Does your cover reveal too much?

As with any writer I always struggle with my cover design. Sometimes I’ve got a picture in my mind of how I want the cover to look. During the writing of my books I’m constantly thinking of the cover. Some parts of the book inspire the cover.

It’s so discouraging to pick up a book and look at the cover expecting one thing and reading the book to find something totally different. I’ve done this several times as I know you have too. For example, the book has a vampire on the cover and the only thing about vampires in the book is a short part from a nightmare with a character. So why put a vampire on the cover when the book is not about vampires at all but about something totally different.

Then you get into the aspect of revealing too much with the cover. Let’s say that in the book there is a secret that will not be revealed until the middle or end of the book. You don’t want to put something about that on the cover if it will tell the reader what the secret is. This just spoils the whole suspense plot. 

So in my opinion the cover has to be thought over quite a bit. The cover can reveal a lot about the book. When my assistant and I designed the first couple of covers it was so wrong. We quickly revised it until we were happy. I was careful not to reveal too much about the plot but I also made sure the cover was relevant. 

Hope this helps if you’re working on your cover. It’s often one of the hardest things to me as a writer other than the dreaded description, but that’s a whole new blog post 🙂

As always, good writing and May God Bless You…