Topic: Bad Book Covers

Hi! Dominique Gibson is back with another post. So I don’t know if I had mentioned this at all in my previous posts or even on my YouTube channel but this week, I officially started my thesis writing course for my MFA in creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University (also known as SNHU) after a week of vacation and after ten weeks of exploring different ways of how to market my work while having a full time job. There were many options to consider when it came to the decision about marketing my work in addition to resources to get a head start on marketing your work in general that I will be doing in a future post.

Today, I wanted to talk about one topic that came up in my discussion post during the first week of class: Book Covers. The reason why I wanted to talk about it today was because my professor went on my website and stated that my book covers wasn’t very good and stated that she couldn’t tell what kind of book it is based on the book cover alone. She stated that even though she read the blurbs of the novels, she stopped gaining interest when she saw my book covers.

Now don’t get me wrong, she gave me a congratulations when it came to my work overall and started asking questions about what my genre is when I mentioned that it’s a sci-fi paranormal romance (She stated that it might be futuristic paranormal romance instead). But I have to admit that her comment got to me a little bit. I then commented her back saying I didn’t have the money to hire a professional cover designer and she gave me some resources on how to find premade book covers for a cheaper price.

But before I received her comment about premade book covers, I went online to see if I could find some covers that were just downright terrible when it came to book covers in general. I decided to share this link for other authors who might not be feeling so confident about their book covers right now.

My words of encouragement: If it comes down to you paying between a book cover designer for your book versus paying a professional editor to edit your book, go with the editor and skip the book cover until you can get enough money to afford a premade cover or hire a professional book cover designer.

If you want to have a great laugh or just want to make yourself feel better when it comes to your book cover or your writing in general, check out this post:

Terrible Book Covers for Classic Literary Novels

P.S. I do plan on changing my book covers in the future but just not right now because I don’t have the funds to do so. Once that happens, I will be sure to keep you posted.

Dominique Gibson