Book Covers - Titles

[J_Chemist]

Sup y'all. I come with another problem to be solved via discussion. As I have a new book cover on the way, I have a conundrum to be solved.

Book Covers and Titles.

What text do you put on your covers? Or if you're not an author and just a reader, or if you're an artist, or just someone with an opinion, what do you think should be on the cover?

Currently, I'm torn. I have the series name, "The Blessed Child", and a volume name now that I have multiple books. Should I include both of them? Or do I just include the Volume name?

I'll obviously have my penname at the bottom but the former details I am confused on. I don't want to clutter the cover and ruin the pretty artwork, you know? I'm tempted to say just put the Volume title, as I've seen most other actual published authors do the same, but then I would technically have to revise my first cover to reflect the same detail. Something I am pained to do as I'll actually have to recommission a whole new cover. life is pain.

Let me know what you think! Thanks y'all!

Edit: For clarity, I'm just asking about text. Not art.

 

[Deleted member 84247]

Sup y'all. I come with another problem to be solved via discussion. As I have a new book cover on the way, I have a conundrum to be solved.

Book Covers and Titles.

What text do you put on your covers? Or if you're not an author and just a reader, or if you're an artist, or just someone with an opinion, what do you think should be on the cover?

Currently, I'm torn. I have the series name, "The Blessed Child", and a volume name now that I have multiple books. Should I include both of them? Or do I just include the Volume name?

I'll obviously have my penname at the bottom but the former details I am confused on. I don't want to clutter the cover and ruin the pretty artwork, you know? I'm tempted to say just put the Volume title, as I've seen most other actual published authors do the same, but then I would technically have to revise my first cover to reflect the same detail. Something I am pained to do as I'll actually have to recommission a whole new cover. life is pain.

Let me know what you think! Thanks y'all!

If it is for the SH cover keep it minimal. Just put the volume number, but you could do the title in smaller text. Or the inverse. If you plan to do a physical book, then at that time it would be easier to include everything.

 

[LilRora]

The thumbnails on Scribble are too small to fit any reasonably sized text longer than 4-5 words. Generally, unless it's unusually short, you should only use the title and volume number.

You can also consider having the title in larger letters and the volume name underneath in small text (as you'd generally have for paperback covers) but it most likely won't be visible to people looking for stories among latest updates.

If each volume has a separate storyline, then you can also consider making the volume name large and title of the whole series, smaller, above or underneath. That one should only be used when you have a major plot points closed within each volume, not a long story stretched across multiple ones.

In general, in my opinon, a cover has to convey two things apart from the obvious title and all. First, the mood. This one's hopefully self-explanatory, but just in case I'll say that I mean things like scary or unsettling covers for horrors and bright, lively covers for comedies, or plain, to the point covers of historical books. The second thing is what kind of book it is, and by that I mean if it's a standalone story, a part of a series, or just another volume of one long story. That includes what I wrote about a paragraph before, and it basically means that that the cover should indicate if you should be looking for the previous volume or what. It doesn't apply as much when you're posting online, but still.

 

[TheKillingAlice]

To be honest, that's something that kind of depends on where you from and on the internet, for Webnovels, it all boils down to how you want to present your book. What do I mean with that?

1. Regional Title Styles
First of all, in my country, books that are part of a series are published under a series-title with subtitles to it. Like "John Doe - Story of a Man Unknown" and the sequel "John Doe - Life of the Amnesia Man". That way, though a lot of books now have secondary titles, you would usually know when it's actually a series. In American novels, I've witnessed a different style. The first book would have a singular title, for example "John Doe", and the next book would have a new title, let's say "Life of the Amnesia Man", with the annotation that it's part of the "John Doe"-series. I think both are good to represent the individual book and the series at large.
I do need to say that it's important to have those things on your cover, especially for printed book, because it's needed for readers who find this book, it would definitely be of interest to them, but...

2. Internet Style
Well, as @RepresentingEnvy said, it would bloat the cover, as you don't have much space on these tiny covers, with little dpi, you can only see very tiny versions when the book is shown to you and you don't already know it, so you will want to be able to read the important details. You can't write the small stuff actually small, because even the biggest versions you see of the covers aren't actually that big.
What I would maybe pitch is that you definitely take a cover that is very close to the first one, but maybe a different color scheme or just a different character or whatever and put a new title the same way on it as on the first book. Call it "Whatever Title", an put in "Book two of the Blessed Child series" as a first line on the summary. Yes, people will click on it, but they should, right? Then they see it's a second novel and will either go to the first or leave it, but then they aren't interested in it and wouldn't have read it anyway, because through the misc it's not hard to find a related book, right? They will find out right away that it's a second book, but you don't have to put on too many things.
EDIT: Btw the same stlye because those in the know will recognize it and click on it, probably get a notification about it anyway. But those who don't might be interested and find the first book like this, maybe not clicking on a second book from the get go, but since they are already there, they might. It's psychology. Works on some, not on everyone. But it can give you a bit of an additional boost. Anyway, that's about as much as I can say about it, from the perspective of a Cover Designer. But I mostly did print, I will admit that.

 

[georgelee5786]

I just put something semi-related to the story for the covers of my online novels. If I published irl, it would be title, my pen name, and a character in the story, probably simply standing or sitting

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

Sup y'all. I come with another problem to be solved via discussion. As I have a new book cover on the way, I have a conundrum to be solved.

Book Covers and Titles.

What text do you put on your covers? Or if you're not an author and just a reader, or if you're an artist, or just someone with an opinion, what do you think should be on the cover?

Currently, I'm torn. I have the series name, "The Blessed Child", and a volume name now that I have multiple books. Should I include both of them? Or do I just include the Volume name?

I'll obviously have my penname at the bottom but the former details I am confused on. I don't want to clutter the cover and ruin the pretty artwork, you know? I'm tempted to say just put the Volume title, as I've seen most other actual published authors do the same, but then I would technically have to revise my first cover to reflect the same detail. Something I am pained to do as I'll actually have to recommission a whole new cover. life is pain.

Let me know what you think! Thanks y'all!

Edit: For clarity, I'm just asking about text. Not art.

I don't put text on my covers. I put a huge grin devoid of attachment to a face, with a tongue licking its lips.

 

[dummycake]

I don't put text on my covers. I put a huge grin devoid of attachment to a face, with a tongue licking its lips.

you spawn your cover with twenty pints of blood of virgin girls and two decapitated black chickens

 

[melchi]

I think as long as the text contrast is really high that is the main thing. The thumb nails on Amazon are really small. The the more it can be shrunk and still be ledgable the better.

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

you spawn your cover with twenty pints of blood of virgin girls and two decapitated black chickens

???

 

[Deleted member 54065]

I can help you with layouts. Feel free to send (PM) the cover art and other details to me.

 

[Panthers426]

This was the one I used for volume one.