Most self publishers underestimate the importance of Kindle covers.
And guess what? Everyone judges a book by its cover!
Your book will be judged no differently.
How to make good kindle covers is more of an art than it is a science.
That being said, I’m going to show you the best practices that’ll hone your design efforts to making good Kindle covers.
Kindle covers that will sell your book and have the Kindle Store audience chose your book over others.
Table of Contents
The Series Cover Strategy
Most people have seen series in their physical book collection, or while shopping online, but very few actually know why series are used in the publishing business, let alone recognize that books are created in a series style manner.
Designing your Kindle covers with this in mind is extremely powerful.
Before I show you what they are. Let’s take a look at why you should use the Series strategy to design your covers.
Benefits of Using Series Style Book Covers:
- Creates an impression of authority
- Makes cross-promotion of books possible
- A complimentary practice for bundling
To use this strategy, it’s best to use it on a per niche basis. A niche, or category, is just a collection of interests. The niche brings all the interests together by representing the interests with one word (the niche).
For example, weight loss, well some interests in this niche would be dieting, exercise, stretching, meal prepping, specific diets, yoga perhaps…you get my point.
If you publish a series of books, under one pen name, then you’ll want your books to be similar in cover nature.
Feel free to change the title, subtitles, images. Just make sure to keep consistent!
Example of Good Book Covers that Practice the Series Strategy
In Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Series, you can see he, or the cover designer, is using the series cover strategy. You see the pattern, right?
The top half of the book remains the same. The bottom half stays the same as well, except for the image in the bottom half center. The main difference across all his books, at least in the image above, is that the title/subtitles change!
Same deal here—well almost. These series of books stay consistent by changing the background image, but the images are all congruent.
For example, if someone read The Millionaire Next Door a year ago and ran into The Millionaire Mind in the bookstore by accident, most people would recognize the familiar cover. Something in their brain would trigger “hey…that book looks familiar…let me check it out”.
A few moments later, that person would most likely buy it (assuming she/he liked the first book) because she/he is already familiar with the authors work! Just like the old saying goes, “People do business with those they know, like and trust.”
How to Apply This to Your Kindle Business
Ever heard of swipe files?
Swipe files are a collection of screenshots, images, or URL’s that an online marketer uses as templates or references. They use swipe files when they need help in creating something from scratch.
That something could be Kindle covers.
For instance, I have a Kindle Cover Swipe File saved to the cloud. I also have a swipe file for cool squeeze pages that I come across.
See what I mean here?
Having swipe files is a great strategy for creating good Kindle covers. All you’re doing is modeling other people’s, in this case, cover’s, success!
Here’s what you do…
Take screenshots or save images (you right-click on the book cover you want and click Save image as…) when you come across a Kindle Cover you like (can be regular books too).
Ideally, the Kindle Covers that go into your swipe file should have a good Amazon Best Seller Ranking and can be marketed well by self publishing course principles. If your book is attempting to rank for an Amazon keyword, include it in your book cover title or subtitle. Book marketing software like Publisher Rocket can help you craft your title and subtitles.
Save a few Kindle covers to your newly created Kindle Swipe folder, and you’re on your way to having a great collection of good Kindle covers to reference!
How to Make Good Kindle Covers via Freelancers
Most Kindle publishers don’t make their own covers. They outsource.
Now that you have these strategies under your belt, you have to communicate with your cover designers.
Kindle publishers either outsource the job to Fiverr (which is what I do by the way) for $5. Or they outsource it to a freelancer on sites like Upwork.com.
Once you have a cover you want to model, send the PNG, or JPEG file to your outsourced designer and tell them to make you a cover that looks like “this one” (referring to the chosen Kindle cover in your swipe file).
Of course, you’re going to be giving the designer your own title, images, subtitles author names, etc. A good method of implementing this swipe file strategy is to find a good cover in a different niche than the one you’re planning to publish in.
There they are…
The two tricks elite publishers use, the series and swipe file strategy. Go ahead, model success!
Happy swiping :)
What do you think about creating good Kindle Covers? Have you used these strategies before? Let me know in the discussion below!
