We are delighted to welcome back author Denison Hatch to Omnimystery News.
Last week we had a conversation with Denison about his new thriller Flash Crash (Lookout Press; April 2016 ebook format) and when he told us he designed his own cover, we asked if he could share his experience with us. He titles his guest post today, "Diving Deep into Book Cover Design, or What To Know about Book Cover Design".
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Photo provided courtesy of
Denison Hatch
When I started to prepare for publishing my upcoming novel, Flash Crash, a vast array of logistical issues reared their head. As I came closer to actually releasing the book, I learned the truth of why it's very hard to self-publish successfully. Every author needs an edge — and hopefully the writing itself is one to begin with. But that may not be enough. One inherent conflict for the average author preparing to publish their own novel is that its difficult "tell great stories" and to also conquer the learning curve of "formatting a novel," "designing a cover," "fostering a social media following," "developing a website," and "marketing a product."
Strong experience or a particular skill in any of those elements will help your average self-published author immensely. But in the end, it doesn't matter if you're doing the work yourself, or if it's a graphic/web designer that you've hired. What's most important is that you're holding the work up to the highest possible standard — applying objective criticism and deep thinking to the fundamental nature of the product.
Today, I'm going to focus on cover design. The cover is vitally important. The reason that I've reached some of these thoughts and conclusions was due to the design and subsequent redesign of my own book cover. First, I'd like to show you the first version of my book cover (right).
I was super proud of this cover. It was ultra bold and in your face. There was a lightning bolt. It even had a "bad guy" with a tattoo of a scorpion on his scalp — both a literal and physical description of one of the antagonists within the novel.
And at first, most of the people that I showed it to were complimentary. A few loved it. Most liked it. Some were on the fence. But then I began to receive external comments. An early reviewer read it on NetGalley and noted that the book was "better than the cover made you expect." Others echoed her view. I took it all to heart, and I started thinking about where I could improve. What did it really come down to? A lock of focus? Were the words too bold? Was there a problem with the story on the cover?
What should a cover really look like anyways? What is it that people are going to want to click on?
When I first think of covers I think of The Hardy Boys books, because they were the first "series" that I read actively. Somewhere around third grade, I read an entire shelf full of The Hardy Boys. Check out what Hardy Boys covers looked like, right.
They were very literal and to the point. The cover depicted action from the book. It gave you a glimpse into the story. And The Hardy Boys, while aimed at YA males, represented the cover zeitgeist of the times. First published in 1927, their prime was the 1960's.
From the sixties to the seventies and into the 80's, graphic design experienced many shifts. It started with the literalism of Hardy Boys. Then cubism and post-modernism arrived. Art deco flickered up and down in leaderboard, and finally the eighties ended with a combination of all of this — creatively laid out text, hand-illustrated feature or images. Check out Eye of the Needle, followed by The Bonfire of the Vanities and then It.
The 90's were all about John Grisham, Michael Crichton, Tom Clancy. Oh — and one more participant: Photoshop. One need only to look at Grisham novel covers, from A Time To Kill to The Partner to witness the progression.
This series of developments occurred and eventually began to include fully computer-aided design. That's the point when we reached pure photorealism, such as the cover of Dan Brown's Angels & Demons.
In the process of researching what books were selling on Amazon, and general bestsellers, I realized that another progression in book cover images was well underway. The Angels & Demons-period is gone. It seems as though special effects and photorealism have fallen out of fashion. No longer are designers or readers interested in the "capturing" of a storyboard from the movie version of the book. Perhaps it was only once book covers reached "Peak CGI" that the backlash began.
What has emerged is, at its essence, simplicity. Simplicity is a rejection of the idea that we should try to force a vision of our novel's world onto any reader. It is also an endorsement of the concept that books are a different pleasure from movies and television altogether — and to display a scene from the book for the cover is to pervert the very intention of the medium. Simplicity can mean one image, one piece of art or illustration, or something else that I noticed: the ultra close-up.
If you want to be completely on trend, then right now the ultra-close up is what's up. All one needs to do is take a look at the two hottest beachgoer's novels of the last two summers, Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. Gone Girl's ultra-close up is of a piece of hair (or twine... I can't be sure). The Girl on the Train's ultra-close up is essentially just a window on a train — blurred and whipping past. Both images use their simplicity to capture a sense of tone, but importantly, not plot.
Thus resulted in the final lesson for my book cover. A great modern cover should avoid plot, but is required to project "tone." This tone places the reader in the mindset of the world they are about to enter — it makes them feel what the characters are feeling.
Thus resulted in the final lesson for my book cover. A great modern cover should avoid plot, but is required to project "tone." This tone places the reader in the mindset of the world they are about to enter — it makes them feel what the characters are feeling.
It's beneficial to think about a project from a wider tonal perspective first, then dial-in on the right look, second. That said, there are a million other important points to cover when it comes to design.
One more crucial one: Make sure that your cover downsizes well, ensuring that when it is as small as postage stamp it is still discernible. The wording should be readable. Most importantly, imagine that postage-sized stamp as your only sales representative. When your image is in a line against eight other titles, which one is the reader going to click on?
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Denison Hatch is a screenwriter and novelist based in Los Angeles. Although he lives in the proverbial desert now, he is originally from Delaware — land of rolling hills, forested valleys, and DuPont gunpowder. Denison has a number of feature and television projects in development, including his original screenplay, Vanish Man, which is set up at Lionsgate. A graduate of Cornell University who worked in film development before becoming a full-time writer, Denison lives with his fiancé in a little house in Hollywood.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at DenisonHatch.com and his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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Flash Crash by Denison Hatch
A Jake Rivett Heist Thriller
Publisher: Lookout Press
David Belov, a quant programmer working for an investment bank in New York, is blackmailed into writing an algorithm that will intentionally crash the gold market.
David discovers that his virtual "Flash Crash" was simply a required stepping stone towards the largest physical gold robbery in history, and that's he's been framed for the resulting chaos, the lives of his beloved wife and son on the balance …
With Detective Jake Rivett and the NYPD's finest operators from the Major Crimes Division actively seeking to locate and arrest David, and other, darker elements nipping at his heels, David is forced to confront his own past in order to have a future.
— Flash Crash by Denison Hatch
