I’m going to make a promise to you. Right here, right now. Are you ready? Good.

I will not, repeat — I will NOT mention the cliche “…judge a book by its cover” again in this whole, entire series. In fact, this is all I’d like to say on the subject of the covers and the judging: for right or for wrong, we do it. Period.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s talk about how to make your cover fail.

Fail? That’s right — I say fail because looking at a gallery of self-published titles, it seems that’s all I see. Cover fail after cover fail after cover fail. And I don’t just mean normal fail. I mean, FAILing. I’m breaking out the capitalization — that means things are getting real.

Harsh, I know. I’m not a stone-hearted meanie, I promise! In fact, do you know what emotion I feel as I click through page after page after page of those books? It’s not pity. It’s not disconnection. It’s not even sadness.

The emotion I feel the strongest is outrage. It makes me mad. Mad to think that an author who spent (at the very least) months of their precious time pouring their heart and soul into their work will have it glossed over in seconds by those doing what I like to call “cover surfing,” readers searching through hundreds of books, looking for a cover which draws their eyes simply because of cover FAIL.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Overwhelming as cover design may seem, you don’t have to be a book designer to give your cover the best foot forward.  In this series, I’m going to explore the most common causes of “cover FAIL,” and tell you the secrets of how to reverse them in order to stop those “cover surfers” dead in their tracks – and convince them to buy.

The Paths to Cover FAIL

Periodically, I’ll add a new path to the list. We’ll discuss its symptoms and how to avoid it in the future:

1. Packing on the Pounds (or, Adding Too Much)
2. Forgetting to do Research
3. Focusing on the Wrong Things
4. Forgetting Your Target Market

Take a look at your previous covers (if you have them) or think about your upcoming covers — have you committed any of these FAILs in the past and, if so, how can you learn from those to create better covers in the future?

If all else fails, hire a pro. Stopping those “cover surfers” is our bread and butter.