Cover design
Designing covers and logos for your author platform can be an interesting and fun way to explore different aspects of the publishing industry. Part of your author brand is to have a consistent design.
Design a logo for your author name and an imprint
In your diary come up with some ideas of what you want people to think of when they think of your author name. Look at other designs and start coming up with possible designs. I think simple is better than complicated. You can look at some of the fancy fonts that are free for commercial use. I particularly like the handwriting fonts like Jane Austen. But there are thousands to choose from. An imprint is what your book will be published under. You would have seen imprints before like Penguin and HarperCollins. This will be the business side of your book. You should come up with several versions and test with others which ones work before creating the final version. If you are artistic I recommend drawing it and then scanning it. If you like technology then you should use Indesign or Photoshop but there are places online like Gimp that will be acceptable as well or Canva. If this really appeals to you then you might want to invest in a product like Affinity Photo. It is a lot like Photoshop but is not as expensive. If you have no skills with technology or art then like your author brand I suggest looking for a font and maybe do a typography imprint. (If you just go with a fancy font you won't be able to use your logo for the art standard)
There is a design standard that you can work on for this part but not essential.
Here are some sites to help you design things for your author brand.
Here is an example of planning a cover
Cover design
Since this is a series it has to fit in with the branding of the other covers.
So I will need to use the same fonts though I can change the tones of the covers. I will need a woman's face. I haven't decided yet if I will have her to the side like the first book in the series.
The first book has distinct steampunk elements like the mechanical hand and the second book the main character didn't have anything like that so I had the gears at the bottom to show that it is a steampunk.
The close up of the face is reminiscent of romance so that signals to the reader there will be romantic elements to the book. Since this has a strong 'lust to love' trope I need to make sure my audience is aware of this otherwise I will get bad reviews if I surprise the audience.
Things that I need to hit for the blurb is that it has a dragon and 'lust to love' trope. I need to include the train robbery though this will technically be a spoiler since it will only happen partly through the story. Since I start with a train I think I can get away with this.
Possible hook/tag lines: Her heart is stolen and she needs to get it back before the train stops.
One stolen heart, one stolen train and they are on track for disaster.
Here are some books that are top of their genres that fit in with what I'm going for as inspiration.
Common themes from these book covers is dark atmospheric. High contrast of colours though the colours can vary. I also want to focus on hands as well as faces. The model needs to engage with the camera and make it look like she is looking at the reader.
Possible ideas for the person - I have a subscription from Deposit photos so I don't break any copyright laws.
Part of what you need to do with your cover design is market research.
So I was working on a task for a student based on 90846 which is conduct market research. I realised that you could also do this with planning the novel so this is an extra or optional standard people can do for writing their novel. I chose to show a market research for novels as it is what I am most familiar with. So this is a mixture of examplar and resources needed to understand the business behind it.
Step one is to break down what you are and what your want out of your research.
I am an author of urban fantasy and I want to provide escapism to all. To give the world a new perspective and allow people a chance to see the world with new eyes. That is why it is fantasy as they will allow a fantastical element that is so different from reality that there will be no mistaking that the story is far from real. On the other hand I want people to relate to the characters as well so the story will be set in a urban setting and the race and gender of the characters will be diverse so there will be something for most people to relate to.
Basically this section is your mission statement or your why. Here is a video to explain what that is.
Step 2 - What is the aim of your research
It is easier to work around a specific product or event that you want to market for. For a book, it is release day and the product is more the cover than anything else. Yes, the inside of a book is great but people tend to buy based on the cover and the blurb so you need to get those right. I'm going to mainly do what is called A B testing. Which means I'm going to have two versions of everything and test them out to see what people do.
Aim of my research is to find the cover that will attract people like urban fantasy. This will be amongst avid or what is called whale readers. And once I find a cover that attracts the right kind of audience I will see which blurb is the most enticing to buy.
My secondary research will be to see which covers and blurbs have sold well in the past in the urban fantasy genre. These books will be our main competition and we'll see which price range they sell at to see which price will be the most competitive.
I use K-lytics myself for most of this kind of research. They also kindly put all the marketing information in graphs and have a video that explains it all. You have to pay for those but I wish I could post it on here to best show what this standard is looking for. K-lytics though has a little taster of what they provide.
Step 3 is to state how you are going to gather your data.
Like before I said I was going to do an A B Test. Here is an explanation based on games.
The easiest way for market research to be done in a school setting is through a survey. What you ask on your survey is important and how you ask is also important. Even the order is important. So, for instance, I want to know more about my targeted audience than I do with whether the cover appeals to more people I will put a question first about who likes urban fantasy and who doesn't. This will prime the person being interviewed to look out for things about urban fantasy. Then I could show my two covers and ask which one is preferred. I could change my focus and instead look for a cover that appeals to the greater audience and I would start with an A B testing of my covers and then ask for demographic information like which genres they like. Here is a guide to writing surveys.
My market research plan is to first see what is selling in the top 100 books on Amazon in Urban Fantasy. I will make a list of elements that seem to be in common amongst all the books. I will also then look at the blurbs of the top 100 books and look for something that is similar amongst all of them. I will make a note of the prices of all the books in the top 100 and look at the average price as being the most competitive. I will also make a box and whisker graph to show the range of the prices these books have.
Once I have an idea of what is profitable in the genre I will develop two covers and two blurbs based on the elements that are in all the books in the top 100. I will then go to a Facebook group that is meant for surveying book covers and blurbs. These are predominately whale readers of a wide range of genres. I will ask them to state whether to them it fits into urban fantasy and I will ask them to choose between the two. I will repeat this survey with the blurbs.
I can also talk about how many I will survey. I could also have done this at a library where I am likely to find whale readers. Another option is to survey my Newsletter subscribers. All of these would be appropriate groups. In fact, I could survey all three groups to get a better range of data.
Step four - make graphs of your data and present
Here are two articles to help you decide how you will visualise your data.
I'm terrible at graphs so I'm going to show you what they should look like from people who actually know what they are doing. The reason I don't is that most of my A B testing is done through neat programs that record the results for me.
I recommend a bar graph or a histogram for your A B testing results.
A box and whisker graph for the price of the top books because it will show you an average price as well as the top you can charge and what the lowest that is on the market.
Scatter graphs can be useful as well depending on the kinds of questions you asked on your survey. For instance if I asked about age or for them to rate how much they liked urban fantasy I could create a graph like this.
Step Five - Conclusion
Here is where you make your generalizations about the process and the data. I would say which price I'm going for and why. Which cover and why - I can state stats here to back up my reasons. I would do the same with the blurb.
Conclusion
I will be going with cover A because the elements match the genre the most. People who like Urban Fantasy liked the A cover 78% of the time while those who didn't like urban fantasy actually preferred cover B. By going with cover A I am more likely to appeal to urban fantasy readers. This is important for further sales and word of mouth as people who like urban fantasy are more likely to read other books in the genre and speak well of it. I will be going with blurb B but with some minor changes that some of the people surveyed suggested. Everyone preferred blurb B with urban fantasy readers liking it 82% of the time and non urban fantasy readers liking blurb B 59% of the time. I've decided that I will go with the average price of $3.39 for ebooks as the sale price. As this is the most competitive as the most expensive book in the top 100 is $15.99. But will give me a good profit compared to the lowest priced book which is 99c.
Step 6 - Strengths and weaknesses of the process.
Here you should look at the process and try to figure out ways to make it better and why the results might not have been the best. They need to make sure they show how these weaknesses and improvements will affect the validity of the data.
Improvements
I only got 15 respondents to the survey. To have a better result I would widen the survey to incorporate more people. I will most likely get more non urban fantasy readers but I will be able to get a wider range of data that should prove the most accurate.
I could have held a focus group with a small group of very avid readers of urban fantasy. This could have been done in the early stages before the first covers were created. I could have done this with all the elements.
Since the Top 100 books in urban fantasy aren't always purely urban fantasy I could have culled out the books that were clearly more low fantasy and paranormal romance to get a better and more accurate picture of what is appropriate in successful urban fantasy books. Many authors try for smaller niches to get to the top 100 which improves visibility. Also, I would maybe treat traditional books differently. For instance, the top books in urban fantasy were the Harry Potter books. They muddy the data as they are in a league of their own. There is no need to improve their visibility and they could literally be in plain covers and still sell so it would be better to focus on unknown authors and see what they did to rise above the others.
One of the weaknesses of A B testing is that there are so many variables that I could have gone with. Since covers are so dynamic I could have missed the perfect cover because I didn't think of it or the elements I had picked from the top 100 urban fantasy books had altered my plans for a book cover.
To pass this standard you really need to make sure you explain business terms and display that you have some knowledge of the industry. Explain how it works and that kind of thing. Make sure you hit primary and secondary research data. This is because you need a range of displaying your data. I made sure of this by hitting both the cover and the blurb as well as looking pricing. That is three pieces of information I would get out of this. Don't limit yourself to too little. Find out as much as you can about your product from the survey.