Post by account_disabled on Jan 6, 2024 3:46:52 GMT
Today's is not a real post, but a journey into the tunnel of horrors of DIY covers . Viewing and reading are not recommended for an audience of amateur graphic designers and for those with a hazy tail. How many times have I said that the cover of a book is the business card of the book itself ? Yet it is common to find self-publishing books and ebooks with terrible covers. Thanks to the Kindle Cover Disasters site for the material and inspiration provided. Even though the post has a satirical and humorous nature, its content is intended to be very serious. The author trusts and hopes in the goodwill and intelligence - as well as humility - of self-published authors so that they do not introduce similar disasters into the publishing market . #1 – The lack of connection between image and story Cover Cover In my opinion, the first step in creating a book cover is finding the right image .
In this case we are obviously talking about covers that use an all-round illustration, be it a drawing or photo. What does suitable image mean? That the image used must be contextual to the written story . It must Special Data evoke the topic being discussed. In short, there must be a direct link between the two. In this regard, I chose the cover of the ebook The Devil's Bestiary – an anthology of horror . Even if you don't know English, it's easy to understand the meaning of the title: “The Devil's Bestiary – a horror anthology”. What better image, what photo more representative of horror, bestiality and the devil to choose than that... of a cute penguin ? Maybe the photos of bats or sewer rats were over, it could be anything. The second disaster is instead the cover of a science fiction story . Yes, Arrival of the Overlords , the second novel in the Invasion Planet Earth saga , shows us a scene worthy of Star Wars .
How could we not be struck by that hypergalactic and futuristic image that would have made even Asimov shiver? #2 – Poor image quality Cover Cover A cover is above all an image, but understood in a very broad sense. It is the very image of the author, of the story he presents. The illustrations to be used must therefore have high quality , resolution and definition . The cover of the novel Eagle Bird One is grainy, certainly made with photos and drawings taken from the web and shrunken down, images that were perhaps already low definition. But the title also appears in the same state. The superhero novel The Skunk Woman (whose title says it all: “The Skunk Woman”?) features crude drawings, made by those without manual skills, and saved in a low-resolution jpeg. #3 – Insufficient contrast between text and background Cover Contrast Perhaps the main difficulty in creating a book cover is knowing how to adapt the text to the image used.
In this case we are obviously talking about covers that use an all-round illustration, be it a drawing or photo. What does suitable image mean? That the image used must be contextual to the written story . It must Special Data evoke the topic being discussed. In short, there must be a direct link between the two. In this regard, I chose the cover of the ebook The Devil's Bestiary – an anthology of horror . Even if you don't know English, it's easy to understand the meaning of the title: “The Devil's Bestiary – a horror anthology”. What better image, what photo more representative of horror, bestiality and the devil to choose than that... of a cute penguin ? Maybe the photos of bats or sewer rats were over, it could be anything. The second disaster is instead the cover of a science fiction story . Yes, Arrival of the Overlords , the second novel in the Invasion Planet Earth saga , shows us a scene worthy of Star Wars .
How could we not be struck by that hypergalactic and futuristic image that would have made even Asimov shiver? #2 – Poor image quality Cover Cover A cover is above all an image, but understood in a very broad sense. It is the very image of the author, of the story he presents. The illustrations to be used must therefore have high quality , resolution and definition . The cover of the novel Eagle Bird One is grainy, certainly made with photos and drawings taken from the web and shrunken down, images that were perhaps already low definition. But the title also appears in the same state. The superhero novel The Skunk Woman (whose title says it all: “The Skunk Woman”?) features crude drawings, made by those without manual skills, and saved in a low-resolution jpeg. #3 – Insufficient contrast between text and background Cover Contrast Perhaps the main difficulty in creating a book cover is knowing how to adapt the text to the image used.