Blurb: Defining the Design Brief

Before I briefed my designer, I needed to capture the tone and genre through the blurb, a crucial and unbelievably difficult step in book cover design for indie authors.

Working with a Professional Book Cover Designer

Screen grab of Get Covers compare packages.

After my own inadequate attempts to design a cover, I hired Get Covers, a Ukrainian company that from what I understand acts as a training ground for designers. For remarkably cheap prices, they design professional looking, attractive covers. A translator passes on the design brief to the designers, who use stock images to create the cover. The translator then shares the designs with the author, who can request any necessary changes as many times as they want.

That’s the stage I’m at right now. I saw the initial design, and really liked it. The designer had definitely captured the feel of the novel and also captured the genre. I won’t reveal it because I’m probably going in a different direction, but it’s similar to the ones in the pictures above. A young, beautiful woman looking directly at the camera, (although in No Way To Live’s case, she’s aiming a handgun). Big Ben looms in the background. Authors like Jessie Keane, Linda Calvey and Roberta Kray all write gangland thrillers, and all have female characters front and centre.

To show the character or not?

There were a few problems with the design. For one thing, while most of the action takes place in London, Big Ben isn’t mentioned in the book. And then there’s the woman, who to be fair is similar to the image I had in my head for Billie: blonde pixie hair cut, tall, youngish. Apart from red nail polish and the colour of her clothes (in the scene depicted, she should be wearing white), the designer pretty much captured Billie’s essence. So she’s true to my vision of the character, but my vision isn’t necessarily how a reader will view her. Do I really want to nail down a reader’s perception so precisely?

I also don’t want to give the impression No Way To Live is only about Billie. The male character, Tom, is very much the story’s protagonist. In some ways, Billie is like Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca…very much present, even when she isn’t.

Building a Consistent Look for a Book Series

I also need to be aware of the fact that No Way To Live is the first in a series. Book 2, Good Deeds and Charity, is already written in first draft. It has a similar feel to No Way To Live, and is also set in London. Book 3 is in the planning stage, but is probably set in London as well. But around Book 4, the series is likely to branch out to other locations. Every book’s cover needs to be recognisably part of the Angel of the South series, but they also need to be flexible enough to cope with change.

I’ll share the final design soon — and how I balanced character, tone, and genre in the final choice for No Way To Live as it’s own novel, and as the first book in a series.

No Way To Live will be available on Amazon from November 21st.