The design of your book cover is really important and is an aspect that shouldn't be overlooked. After all your book cover is going to sell the majority of your books. If customers don't like the look of your cover they won't even bother looking inside to discover more information. Your book cover needs to instantly tell people what your book is about. It should have the title, subtitle and author name clearly visible and easy to read. One mistake that many authors make is to use fancy fonts that are difficult to read.
If your book cover has an image on it, ensure that this doesn't interfere with the title either. You may wish to just have the image display in the centre of the book, then have a white or plain section above where the title would go. On the lower portion of the cover, you could have the same strip available for the author name.
Also remember that sometimes less is better and an uncluttered book cover may be the best choice for your book. When deciding upon your book cover you want to choose one feature, character or point from your book to focus on. Maybe you want to have an image to represent the main character or the main benefit of the book.
Another area that is often overlooked is the look and feel of the spine and the back cover of the book. While an eBook may not have a back cover, quite often the spine will be shown on any 3D version and it needs to look good.
If your book will appear as a paperback version then don't forget to add your photo and a short biography. Have the colour and design reflect your front cover and add the title and author to the spine. Make sure that the font and print size is easy to read too.
While some of these points may be small they can add when it comes to selling copies of your book. Even if you plan on creating your ecover yourself, take these pointers into consideration.
The nice thing about creating your own ecovers is that you can easily test out a few different designs. If your book isn't selling then change the cover by selecting a different background colour or using a different font style.
Each time you make changes you can still keep a copy of the previous ecover. Then once you find which one brings more sales you can select that as your final choice.