A Tale of Two Custom Covers: Author Submitted vs. Professionally Designed

In yesterday’s post I talked about our custom cover option and how we often have to walk a delicate line when working with authors who have submitted their own cover designs and who we want to diplomatically point toward a “better” direction. One of our authors, who has given me permission to recount her experience, recently went through this exact scenario. She had designed her own cover and submitted it for her book. It looked like this:

This is a relatively average example of the author-submitted covers we receive at Outskirts Press. They are almost always white (since designing on color or backgrounds introduces a whole host of technical problems that most authors simply choose to eschew) and it lacks a spine and a back cover. But that’s why they come to us, right? To make their book even BETTER than it already is… In some cases we’re able to convince the author to consider a professionally-designed custom cover, given the overall importance of covers. In other cases, we’re not so successful and they end up publishing what they (or their designer friends) have designed in a word processor. Fortunately, in Ellen’s case, we were successful in communicating to her the importance of a great cover; and as a result, our book designer created the following two custom covers for her to choose from: