2025 Cover Design Trends

Sam.

Foreign.

Happy Saturday and happy February. I hope everyone's 2025 is off to a splendid start. We have a really fun deep dive for you guys today. And so I know that this has been one that has been requested multiple times in the past. This is, I think, our third time doing this now three years in a row. Or is this the fourth at least three years in a row now, which is just awesome. And this has been in high demand. So we are bringing it to you today at the beginning of 2025 to talk about COVID designs and cover trends. So before we dive in, introduce everyone on the team, let's hear from you guys in the chat where you're watching from. So I am in. I see some people who are snowed in. Someone in. Where is it? Ontario. Snow snowed in. That's crazy. I'm in sunny, warm Miami, so picturing you guys with snow is just my brain. Can't. Can't compete. We got people from Colorado, California. Hi, Darla. Hi, Eric. Eric was the first one here, and Eric might be the person who has been requesting this the absolute most. He has been spamming us, asking us to bring this back. So, Eric, I hope you're buckled in and ready to go for today. Let fear bounce. You're watching from snowy Pennsylvania. Alana, Hello. Cold Wisconsin. Hello from Georgia. New York. So many people. How awesome. Portland, Oregon, you even have snow. Reba, lovely to see you. Jason Ward. Hello. From Oklahoma. Oh, Jason, this is perfect. He says, I'm so excited about this part of my journey, starting cover design with book launchers this week. Yes. Jason is one of our awesome clients. So that. How perfect. Jason, this is meant for you. How awesome.

Let's see.

We've also got people from Utah. Well, awesome, guys. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you've not been a part of one of our deep dives before, there is prizes, and some of that does go for participation. So commenting on the video or responding to different things does help. But let's officially dive in today.

We.

We have a couple people who, if you have watched some of these deep dives before, you will recognize. We have our lovely Alyssa Grazer, who was actually hosting the deep dive last month with me as well. And then we have our fabulous Cassie Boers, who is our lead designer. So I will give them a second to introduce themselves in just a moment. If you don't recognize me and you're like, that's not the lady I see on YouTube. You are correct. I am Angela. I am the operations manager here. And this is one of the things that I do. I do a lot of things behind the scenes. I have one of the few roles here that doesn't actually touch the manuscripts themselves, but I'm doing things to help keep the company running and helping provide support for anyone who is running our YouTube lives, our deep dives, any trainings that we have. Because it's a lot. It's a lot. So you'll kind of see me behind the scenes responding to things, jotting down the prize winners and all that fun stuff. I also do hold all the prizes and you guys. So I wanted to let you guys know I am in a mission this year to clean out some of the prizes. So I'm going to talk about the prizes that we have. We are going to do a book theme for prizes today because I have so many boxes of books and they can benefit you guys. So we're going to be giving away books today. But let me stop talking for a minute and I will let Alyssa and Cassie introduce themselves. Elissa, do you want to go first?

Sure. So, like she said, I'm Elissa. I am the production manager here at Book Launchers, and basically that just means I oversee the entirety of our book production process from the beginning of writing, all the way through editing, design, layout, and upload for distribution and publication. That also means that I have the privilege of working closely with the brilliant Cassandra on the designs for our author's books. And I am also really excited to be here today because this is also one of my favorite deep dives that we do. So, yeah, excited for what we're going to go over today. And, yeah, Cassandra, tell them a little.

About yourself, a little bit about me. First of all, Joy, thank you so much for saying that about my work. I appreciate it. I'm so excited everyone's here today. This is, as Angela said, something I get to do annually. And if there's anything I love to talk about, it's design, because it's my whole life. So I'm super excited to be here today. I am the creative lead, so I'm working on, you know, cover designs, interior layouts, working with Elisa to make sure that all our clients are happy and loving their artwork. You know, like I said, design is my life. So you're going to see a lot of stuff. As I go through here, I get a little obsessive. I apologize in advance for that.

So.

But I love it. And who doesn't want a designer that loves what they do? So I'm so happy you're all here. Today and we're going to get really deep into cover design with a lot of examples and how to work with your designer, you know, what kind of questions you should ask them, what kind of information you should give them and really kind of getting to that ultimate goal which is your favorite design for your book cover.

Yay. Yes. And we are so excited to dive in. Couple other quick things before we get started. I will be monitoring the chat for answering things as I can and if we have time, we'll try to get to as many questions as possible. I know Cassie has some fantastic things she's going to be showing us today. So we will try to answer questions as best we can. But to help me or Elissa out if she keeps an eye on the chat as well, if you have a question at any point during this, if you could preface your message in the chat with a capital Q and then go into your question, that'll help us keep an eye on them. We can star them that way and then that way that'll make it just a little bit easier for our eyes to find everyone's questions while we are going going throughout this. Now, before we dive in, we always start out with a prize. And as I mentioned a minute ago, we do have the, we have five different books that we will be giving away today. So I want to tell you what they are and then I'm going to do a random draw for who is the winner. So if you haven't commented yet, please do comment. And that reminds me, I should probably open up the giveaway tool so that I can actually show you guys who the winner is going to be. So while I do that, let me tell you what the prizes are. So we have two different versions of Julie's book. We have Self publish and Succeed. We also have Self promote and Succeed. We have a book called Rise of the Reader by Nick Hutchison. We love Nick. And we also have two of Dale Roberts books. So he has a series. I think the series is five books and these are the first two books of the series. So one is some basic guidelines for self publishing authors and the second one is an advanced guide for self publishing authors. So those are the two, those ones are actually also hardback. So the other ones are paperback. That one, those two I should say are hardback. So five different options that you guys will have. So I see some people who have commented while we have been going. So let me share screen. And we are going to, we are going to give away this first prize. So let me see the giveaway Tool. Here we go. Okay, 26. All right, there are 26 options for a winner. Let us see who it is going to be. First winner is Emily Romero. How lovely. I feel like it's been a little bit of time. Maybe you haven't won since the holiday extravaganza, but if there's any of those books that you don't have, feel free to to email me. The instructions for our winners is to email me at team T A M book launchers.com to claim your prize. I do need to know which of those books you would like as well as your mailing address. So even if you've won in the past, please do send your mailing address again because I don't keep those emails, so I don't want to have to go back and see if I can find it in some some way. So please include your mailing address as well. And that's it. I did see a couple questions come in, but I think I will answer those. Okay, well, actually, I will answer one of them because it's been asked more than once. Will this be recorded? Yes. So this is live right now on YouTube. And once this is done, it might take a short amount of time to process, but essentially it'll be available anytime on our YouTube channel. You might have to go back under the Live tab to find it because it's not an uploaded video. It's alive. So in two weeks, if you want to come back and watch this, I think you will have to go to the Live tab to watch it. But yes, this will be available. So if you have to hop off after an hour, you can pick up the second hour whenever you are next available to. That's all we're going to get to right now because I want to unleash Cassie's genius to you guys. So we are going to let her take over. So, Cassie, you should be able to share screen and just take it away.

All right, let's do this. Warning. I am a little under the weather, so bear with me. Luckily, I have my trusty water bottle here to get me through. Let me share my screen. So we're gonna go over kind of a lot of stuff today. I'm gonna share my entire screen with you guys for purposes later down the road. Let's get into it.

And if you need a water break, an additional break aside from the ones we have planned for your throat, I can give way more books. That is. Okay, so win for everyone.

Okay, Everyone should see this.

Yes, I see your PowerPoint.

Fantastic. Okay, let's get into it. Let's do the same thing. So coverage, line and 2025 trends is what we're going to go over today. And like I said before, I'm a super nerd, so I'm super excited about it. Let's get to going. So the first part of this is really working with your designer. And what I want to walk you guys through is from the beginning to the end. So starting with what information you're giving your designer, how to work with them, what are they doing while they have all that information. I want to show you some examples of some covers and ultimately just how to get through the COVID design process and make sure that you get the ultimate cover that you desire. So first and foremost, it's the information that you're giving your designer. And obviously it's basic information. I know this seems really obvious, giving them the title, the subtitle, your book size, and the author name, but there's little details inside of that. That is a designer I'm looking for. So let's say this is a really bad example of a book title. Don't worry. I do not work on book titles. Don't have to worry about that. But let's say your book is called Lost at Sea, A beginner's guide to getting your startup off the ground. Let's just say that that's a terrible, terrible book title. Please don't use that. But the point of that being is, let's say you provide the title Lost at Sea, but you don't provide them with the subtitle. As a designer, what I'm looking at is there's little words inside that title and subtitles. It's going to help me start generating some visuals about what I could use to create this cover. If I just got lost at sea and I'm utilizing. Okay, well, obviously I'm thinking of images of the ocean or water or boats or anything. I'm just trying to pull some imagery that could connect to that. But now that I know it's about a startup, those images are going to change. I'm not going to be thinking about just water and boats. I know that this is about a startup, so I need to include some different imagery in there. So my advice to you, don't go into it with just your title. Make sure that you have the complete package. That subtitle is also really important. And also in some cases on a cover design, you may want your title Lost at Sea, terrible title to be a little smaller, but your subtitle to be bigger because that Information about a startup is equally or is more important than your title. So all of that information, though, seems very basic, is really important, and really gets my brain going in the beginning. The other part of it is your book description. So your book description. You have to imagine that as a designer, I know nothing about your book. And I want to use a weird example. So let's say that I'm building an advertisement for a restaurant. We'll. We'll call it Elisa's Diner. Elissa, you know, own a diner. So Elissa has this diner and she wants me to build some advertisements for it, but I know nothing about this diner, this restaurant. I don't know what it looks like. So giving me a description of maybe what's inside the restaurant is going to help me. Let's say there's like, checkered floors. That's going to help me visually. Maybe I bring in a checkered pattern into that design. Or maybe there's vintage chairs that, you know, this diner sounds hideous to look at, but there's vintage chairs, and I can kind of use some of that to build and tie that creative into the actual establishment. So your book description is so important to give me more insight about your book and the history of it, more details. There might be more words in there that I can start pulling more visuals from.

Yeah. So in our process, you know, this is something that we do for our authors. But if you're working with your own designer, think of your book description as the, you know, the blurb that you can read on Amazon, like on a retail listing for a book. You don't want it to simply be a summary of what's in your book. You want it to pull out some of those like, promises, the things that readers will get from your book. And by doing that, you're setting yourself up for success with your book description as well. But it'll also help your designer more because they don't just need a summary. They need to know what makes your book unique, what makes it different, what will appeal to readers, why they would be picking up your book so that if they can somehow reflect that in their design to help with that promise. Since the book cover is usually what readers see first, it'll just improve the quality of what you get, you know, from that very beginning step.

Absolutely. Yeah. Whoever said don't judge a book by its cover was very, very wrong. We do judge books by their cover and, you know, as much information as you can provide to the designer, imagine they don't know anything. So another part of that is going to be sample covers. And this is actually a part that's really one of my favorites as far as providing information goes. So sample covers, meaning provide your designer with, like, three Amazon book links that show, you know, three different book covers that you like. And it could be even covers that you don't like. Your dislikes are equally as important as your likes. So maybe you have, you know, three covers, and it says a lot to me as a designer, because maybe all of those covers have sans serif types on them, and maybe you didn't notice that, but something. I'm gonna notice that, okay, you really like modern typography and more modern fonts, or maybe all of them have a lot of, you know, really big, bold fonts. That's going to say something to me. It's going to help me understand what you're looking for and ultimately how I can translate that onto your cover. So making sure that you're providing that is it just, again, it connects me with you and it gives me an idea of where you're at. And I mean, you know, if I didn't know that, if I didn't see those links, I could. I'd have no idea of maybe you really like the color pink or you really like the color blue, But I can see all that stuff through those samples. So that's important to provide your target market. So this is also important. All of this is important, obviously, but the target market, you know, maybe you have a really predominantly male target audience. That's going to make a difference about how I design this cover. And maybe I want to use bolder fonts. Maybe I want to use a certain color palette. So maybe if it's more directed towards women, I'm going to maybe use more of a script font or something. Colors that maybe reach women more than it might reach men. So your target audience is really important to kind of give us an idea of who we're selling this to. Who am I designing this for? Design elements. So this part is. This part is good. Okay, so let's say that you have a website and your brand and your logo and your business cards, and they all have a general branding to them. And your colors are, I don't know, blue and orange. So this is your time to tell your designer, hey, these are my colors. These are the fonts that I use. I really want my book cover to be cohesive with the rest of my assets. So this is the time to let them know that. And also, it could be that you don't want your book cover to look anything like that. But when we design these covers for you, we're always going to provide one comp that is per your request. So we'll go over that in a little bit. But letting your designer know, like, I really want to use this icon on every single cover. I really want to use this image over on every single cover. So that's important to let them know that if you have any of those elements that you want to incorporate. So as an example, here is a book cover I did for Daryl Whittam, and it was really important to him to include these symbols at the bottom. So every single comp that I did, though they had different concepts, included these icons and then also on the interior. So that was really important to him. And that's really where you're telling your designer in that section, letting them know, like, I need to have this on every cover. I'm going to go over a couple other ones. So here is an example of Shannon Russell. So something that she requested was she really wanted this oil painting texture to the. Like, to the. To the COVID And her first request also, she wanted an arrow that was really important to her. So the first cover comp is going to be per her request, and I'm going to try and get as close to it as possible. So if you, you know, let's say you want a man on a beach walking towards a sunset, that's going to be my first comp. I'm going to get as close to that as possible. If you, you know, sometimes we get crazy requests like, I'm totally making this up, but let's say it's like a man with a wolf head and wings, and he's staying on a mountain, and it's a little much. And I'm going to try my hardest to get as close to that as possible.

But.

But it's your vision, and it's important to us and to me that I'm generating a creative that. That you had in mind and getting as close to it as possible. Obviously, you know, putting that wolf man together is probably not the best idea for a book cover, but still, it's something that you requested. I'm going to try my hardest to get to it. In this case, with Shannon, you can see that every cover has a different concept, but I'm carrying through that paint texture in the background on each single one. So her request was to have this arrow. I went a different route. And since this book was about your second act and kind of starting over and blossoming, I chose the butterfly, but still Kept it in that paint texture. And then same thing here. We're utilizing it again, but just a little bit different. Let's look at some other ones. So this one likes mirrors. Action. Again, something that the client requested was there had to be a brain on these covers. Absolutely. Must have. Can't do without it. So when I started building these covers, I'm looking at the words like I talked about before, the words in the title. Lights, mirrors, action. So I'm already. And this was my first one that I did. I'm thinking, okay, mirror. But it's about stroke survivors and the damage to the brain and what happens. So to me, I'm trying to find a clever way to show, like, a distorted brain and tying it to this mirror and tying it to the title. So in this comp, we're looking at this brain kind of. It's changing over time, but I'm still keeping it into that film industry. Because you see that light sphere's action. Obviously, you think light, camera, action. So I'm trying to tie that in there. This one now, I'm introducing different colors. I'm just making this the center of attention. And we ultimately ended up with this cover. So we made some changes and did the mirror and hung it on the wall. But still, I'm keeping a request that you had, and I'm carrying it through all of those comps, but still approaching it differently. And that's really what you want from your designer. You want to make sure that, you know, when I build covers, I build on a spectrum. So that first one on the far left is going to be what you asked for. And in the middle, I'm kind of creating something that definitely incorporates what you asked for on the original one, but in my own way. And on the far right, I'm building something that maybe you didn't think of at all. And that's really our job as designers, is to provide you with a concept that maybe hadn't crossed your mind. And we get a lot of clients that end up going to that far right of the spectrum because it wasn't something that they thought about, but now they see it, they're into it, and now we're kind of going a different direction. And it works for them, though. So it's important that your desire is providing you not with. When we were looking at that feather, the feather covers not providing you with three covers with feathers or three covers with the same typeface or three covers with the same coloring unless they requested it. But you don't want to see the Same thing over and over again. You're looking for different concepts completely. If you see three covers that your designer gave to you and they're all using the same fonts, they didn't take the time to really consider the concept and really consider what's going into that. And you deserve that. This is your project and absolutely deserve to see different concepts when it comes to this. So those are our book details and how to work with your designer, what to give them. So what is my designer doing while I wait? So you've given them all this information. And at this point, what I'm doing is I'm kind of checking out the competition. So I'm looking at your category on Amazon, and I'm looking at books that. Let's say it's, you know, I don't know the. Oh, you know what? Let's use an example of a book I used. Let's say it's about woodworking. And I'm going to basically dive into all books that are about woodworking. I want to see what's out there. I want to see what people have done creatively, and I want to do my best to stay away from that. I don't want to create something that's already been created. So I'm looking at the competition saying, well, you know, they're using a lot of bright oranges or a lot of blues. I want to do something that's going to stand out. When you're looking on Amazon, how can I do that? What's different than what's already on there? And this is also a time where I'm gathering inspiration and really immersing myself in woodworking. So, you know, what does that mean? What kind of tools are used? What kind of woodworking is this? And I'm also asking the client questions about that. Like, how specific are we? Wonder what kind of woodworking you're talking about. Is this like hammers and nails or, you know, what, what are you working with? And how can I narrow down and get really specific about what your book's about so that when the reader looks at that cover, they understand what they're about to get into? They want to. You want to give the reader something to attach to and really understand what this book is going to be about? You don't want to be too vague. So conceptualizing and pulling images, this is where I still, you know, I. As far as woodworking is concerned, I'm going on our stock photography site, and I'm literally typing the word wood. Just a really general idea to start Pulling images that inspire me for these concepts. So I type in wood, and I'm looking for different types of wood, different colors, different textures, and I'm seeing all these images just to, like, kind of start building ideas, like, what do I want these three covers to look like? And I'm actually going to give you that example of this woodworking client that we had. So garage shop income, Big shop secrets for the small woodworkers Success with this cover. I loved this wood image. It was just so rich in texture. And so I saved that. I knew I wanted to use that, but I also knew I wanted to be specific about woodworking and including the concept of money, income, and tying those two things together. So you can get a designer that says, okay, woodworking, let's use a hammer and a bunch of cash and we'll lay it over each other. That's lazy design work. It's not. You're not. They're not thinking of an actual creative concept. And not that I'm doing that. I did an amazing job this summer. But point being is I'm looking at it from the client's perspective, I'm looking at it from the reader's perspective and trying to come up with some sort of visual that ties to the title without it being so obvious. So for this one, you know, I fell in love with this wood texture. I. I had actually used AI, which we'll go over later, but I had to use. It was such a specific idea that I had in mind that I needed to get every single piece right. And ultimately the client went with this power. And it was a good. It was a happy ending. It was a happy ending for sure. Okay. So even though visuals are super important, the typography is also so, so important. And I'm a huge font nerd. I. You know, people ask me what I do on the weekends. I download fonts. It's a problem, but I do, I love it. And I think that it speaks volumes to your book. So I don't want to use, you know, a frilly swash font for something that. For the. Let's even say, like, for the woodworking book. I don't want to use something like that. And the type says so much about your cover. So it's not your job to choose a font. That's definitely your designer's job. But on this screen, what I'm showing you is you have a couple options to let your designer know kind of what direction you want to go. So do you like serifonts? Do you like sans serif? Fonts, are you open to combining those together? Are you open to swash fonts or script fonts? And that's important for the designer to know. Am I able to play around with this? Do you want something that's really classic, like a serif font? Letting them know that. And that also shows up too in your, like, Amazon examples or in your likes and your dislikes. You can very much be like, I don't want any serif fonts. I want it to look really modern with sans serif. So this is your time to let them know, like, hey, this is. Back when we talked about this so long ago, I think it was like seven minutes ago when we talked about your likes and your dislikes. But this is really a time to tell them, like, stay away from this, or I'm open to anything. And as a designer, I mean, once I get my imagery together, that's the fun part for me, is to do the typography and making it fit with that, with those visuals. So definitely don't downplay the typography. It's very important. You know, we have some clients, we've had experiences where they go with something really basic and the whole cover is in one font, and you want to stay away from that. You want to show some hierarchy in your typography on your cover. So maybe your title font is different, but your subtitle is a little bit smaller. Maybe that part is an italic serif font. It's good to mix them up and generate that hierarchy. I'm going to take some water because I'm so thirsty.

There was a question that came in from the previous slide that was about. It says, what font is the last image in the typography page?

This one here on the combo, I think.

So I think that's what they're referring to. Yeah.

So we have a couple different fonts here. I mean, I don't even know what I chose back then, but this one's probably an alternative gothic. This one. At the time, I was really obsessed with Gotham, so assuming that's what that is, because I had a whole Gotham stage and this was probably like a Baskerville or something along those lines. But I think that's also what we're seeing here, because you can see in the T's the similarities. Cool.

And then just one other question, just to clarify. So the serif fonts you said are more of the classic view, whereas the sans serif is more modern?

Yeah, it's a little bit more modern. I mean, I think on business covers, we see a lot of sans serif fonts, but, I mean, I like to pair them up. I think that there's a beauty between when they're combined together, and I think when your whole book cover is all sans serif, I'm a big combo fan. I think when it's all sans serif, it's. It gets a little. It gets a little repetitive. And even then, not to say stay away from that. The best kind of designer is going. If you want a sans serif cover, the best kind of designer is going to take these different fonts and combine them so they're not going to use the same font over and over. So you can see this sans serif is wider. And, you know, I've added some space between them where this is more condensed and taller. So you can absolutely use all sans serif. But make sure you're watching your designer that they're not using the same thing over and over again, because, again, you're missing that hierarchy. And so even you can tell here the author name is not as thick as book title. So I'm automatically creating that hierarchy by making the title thicker and bolder and the author name a little bit smaller and wider. I guess you could say those letters are a little bit wider. So I, again, I'm a big combo fan. I like to take a sans serif and mix it with, like, an italic serif, and maybe it's a little swash font in there. You definitely don't want more than, like, three fonts on your cover unless you're doing, like, a really heavy type typographical cover. But there's. There is a time and a place to not use a lot of fonts. It gets too distracting. So you want to kind of stick with, you know, maybe two or three. Two or three fonts?

Yeah.

And that is a key thing that Cassie just has honed in on to make your cover stand out and look even more professional. Not that there's not a time and a place for, you know, maybe the same font being used across the board, but that combination of different ones can really set your book apart. So that was all the questions for. For now that we're gonna get. I just saw those couple ones come in. I've been starring all the questions, guys. So if you have those, keep them coming. And if you can, just to make it easier for me and Elissa to find, if you could preface your question with a capital Q, that will help us be able to spot them more easily. But they're great questions. We're going to get to as many as we can, but I'm gonna go away so that Cassie can dive back into her. Into her presentation.

Well, maybe think of a final note. You know, when you have these combo fonts, what you're doing is you're really setting yourself up for success when it comes to your interior. And we talked about that last year. But you're. You're putting yourself in a position where now you have maybe three different fonts. Right? But now I can use that on my interior. And when it comes to my headers and my subheads and my sub subheads, now I have some. Again, hierarchy. Very important word these days. Now, I can generate hierarchy with those fonts that I use on the COVID because anytime I generate an interior, I'm using what was built on the COVID So you have that cohesive design on the inside as well as the outside. That's another reason to watch your fonts and make sure even the Sprint fonts, they can be used on interior in really delicate ways. But anyway, I can talk about fonts forever. So let's move me quite along here. So what to expect for a review? All right, so your designer has built your covers and delivered them to you. So you should have a minimum of three covers. I sometimes get ahead of myself and I build more than that, but I definitely don't go over five. At that point, you're just. It's just too many options. So Sometimes I'll have four covers, but 1 and 2 are the same cover. But I made a font change on the second one because I couldn't decide. And you have to decide because I'm too obsessed with the font. Maybe it's a situation where, hey, I use a different color. You said you liked blue and orange, so this one's blue and this one's orange. Let me show you some examples of some delivered concepts. So Brian Pullman had requested in his images and design ideas that he wanted on the far left here. He wanted a businessman looking out over the city. That's what he had requested. And so I generated that specifically because that's what he wanted, and that's my goal. I mean, that's what you asked for. So I'm going to build something like that and get as close to that idea as I can. Now, knowing that he wanted this, like, skyscraper or these buildings, I, on my second comp, stuck with that. So I'm still keeping some of what he asked for, but at a different perspective. So here I still have the buildings, but it's, you know, we're looking at a little bit differently as well. I'm using completely different fonts. So this is lowercase, these are uppercase. And playing around with different shades of black. And, you know, now this is answer. If this is serif, I'm giving him different options and different placement as well. Like, the name's a little off center, but it works because of the building. So everything's going to be a little bit different on the final one. And this was the one that, you know, was on my end of the spectrum of let's try something completely different and not include buildings. Let's try a compass leaders look within. So, you know, looking, guiding, kind of brings that compass into mind. But how can I incorporate this compass without doing title, image, author name? Obviously I use this as a replacement for one of the O's, and I think it just kind of pops out a little bit. And he actually ended up going with that cover on the far right. Let's look at some other ones. We looked at this one before, but I think it's important. You saw the final version when we looked at this and. And this is where we started. So it was again, important to the client to include these symbols. So you can see it's in every single comp. But I didn't get a lot of I like san serifs or I like serifs or anything like that. And this brings up, you know, a situation where I've had. I've had authors that say, you know what? I don't have any ideas. Be creative and do whatever you want. And that's. It's a tough place to start as a designer. It's tough to generate creative without any sort of direction. And the direction, even if you said, like, I really hate red, that even helps me. So, you know, if you don't have an idea of what you want your cover to look like, that's okay. That's our job to come up with the concepts. But as much information like we talked about on the first slide that you can give is going to help guide me to a successful cover in this situation because I didn't have a lot of information. You can see every single comp is very different. This one, we're really more realistic with actual hands. I'm using capital serifs and sans serifs here. We're looking at completely different fonts. We have water coloring. We're using a lot more. We have a lot more space on this one. Then this one is filling up the whole thing here are all completely different concepts at this point, and. And luckily you saw the end, but this is where we went, and we just kind of kept working on it to get to our final, final cover. So Soul center, the request on this one, for me, the request on this one was the far left, again, was to have some water and some fog and the city. And also blue is really important. We had to have blue in this cover. So that's something you see carry through all of the COVID concep. So we, you know, I built this one and then tried something completely different as far as type is concerned, to try to loosen it up a little bit. And then on the far right, this is really where I took it to a completely new level. I knew that she liked water, and so even on the second one, you can kind of see that maybe you pick up some, like, water vibes, I guess you can say from that. But. Oops. Hello. Know what just happened? My mouse. I apologize. So on the far right, this is one that I got to play with. And we actually ended up going with the one on the far right. Yeah, I must be, like, fit of this or something. All right, last one. So this is actually really recent, and I brought this one up because here I am talking about different. Making sure that you have different cops, and every single one is, you know, can stand on their own. But this one specifically is a good example of a client that these glasses, these reading glasses, are a part of their brand. And this is what we talked about before, right? This is something that's on his website, part of his logo. And it was really important to him that the glasses be incorporated in every single comp. So he had actually provided a comp that or a cover that he had just generated on his own. And you wanted to stick close to that, but also see some other options. So what I've done is, you know, his had a circle behind the words, so obviously I'm trying to create some different shapes. He did have a color palette that he was really specific to use, so I use that, but in very different ways. And the placement, everything's different. You know, you have your subtitle up top, you have your author name up top or down below. And, you know, I'm using a script font here. He was open to that. You know, we have some changes that need to be made, but still, what I'm offering is, you know, yes, we're still using that one element, but here are different ways we can apply it. So it's okay that these have a bunch of similarities to them, but they're also, like I said, they can also stand on their own as far as colors and font choices and all that. Okay, so after you have reviewed your clubs, this is really. You're gonna sit with your designs, look at them, listen to your gut. And also, you know, we don't want to get too many opinions. I know, Alyssa, and you can chime in about this. We don't want to get too many opinions from people. It just kind of makes it a little bit murky trying to get through that. But you want to hear from some people. Absolutely. Unless I know that you deal with this. Yeah.

So one of the things that we talk about a lot with our authors is when you do seek feedback on a cover from someone, it's good to share it with people who understand, like, what your vision is for the COVID or what your vision is for your book. But if you share it with a lot of family and friends, for instance, what you need to keep in mind is that they may not be part of your target audience. And this book cover, at the end of the day, is for your target audience. You are wanting to have a book cover that helps readers self identify that your book is for them. And so if you are writing in, like, for entrepreneurs, for instance, and that is your target audience, people who are starting small businesses, and you show it to friends and family who are not interested in that topic, this is not a kind of book that they read. They're not in that life category. Then you can still allow for their opinions, but you need to understand that they won't be giving you an opinion from the perspective of your target audience audience. And so it doesn't. It shouldn't necessarily have the same weight as someone who, for instance, has a platform of people who are excited for their book or interested in their book, and they share it with them and take a poll, well, those are perhaps in their target readership, and that feedback could actually be really helpful. So it's not to discourage you from sharing it, but it is to understand the quality or nature of feedback that you're going to get from the people that you share it with. That, at the end of the day, this isn't just about what you like, but it's about a cover that is in keeping with with what feels authentic to you, that will also work for your target audience and again, help them self identify as potential readers for your book.

Absolutely. Thank you. Let's appreciate that. And, you know, as far as, like, getting feedback, this is also your time to give your feedback to your designer. So when you're looking at these comps, you can say, let's take a look at one of these. You can say, well, I really love the. I really don't love that. So I can't even use that as an example. Let's say you really love the typography in comp number two, but you. And you want to take that and put it on comp number one. You can do that. Take things from different ones and say, I love this. I don't love this. Can we take this from this one and put it on this one? We get that a lot. Absolutely. If there's something that's missing or you're saying, hey, I feel like we're really close, I don't like this particular compass. Something we noticed when we did this was that north. It was not right. We had to switch that up. But there's little things that you may say, like, I like this, but let's change A, B and C. At that point, you've given your changes to your designer, and now you're in the back and forth stage. And this is. This is important. You don't want to go forever. This is not a time to, you know, carry. Carry this on and on. You want to make sure that you're getting these changes made. But you could. And especially as an artist, like, I could make changes forever. I can look at covers that I've done. I'm like, I should have done this, or, you know, maybe let's see what it looks like with this. Which is why I have to keep myself, you know, making sure that I'm only giving you three comps because I could go on and on. But this is your time to go back and forth and start to dwindle down to that final cover. Obviously something you're happy with. That's the goal. As a designer, I'm here to make your project come to life. And it's important to me that you are happy with the final product. This is that time to make that happen. But after this slide, Angela, we are actually going into prizes. Going to stop sharing, if that's okay.

Yes, absolutely. So I. I've been reading some of the comments, and people are loving the fact that you're showing all three comps, Cassie, and explaining your reason why you did certain things or why the author chose certain things. So people are loving that. So, yes, we are going to do another prize, and I do want to take a chance. If you want to take a quick break, Cassie, rest your voice for a second, maybe get more water. If you need to, I will answer. And I might have to for some of these. I will answer some questions. I'll just remove Cassie from the stage really quickly. So I'm gonna try something fun though, for this prize. So this is going to be for people who are watching this live. So if you have been liking what you've seen so far and you would like to be a potential winner for the prize, I would like for you to type in the chat hashtag wow.

Wow.

Because aren't Cassie's cover concepts just wow? So I will put an example, does not matter if it's capital or lowercase hashtag wow in the chat. So I will give people a few minutes to type that in there and you will be put into a random draw to be a potential winner for books. So let's talk about the prizes real quick. We are doing a book edition for the prizes today. So there are five different options for books that you can choose from. We've got two of Julie's books got Self Publish and Succeed, as well as Self Promote and Succeed. We also have a book by Nick Hutchison called Rise of the Reader. And then we have two of Dale Roberts books. The first one is self publishing for new authors and the second one is advanced self publishing for authors. So those are the five book categories that we have in. Awesome. We've got lots of people putting their hashtag wow in the chat. We'll give it just another second. Wow, there's so many. Fantastic. Okay. If you haven't done it, even if you're watching on your phone, you should still be able to do it. So get those last ones in. And while people are doing that, I'm going to see if I can answer some of these questions. So there are several that have come in. Let me see. So there was a couple people who I'm not sure if they're tagged, if the questions are tagged anymore, but it was Gian and Henning. So one of the things that Cassie had mentioned that she does is she looks at the category on Amazon and I do want to mention this because it will potentially be helpful for many of you. So whatever category your book is going to be in on Amazon, look up those books. And this is something that Elissa and her team will do. And if you see that all the covers in that category, let's say, are orange with yellow font or they all have a certain feel and vibe to them, you don't want to mimic that per se because then your book is just going to blend in. So I believe what our team does is they look at the top 10. Is that right, Elisa? And they want to compare what this book is against the others in that category and see which one stands out the most. So I know some people were mentioning blues in the COVID Check that against your category. And it's not to say that necessarily you can't have blue on your cover, but make there be something on your cover if you do decide to go with blue, that is still going to make it stand out. Elissa, anything you want to add with that?

Yeah. So one question that we always ask when we look at a category that seems to have a lot of very similar book designs in it is why is there some really like, hallmark trait to that genre that everyone is trying to signal and they're signaling it in the same way? Or is it just that, you know, navy is a very classic color and that's what people are tending to do. We want to identify the why, if we can, behind some of that genre signaling, because that actually is important. So again, I said before about helping readers to self identify that your book is for them. Genre signaling is part of that. So you don't want to necessarily dump a book with totally polar opposite colors into a navy drenched category unless you're also still hitting other genre signals for that category. Because if people are very used to seeing one type of book cover, you want to find a way to still kind of tie into that, but stand out. And that is probably one of the most challenging parts of effective color cover design is how do you show that your book fits in a category and will appeal to that audience for that category while simultaneously standing out and signaling that your book is unique. And that is where a very skilled designer can come in and be very helpful to you. But if you're doing this on your own, that is, I would recommend looking and trying to figure out why a color or an image or, you know, even a particular font seems to be very popular and seeing if there's a way that you could interpret it differently. Seeing Cassie's three Comps, I think, is probably a really helpful element there because you can see that, say, everyone's book covers have water on them. Well, you can see that there are actually really different ways to interpret that that could still allow your book to stand out in a category that has that as a very common feature. So, yes, you want to stand out. It's important, but you also want to fit in in the right ways so that people know that your book is part of this category or genre that they are searching for.

Yeah, that's an excellent point because you don't want it to stand out too much because that could actually dissuade some readers from even thinking to click on your book. Because one of the things you want to think about is the majority of books buyers are going to be looking online. They might go to the bookstore and actually look at your book on a shelf, but they're going to be seeing all these little icons. And if they're all blurring together, take some of those elements that Alyssa mentioned. If you are still wanting to have some elements match what your category shows, keep in mind you want it to stand out when it's going to be more than likely a little icon on their phone or on their computer. There's one other question I wanted to get to because it's really on point with this, and this is from Eric. What about staying on trend versus standing out? So this is actually an interesting one because how do you toe the line between. Not that. Is there anything else you want to add specifically to that? Or Cassie, I don't know if you had anything you wanted to add to that either.

Yes, I mean, that is the balance, right? Like you. And that's kind of why I'm cautioning against, say you have a whole category full of very classic looking navy covers. You don't want to, you know, drop in with Comic Sans and neon orange into that category because you're right, it would signal like that you don't know what people are looking at or looking for in your category. So again, it's, it is, it is that balance to be struck with, with the right font choices, with the right imagery and, you know, like Cassie showed being able to interpret what, what is important in a category and for readership and then just doing it in a unique way. I personally couldn't do it. That's why I'm really fortunate to work with Cassandra because, you know, she's obviously.

Incredibly good at it.

Awesome. Thank you. Okay, we're going to do this last prize and then we will get back to Cassie's presentation. So let me share my screen because we've had lots of people say hashtag wow, which is great. So here we go. Hashtag wow. Let us see. I've got to choose the right live stream, huh? 27 entries for people who put hashtag wow. Let's see who is going to be our prize winner if you've already won today, we are going to choose another winner because we do want everyone to have a chance to, to win. Sherry Joyner, Fantastic. So, Sherry, please email me at Team T a m@book launchers.com with your prize of choice. So again, we've got those five books. I will also need your mailing address. You know what? Because we had so many people do it, we're going to draw again. We're going to do one more. I wasn't planning on it, but we're going to do it anyway. Let's see who's going to be another winner for this, for one of our books. Cynthia Barnett. Fantastic. So, Cynthia, you should have our email address, but if you don't email me@teamoklaunchers.com and I'm going to stop sharing screen. Cassie, it is all yours. Once again, I'm back.

I'm ready. All right, let me share away. One second. Share scream.

I might need to add it to the stage. Once you have it all set up.

We are ready.

Perfect.

Okay, here we are, 2025 design trends. We're gonna jump into the first part, which is always my favorite, which is the pantone color of the year. Last year, it was a deep magenta, and it was beautiful. This year, we're looking at mocha mousse. And this color is really awesome. It's really rich. And you can see even in this example that they're using tints and tones of that color. So there's a lot of depth that you can find in it, but there's also that those neutrals that you can pair with it. So it's. It's a beautiful color. Definitely loving that. All right, texture grain. So this is really funny. I actually just built a bunch of covers with this, and little to my knowledge, I did not know that this was trending this year. But we're seeing a lot more of this. And, you know, we're not looking at texture grain. Like, you know, on Instagram, you can put a filter over it and make everything kind of, you know, have that. That grainy effect. We're using texture grain in really specific ways. So you can see over here, the texture is here in the background, but this paint is still really matte and doesn't have it. So they're applying it to different parts of the creative, as you can see here. And what it's doing is it's creating depth. It's making a 2D art feel tangible and not so flat. Texture in general, I try to add a little bit of that into my designs, and it's because, again, it really creates that feeling of depth and that 3D kind of vibe. So this is something that actually, I love this. This trend this year. This one is also fantastic. And it's funny because we were just talking about colors, but one of the trends is going to be your unconventional color combinations. And I love this because you have to take a risk when you do this. And when we talk about fitting into your category, yes, you want to be professional, and there's a way to do that with, you know, you can use your fonts to really convey that, but use your colors as to, you know, show that you're a little bit more modern and you're trying something new. And people are really drawn to this. You know, you wouldn't really think to use, like, this yellow and it's in a neutral color together, but it works. And it's. Yeah, it's a risk for sure. But you're going to draw in different type of readers if that's your goal. There's definitely times where it doesn't work for your book cover. Absolutely. But if you have the opportunity to do it, do it. I think it's so fun. It's just a different approach this year and something we haven't seen in a while. So I love this one.

Look.

It's nothing. Custom shapes. So here's an example. These shapes right here. So what they're looking at, what they're doing is taking these custom shapes instead of like a square or a circle and putting creative inside those shapes. This one, this next one is actually my favorite, and I thought it was really creative because what they're doing in the Sprouter company is they are. You know, it looks like there's some kind of, like, plant company for inside your home. It looks like. Looks like that, but what they've done is these shapes or vases. And that's really cool because it reflects what's in the photo, but in a really tricky way is putting that inside the shape of something that correlates with that, with that company, what they do. So this is a cool time to, you know, kind of play around with that and not be so traditional. So I found this sort of minimalism. What, what. What they're doing is they're using really bold fonts, but making the background and everything else really minimal. So you get these really large in your face typefaces, but everything else is really simple. And, you know, I try to take risks like this with some clients and this one in particular, so. Meaning that there's this shoe that's covering the type. Right. But people are smart. People can figure out what it says and it is a risk, for sure, and it's something that you don't see often. But I love these kind of risks because it's just so creative and it gives you an opportunity to stand out. So whether your type is maybe, like, falling off the edge of the COVID a little bit, but people can still read it. I mean, you know, we can figure out what that actually says. So this is kind of a fun way to play around with something really bold, but keeping it professional and simple with that minimalism. So, retro Sarahs, I actually haven't seen a lot of this. When I download fonts on my free time, I've seen a lot of these fonts popping up. And, you know, it may not work for your cover, but because they're, you know, when you hear the word retro serifs, you're thinking of maybe, like, I don't know, the. The 80s or the 70s. And. And the reality is, is they. They're cleaner now. They're not so puffy, I guess, if that makes sense. But they're definitely. There's definitely a time and a place to use it, but it's, again, kind of taking a risk.

And.

But you can take, like, you can take this one and pair it with a parrot. That didn't mean to do that. But you can take this spot and pair it with like a. An italic serif or something, or even a sans serif that's really a little bit lighter, not so heavy. So it kind of balances out and makes it makes it work for that particular creative. Okay, we're doing prizes again. And the reason why is because after prizes, we are going to dig into AI and this is something that we wanted to really take time out to walk through with you guys. I think it's a really big topic right now, and we kind of want to talk about what it means for book publishing and also from a creative standpoint.

Awesome. Yes. And we'll take a moment because questions are piling up. We'll take a moment as well to answer one or two questions if we can, but I'm going to do another draw. So let me go back over here to our Streamyard giveaway. And Cassie, no offense, I'm going to keep you out. Just gonna remove you from the stage. There we go. Okay, so we are going to share screen again, and we're going to go over to our giveaway tool. And so we are going to see who this winner is for today. So this is kind of re pulling it. So if you've already been one of Our three winners I will be redrawing. But let's see. Susan, I think it's been a little bit since you've won. How awesome. So, Susan, please email me at Team T E A M book launchers.com to claim your prize of choice. Again, we've got those five books that you can choose from. So let's get to some of these questions. Okay, so some of these are. I'm gonna try to do some that I can answer, and then if I'm butchering it, Cassie or Elissa, feel free to. To hop back in. Let's see. So some of these. Oh, okay. This is one that's come up a couple times. So this is from Cynthia. So Cynthia asks, none of the covers feature the image of the authors, and what is the reason for that? So Elissa might need to come in here to help provide a little bit of context. But to preface, a lot of times when you see someone on the COVID they are going to be fairly well known or they're going to be very well known in their specific field. Because if someone is perhaps interested in that topic of the book, but they don't know you and you're on the COVID they may not realize that you're an expert in that field, and that's wording it poorly. So I'll let Alyssa take over. But that's kind of the general concept. There is a time and a place for it, and there are some creative ways to do it where you can kind of be on the COVID but I'll let Alyssa tackle that.

Yeah. So generally speaking, having your face on the COVID if you're just at the beginning of building your career, may not be the best choice for your book. There are exceptions to that, which I'll touch on. But generally speaking, like Angela said, you're wanting to have your face on the COVID if it's a selling point. So for someone who is very recognizable, like Tony Robbins or Oprah, people will be like, oh, I know them. I want to read their book. However, if they see a face on a cover that they don't recognize, buyer behavior indicates that they may go, oh, I don't know who that person is. That book is not for me. So you want to use it cautiously and you want to use it strategically. Now, some exceptions to that can be health and fitness books, things related to like starting a gym or something like that, where the physical appearance of the person, not necessarily specifically their face being recognizable, but the way that their body looks is an important selling point for their authority for that book, then that might be a potential exception to that. Or if you're trying to target a very specific audience that you know seeing you will tie in to what that target audience is looking for in some way, then it may be worth considering. We do put our authors faces on the backs of their covers. So they are on their books, but they're just normally not on the front cover. But sometimes it can be the right strategic choice. We've also had authors who are using their books primarily as a lead generator. And so they are doing a lot of like hand to hand sales. They're doing a lot of direct sales. And so having their face on their book as they're doing speeches or presentations or they're meeting with people and they can hand them their book and the person's like, oh yeah, okay, I know you. This is your book that kind of gets around some of that self exclusion from potential readers. But if they're primarily going to be targeting kind of like cold leads like through Amazon or Apple books or places like that, then you want to think about what your audience is looking for and how they might respond to a potentially unknown face on the picture on the front of a book. The other thing to consider is what kind of image you're using. Studies have shown consistently that readers can get a little bit uncomfortable with a picture that is looking directly at them.

From the front of a book.

It's a little bit disorienting or disconcerting for people. So you want to think about what kind of image you're using and how you're doing it. So strategically, sometimes it can be the right choice for a lot of people that we're working with who are first time authors just getting started, it's discuss if it's something that's of interest to our authors to help them make an informed decision about which direction they would like to like to go.

Awesome. I want to get to two other quick ones. One, Elissa, I think one of these is for you. Just because you'll be able to give much better reasoning than I could. This is from Kevin Hall. Should we keep the same cover design for ebook and print books? And essentially I assume you're asking Kevin for all formats. The second part of the question we might have to get to later because there's a lot that goes into the the range for this. But for the first part, what is the reasoning for for having that?

You definitely do. There is not a good reason for most projects to use a different cover design between ebook and print. You want that consistent branding across all of it. So that when they see the book, they know what it is. The one exception to that is that there is a trend right now in certain fiction genres that the print books will be a lot more kind of demure and conservative compared to the ebooks covers, like in certain romance genres. But that's a very specific niche. And so if you aren't falling into that category, generally speaking, you want them to be exactly the same between your ebook and your paperback or hardcover.

Perfect, thank you. And in this last one, let me see. So someone had asked about Henning. Here we go. You had asked about COVID design and keywords and categories. So one of the things is you do want to, in order for Cassie or whatever, whoever you're working with as a designer, they're going to already need to know what your title and your subtitle is for your book. So that should be a precursor to having your cover design done. So we actually just did a live stream with Sarah being our marketing manager. I'll try to pull the YouTube link. We just did that last week or the week before where she talked about keywords and categories. So that'll be really helpful for you. But yes, what you're going to want to do is find the best keywords in your category and, you know, work them into your title and your subtitle. And then with that, that's part of the information that you would be sharing with your designer, because that could absolutely impact some of the ways that they think of concepts. Sometimes they might highlight certain words. I know Cassie's done that on a few covers where a certain word in the title or in the subtitle is a different color than the other ones. So yes, that's part of the. That is important, but it should actually come before the COVID design. Elissa, did I miss anything with that?

No, that pretty much covers it. It does go back to what I was saying before about your book description as well. We try to incorporate these kind of keywords and category information as much as possible into our book descriptions as well as into our titles and subtitles. Again, just trying to help our books be as, as fun findable as possible and to help readers know that the book is for them. But yes, as far as for the COVID design process is concerned, it can be helpful for, again, for your designer to know, you know, if there are specific keyword search terms that could tie potentially into imagery that are also very true for your book. That's great information for them to have. And then of course, that category piece is really Critical for them to be able to do that initial research and looking at the competition and understanding what's working, what's not working, what people are doing well, and what your cover could potentially do better.

Awesome. Thank you for that. Okay, we are going to dive back in to Cassie's presentation. And if you were left with the cliffhanger, we are now going to be diving into AI because that is the world today, folks. We are in 2025 and AI is here whether we like it or not. So we might as well use it to our advantage when and where we can. So, Cassie, I think you have to share all the things.

I am going to share all the things. All the. All the screen. So the reason for this, guys, let's see.

Share.

So you should see my whole screen and make sure that my mother isn't texting me because she does that quite often. So let's just hide those notifications. All right, so AI design again, we left this for the end because it's a big topic. And what we're going to do is kind of. I'm going to talk a little bit about this. Elissa has some other stuff I love for her to touch on. And then after that, I'm actually going to do a live design with AI and kind of show you what I use it for and how it's applicable to designers first and foremost. We saw AI last year. Absolutely. But it is very much prominent in 2025. You know, if you're using it right, it can be incredible tool to use. There's definitely pros and cons to it. One of the top three things that I don't use it for. Absolutely. Is going to be for people. There's just it. They come out weird and creepy. So, I mean, there's definitely. If you're like looking at one person's face, there's a lot of creative AI driven art out there. But we're talking about book covers specifically. So I'd rather use a stock person, which I still don't even really like to use stock people on covers. But still, for the sake of the argument, you know, AI design or AI generated art for people is they just like their. Their missing limbs and it's very creepy. The other thing is going to be currency. Any type of money, those deals, details on like cash or coins. It just doesn't come across. Right. So that's definitely one to stay away from, which I had to learn the hard way. But the other one is going to be typography. There is always issues with typography when you're generating a book cover and you know, when even using AI there's, you don't want to go into one of these programs and say build me a book cover about A, B and C. And that's it, that's my book cover. There's just too many inconsistencies and I want to show you some of those here. So here's an example. This poor lady is missing part of her leg and it's in her shadow. There's some quality issues as far as like your high res, low res stuff goes. And here's the typeface which is just horrible. So yeah, you can go in here and you know, it's a great tool for authors. Like if you have an idea that you want to portray to your designer, great, go in there and use that to be like, this is kind of what I was thinking. But you're never gonna get a cover like you would from a real person. And let's look at some other creepy, creepy designs. So this one you can't really tell from the screen. I'm not sure if you can, but they have no faces and it's really, really creepy. And then back here it's just, you're losing all that detail. And again the typography is horrible. Yeah, it's not a good luck again here. Like I don't even know what this is supposed to be down here. You know, AI is driven by prompts and what you tell it to create for you. And we'll go over that when I do a live design. But you know, the details are just, they're not, they're not good. And this is really a time when your designer steps in and gets to really generate those creative details. And you know, yes, like I believe in using AI for certain things and we'll go over that. But at the same time, please don't use it to generate a book cover and say woohoo, this program did it for me and now I don't have to do anything else. You're losing that human touch and that's so important and so valuable. I'm actually going to hand it over to Elissa to kind of talk about some self publishing, the self publishing climate when it comes to AI.

Yeah, absolutely. So first, an important distinction to be aware of is the difference between AI generated content and AI assisted content. So when Cassie's talking about not just generating your whole entire book cover with AI, she'd be talking about AI generative content. But if you have a book cover that has an AI created or assisted component that's been edited in and utilized in a unique way. That's considered AI assistance. And for self publishing, that's actually a very important distinction. So right now there are roles at all of the major self publishing companies like Amazon, KDP and IngramSpark and Draft2Digital, which are, they're technically called third party aggregators, but they handle distribution for self published authors, for print and for ebook. And they will help get your book into all kinds of retailers, including libraries. But each one has their own set of rules right now because the self publishing world is still kind of figuring out how exactly to navigate this new AI world that we're living, living in. So for Amazon kdp, for instance, you are required to disclose the use of AI. If it is AI generated, you need to disclose it. If it is AI assisted, you need to disclose it and how you used it. They'll want to know what programs you used and whether it was heavily edited or not at all. And while they do allow it right now and seem to primarily be requiring disclosure and to be tracking who is using it, Amazon also has this kind of ambiguous rule which allows them to block any book that they determine without any clear criteria. So again, very subjective that they believe will create a negative buyer experience. They don't offer a clear definition of what that means and they can apply it however they want to and they can permanently block your book for publication on Amazon kdp. We don't know for sure whether there is a connection between using AI and getting blocked that way, but I have seen people who've run into that block because of using AI generatively to create either the content for their book or the COVID or both. So it's good to be aware of risks you could be exposing yourself to if you use an image like the ones that Cassie was showing that are fully generated by AI. And there are serious products problems with them. Like you can very clearly see, like she noted, there's a drop off in quality in certain details. Like it can go very blurry or very swirly, or the shapes don't make sense or a lady's missing a leg. That can happen a lot with AI. And if you just look at the whole of it, it may look beautiful, but if you look at the details, you start to see problems. And using generated content like that can increase your risk to, you know, falling into trouble with KDP for ingramspark, which is who we use for print distribution outside of Amazon currently, AI generated content is a violation of their catalog integrity guidelines. So if you use it they can say, no, we won't distribute this to our massive catalog of retailers and libraries. So that's something to be aware of there. And then for Draft two Digital, they're less restrictive on the like upload part of the process. But certain retailers like Apple and Barnes and Noble have their own restrictions and guidelines for any books that they feel like would weaken their catalogs. So there's considerations to be made there with using AI and making sure that you use it as a tool rather than as a replacement for like a human designer. The other two big considerations here is that right now the stance by the US Copyright Office is that AI generated content cannot be copyrighted. So what that actually means in practical application has yet to be truly explored and proven in court. But what it does mean is that it's not considered your intellectual property because you didn't actually come up with it or create it. So that makes it very difficult to copyright the content of your book if it's AI generated or to protect your book cover from someone simply taking it and using it as their own if it is in its entirety is not a unique book cover design done by a human designer. So that's one consideration, like I said, that's still very much in development. And there are questions about like, will you be able to copyright your prompts? If you're doing very detailed prompts that are very unique to you in order to generate AI content, will you be able to copyright prompts? There's a lot of discussion still happening, but right now all we know for sure is that the Copyright Office has said it cannot be copyrighted, it isn't intellectual property. And so what you'll see is that these other places, like KDP, InGroup, Spark Draft 2 Digital, they're being sort of cautious in their own distinct ways about projects, books that might have murky publishing rights, because they don't want to be on the wrong side of this issue, even though that side kind of keeps switching around. The other thing to keep in mind is reader perception. So right now, with this massive and very quick rise in AI usage, you're seeing some people who are very comfortable with it, but you're also seeing wide swaths of the readership, especially here in North America, who are quite uncomfortable with seeing what they identify as AI on a book cover. What we're hearing and seeing is that it negatively impacts buyer behavior because they make perhaps wrong and unjust, but they make assumptions about the, the internal content of the book based on that book cover. Like Cassie said, maybe you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. But people certainly do. And honestly, like, perhaps you should. But in this case they'll see if they see an AI generated cover. A lot of readers say that they then assume that the inside the content is also AI generated and therefore they assume it will be less specific, more generic, not have as high a value and not as be as professionally done. And again, that may be an absolutely wrong assumption by them. But it's not a trap you want to fall into simply because you aren't aware of that reader buyer prejudice that we're seeing right now toward clearly AI generated book covers. And so what we do and what we recommend to anybody who, who comes to us for advice is that AI is indeed very powerful tools. Whether you're using ChatGPT or Dall E or Mid Journey or any of the many tools that are available out there, using it as a tool strategically and in the hands of a very skilled designer like Sandra is going to show us here shortly, they can be immensely helpful and powerful. But you want to use them as part of a very unique whole versus as a replacement for a professionally designed book cover that you own. The other side of that too. Another element to consider is that if you are branding yourself and you want to be able to have clear branded elements across everything that you do, whether it's social media posts or, you know, T shirts, whatever you want to do, it can be very difficult to get AI to generate things that have any kind of consistency when you start, even if you tell them to keep everything the same and change this one thing. AI really struggles with that, with image generation. And so if you're looking to brand yourself, using AI to do it may be very difficult to impossible because it just simply isn't built for that kind of specific adjustment that we usually want when we're doing branded elements like that. So that's basically it. Those are the big things to consider. The rules and guidelines that are currently in place with the major players in self publishing and for print on demand. Because if you are choosing to publish independently, they are going to be your gateways to retailers. And then also keeping in mind copyright laws as they currently stand, and then also reader perceptions of the use of generative AI to create the entirety of a book cover.

Man, I had a little spiel prepared and you just covered all of it. So let's do what I do best and design some stuff. All right, I am going to share my screen yet again one more time. Share screen? Yes, entire screen. Let's do it. Okay. So we're going to design some stuff. I'm kind of winging it here, guys, so bear with me because you never know what the AI stuff is going to come up with. But we're going to look at Photoshop AI and Mid Journey AI and kind of see what I do with it. I again, like from the beginning when AI kind of came out and people really stoked, like, oh, I can use this for all these creative purposes, I was really adamant that, like, I can't trust that to really do what a human can do. And it's important to me that I use it, like Elissa said, as a tool, as an assistant to certain things. But I would never just say, you know, build me a book cover. So there's little things that Photoshop can do for me that is really helpful when I'm building a cover. So let's say this is just a general kind of showing you what Photoshop does, and then we'll look at one that's related to book covers. But for example, let's say I just do not want this lighthouse in here, so I can get rid of it by doing this and which is helpful. So sometimes if I'm building a cover and I pull an image from a stock site and there's something on there that I just really don't want, I can go in here, select that and very easily get rid of it. And that's coming from. I mean, I went to art school and learned everything I could about these programs. What just happened and how amazing that is would have taken me a long time to do. And so this cuts out so much. It comes up with so much time for me and when I'm building it. So those little things are incredibly helpful. Now you can see there's different results. Now all of a sudden there's this weird thing right here. I don't know what that is, so. But this, I love it. I'm gonna keep it. And I can also add stuff. So let's say I want. Now the quality on this isn't that great. You can kind of tell when you zoom in that it's low res. But let's add an old castle. I don't know. Sure. So you can tell that it's a little low res, but again, this is why we're using it just for a little stuff to help me get rid of maybe things I don't want. When you're adding stuff in, you can tell that it's. It's not great. But this is cool. So it's far away. It's not anything that I need to have super high res. Another thing that I love that Photoshop does is let me just do this really quickly, but I can add stuff to it. So if I need this image to have more things on the top and the bottom and all of that, I can expand it and it'll basically come up with what should have been there. Right? So this is really helpful for me on covers. I'm going to show you an example of an actual cover that I use this on. And it's going to take a sweet little time, but it always gives me options. And I'm always, of course, looking for the most realistic option. But you. And you can even say, like, when I do that prompt, I could say I want flowers in the front or, you know, any of that. But this is a part of Photoshop that I definitely love. Let's look at these. Okay, so these covers you guys saw on the slides. And for this cover, I. I went into Mid Journey and typed in, you know, a pair of. I typed in a pair of round glasses on a white background. And that's mostly what I used to use in Mid Journey is I say on a white background. And the reason for that is because I want to isolate that image and be able to do whatever I want with it. So I can then go into Photoshop, bring in and utilize just that image. Like if I just say, you know, round glasses, that's it. They could put a bunch of leaves behind it or they could put, you know, a person in there. I don't want that. I want everything on a white background so that I can use that as a tool, as an element, but, you know, get rid of all the other stuff so that I can then create the rest of the design. So these were helpful. These glasses were helpful when I pulled them from midjourney. And here's another example of a pair of glasses I didn't use in the creative. But what it does for me is I can say on an orange background because I knew that client wanted a specific color. So in order to cut out all this work that I would have to do in Photoshop, as far as isolating these glasses, and it was on a white background and having to add an orange background. It's a whole process. So this was able to just give me what I wanted. Now, like I was talking about before, as far as kind of expanding these images, what I could do is, let's say, okay, stop doing that. Let's say I wanted this to be this size and I'M going to say, well, okay, well, I can do this myself. I can add an orange background to it. That's fine. I'm going to grab orange and I'm going to put it back there. But as you can see, there's shadowing. This is a gradient orange. And there's a lot of work that I could do to make it match. But because we have the use of AI and I don't need to do that, I can expand this for a cover. Obviously, I want that orange to expand. I'll just to the top and bottom of that cover. So I'm just going to have Photoshop do it for me, which is very, very helpful. But again, I'm using it as a tool not to. I'm not saying, like, expand this and add the title and put this there and so on and so forth. So you can see it's now generated this whole background for me. And that is so helpful. Now I can add my text, add whatever else I need to, and stick with this color scheme. Okay. The last one that I want to show you guys is Victoria Short. And the reason for that is because this was something that was an interesting project. This was a fun project. It was difficult because there was a lot of Photoshop work to do. So I had to get a photo of all these leaves, find a pumpkin, and the author wanted it to be tucked in behind these leaves. This here is a ton of Photoshop work. Getting the shadows right, getting the leaves right, moving them over. It took hours. Now what I can do with AI is I can make up for those hours. And right here is where I started it. So we'll look at some prompts that I did. So the. Let me just make sure you guys can. You guys can see this, right? We're good? Yeah. Okay, sorry. Going back. Going back. Okay, so the first prompt I did was just top view of a mini orange pumpkin hiding in a bunch of green leaves. So this is what I get. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's kind of cool. I mean, that's close. That's interesting. But I don't like the green. So I do also add some different prompts. I say hiding in green foliage instead of green leaves. I just want to test it out and see what AI comes up with. And if it's kind of what my plan is in my head, like how. If I have something really specific in mind, how can I use Mid Journey to create that? And this was really specific. So this, I expanded it and we're looking at top view of A mini orange pumpkin hiding and peeking out of a bunch of turquoise leaves and small raindrops on the leaf. So you have to get really specific. But these images, I'm like, this is cool. And these colors are way better. I mean, they're, you know, orange and blue are just so beautiful together. And this was definitely more the direction I wanted to go. That being said, once I downloaded this image and brought it into Photoshop, there are things that need to be done for me to get it. Like, it's not completely hiding in there. So, yes, this is helpful, but there's still a lot of work I need to do, and a lot of that is selecting, you know, these leaves and starting to kind of move around and, like, get the shadowing done correctly and making sure that, you know, we're getting that hiding behind the leaf kind of feel. So, no, I'm just being picky. Okay, sorry. So I already kind of did that. I built this and put some leaves over it. So, you know, there's still work to be done for sure. But this would have been very helpful when I was building this cover. That would have been awesome. But still, you can't. You have to have that designer, that desire touch like you need to, because there's little details that need to be worked out. So although this is helpful, it's not the end all, be all. So I do love AI it does help me. But again, there's nothing like having an actual designer. I mean, you just can't replace that. So, you know, I, I suggest to stay away from it. I think it's a great tool for authors to show, like, hey, this is kind of what I was thinking and to get that visual across to the designer. But, you know, having a desire is just, is. Is definitely necessary. So that's a little bit of my live design. I could probably go on forever because I love doing it, but I am going to stop sharing. And Angela, actually, do you. Angela, do you want to go to the last slide or do you want to do prizes again?

Let's do some more questions and then we'll do a prize and then I'll get to that because, yeah, we do have some. I was anticipating this. I'm not surprised. We do have some questions, so I want to try to answer as many as we can. There are a couple and let me see. So there was some from a little while back. And Cassie, remind me, if I'm wrong, was that the end of the presentation as well? That's it.

I mean, it was really just, yeah, showing AI was a big part of that and I think you guys deserve to see that. And, and Elissa, thank you so much for all that information. It's, it's so key. I think a lot of people look at AI, they're like, oh, this is such an easy solution. And it's not, it's not that simple. And I don't want to have authors be misled by this amazing thing that's happening in the world. But there's only so much of it we should really be using and we should be really delicate in how we approach it.

Yeah, agreed. Agreed. Okay, awesome. Well, let us do another hashtag for this prize. Let's see what, what should, what do you guys think? What should be the hashtag that people type into the chat box that should enter their name to win? Should we do something fun like Cassie rocks or Covers rock or let's see, what do you guys. I'm opening it up to you two, Elissa and Cassie. What do you guys think?

100 hashtag casserock. That is, that is the hashtag.

All right, I will type this in there so you know exactly. Oh, best cover. That's a good suggestion as well. Cassie rocks. I will put the example in the chat so you guys can. You should be honored, Cassie. Actually, we should be honored that you're.

Presenting this, but I'm honored and you're honored. We're all honored.

All right, guys, so if you would like to be entered to win this, this prize, if you have not already won, or if you just want to see if your luck is up today, we would still choose another one. But you're welcome to say hashtag Cassie Rocks. Or if you just enjoyed this. You know, we also love to see that as well. So while people are putting that into the chat, let's go through some of these questions. So the first one, this was from a while back, like near the very beginning, from V. Vegan knowledge. That is cool. What are your thoughts on before and after photos for self help books? So like this is what the person I guess looked like before. Let me know in the chat if that's incorrect. And then an after, after they do, I don't know, a diet or some sort of results. So, Elissa, you might be the only one of us who's encountered this. Maybe you have, Cassie, but what are your thoughts on before and after pictures?

Yeah, so I think that kind of falls into that one category that I mentioned that that could potentially work for having yourself on the COVID if you aren't a known entity and that is, if, you know, you do have this physical advertising in some way. And so I think a before and after could be quite effective. It could also work really well on the back cover of a book as well.

Yeah, I think the back cover is really a place for that. Because your front cover, you have so much opportunity to, you know, create something original and draw in readers where. And then, like I always look at the back. I mean, I always look at the back of a book before I buy it. So, yeah, I think that's a really great place to put that and A.

Plus content as well. So if you do A plus content, if you're publishing through Amazon kdp, that is when you can do that additional imagery that's around the middle of a book's retail listing, you might have seen that before. That's called A plus content. And that can also be a really great place to put things like before and after photos, because as they scroll down, that'll be, you know, front and center on your listing.

Awesome. Thank you guys. Another question, and I. I don't know what all is provided, so I wanted to bring this up to you guys. What is provided once a cover is complete? What are those final files?

I totally left that out and I had it written down, I swear. Thank you, Eric. Thank you for reminding me. So what's provided to you are going to be your working files. So that means your InDesign file and your Photoshop file. If you don't have those programs, they're kind of not useful to you. But as well as we provide both launchers, a PDF, a JPEG that's cmyk, so print ready, and a JPEG that's rgb so the web ready. And then you also get a 3D, which you guys have seen on the, on the slides. That 3D version.

Yeah. And a lot of our authors don't ask for or need the like the fonts, the color codes, or the raw images. But we have had requests for it before and we're always able to accommodate that. If it is a font that we have purchased a license for, that's limited to Cassie because she's the one that is licensed for that font, then we can give you the name of it and where you can purchase a license for yourself if you want to use it on additional projects. But it's not something we by default provide every time we do a cover design. But if an author is, you know, interested in having those pieces, it's absolutely something we have in the past provided and can do.

Yeah, awesome. Thank you now keeping it in line with fonts? Are 3D fonts useful? And if so, when.

Yeah, I mean, you know, 3D fonts are, are cool. I think they, I think you have to use them the right way. They can get really cheesy. I see Elizabeth, she agrees. I tend to stay away from them just because once you're using like let's say you have your title in a 3D font, you are, you have to consider that that title may be on like a little tiny ad online, let's say, for example, and that 3D art that small gets really, really difficult to read and you want everything to be consistent like we talked about before. So it's difficult to keep that kind of cohesive look with a 3D font. And as long as it's done in a tasteful way and not a very cheesy like gradient, maybe like I'm thinking like Windows 95, you know, their screensaver kind of deal. As long as we're staying away from that, I think yes, yes, it's. There is a time and place for it.

Perfect, thank you. Now this is something that I wanted to because someone asked it and I do think it is important because there is an element of, Sorry, I'll hide this question not related to that question. There is an element of letting the designers do their genius, what you're hiring them for, as well as taking into consideration what the author wants. And Cassie did touch on this. There's a balance. And she explain the three comps that she puts together. So someone had asked J Boos, how do I deal with my publisher? Basically wanting to shut me out of the ideation of the COVID design and just let the designers handle it.

So that's not uncommon if you're working with a publisher, a traditional publisher, even if it's a very small house through to the big houses. That's not uncommon at all. They often do maintain a great deal of creative control over the end product. That's one of the reasons why some of the authors we work with have chosen to do self publishing is to maintain that kind of creative control. But you know, unfortunately in your case, I think you'd have to, you know, kind of look at your contract with your publisher and you know, take that on a case by case basis. But to my understanding, that is not unusual at all when working with, with a publisher to publish.

And if you are hiring, like if you're self publishing and you're hiring an outside designer, there should be that element that Cassie touched on of working together, letting the Designer, use that creative mindset that they have, but give them some prompts, give them some helpful things to help them put that concept together.

I can even use an example. I have this freelance client and. And you know, she's been really wonderful in letting me kind of come up with those comps and do my thing. But she let me know, like, this is some things I'd love to see on there. I'm like, okay, let's try it out, see if it works. And I had placed the subtitle above the title because the title is tucked behind an image a little bit. And she asked me to switch them. And at the end, when we're wrapping up the COVID I. I couldn't help myself. And I was like, look, I know you had asked for it that way, but I want you to look at it again this way, because what it does is it opens up space and it allows us to do all these other things and make more room for your author name, all sorts of stuff. But. And when I sent them back, I was like, it's obviously up to you, but I think this flows better. And at the end, she ended up following that advice. And I think it's important to trust your desire, but it's also our job to create something that you're proud of. And that's really important to me. And, you know, even at work, it's like, I always ask, like, oh, the clients say, and what do they think about it? It's important to me to know that you are happy with that product. So taking into consideration your wants and feels, that's it. That's important. I think, you know, like my weird man with wolf face and wings that I'm going to absolutely tell you we should not do that. I have some lessons about wolf man with wings and his adventures out in the wilderness. Then. Great, that makes sense. But I think that, you know, there's a time and a place and. And definitely listen to your desire is important.

Awesome. Now, this is an interesting question that Emily Romero posed. Are there any fonts or colors or anything along those lines that are actually taboo for covers?

Oh, my God. I could go on and on about this topic. Please. Papyrus, ever in your life, Please don't use Comic Sans ever in your life. I have. I could really keep going. But like, those. There's, like, there's fonts that are just so generic. Don't go into, you know, word and do a drop down and use a default font. I mean, that's. Everybody knows what that is. And this is really where Your designer is so important because they're immersed in that. They're immersed in all these different fonts and are pairing them up on purpose and in a way that's purposeful for you. So, yeah, I'm telling you right now, please don't use Comic Sans or Papyrus ever. Giddy up. Please stay away from that. I could go on and on. So, Elissa, if you have something, please.

I 100 knew the first two you were gonna mention were Papyrus and Comic San.

I was watching a movie the other day, and it was like, everything was in Papyrus. I was like, oh, God. Like, I just. I can't.

Yeah. And what it does is that it signals. It's not. I wouldn't necessarily say taboo, but what it does signal is a lack of professionalism and a lack of polish. It makes it look like. Whether it's true or not, it makes it look like you haven't taken the necessary steps to put out a professional polished product. So, again, you run into assumptions about your book that may be unjust or unfair, but, you know, using the wrong fonts can certainly hurt you that way.

Yeah. And unless you're, like, building, you know, let's start making your own custom hemp paper and you want to put Papyrus on it, that makes sense, I guess. But even still, like, it's an opportunity to look for new fonts and bring something new to the table. Because everybody knows what Comic Sans looks like, and we don't want it to look like, like Elissa said, unpolished.

I was muted.

Fontaine. I love that. Lazy.

Okay. We actually had a couple questions come in along the same lines of making evergreen covers. So this is one that that jacket posed.

I know.

Joy had also posed the question as well. Like, what are the first questions I should ask? Does any cover for a timeless or evergreen book? Joy's question, very similar. If I want my book to be selling 10 years from now, will these of these trends make it feel dated? So it's both the element of keeping your book, your book cover design relevant. So how would you guys address that? Because there is a time and a place for a cover refresh sometimes.

Yeah. So, I mean, you know, Cassie, you can maybe touch on, you know, how you would use trends that you've talked about in a restrained way so that it doesn't look like, you know, the COVID design equivalent of bell bottoms, you know, where you associate it with a really spelled S 2025 book. Right there. But I think the other thing to keep in mind is that trends do change and reader preferences do change. Evergreen may be, I don't want to overstate, but Evergreen for a book cover might not actually be a realistic expectation. You can definitely have something that's very classic and very polished and that will work well for several years. But like Angela noted, after a certain amount of time doing a refresh, even a second edition to update the content of your book may be beneficial to you to keep it sort of fresh and looking updated. Definitely. Like I said, I'll let Cassie, I'll let you talk on like how you would be restrained with it versus just, you know, diving headfirst into something that's super, super trendy. But that would be my only thing is like you, if you're going to use trends, be conservative, but then also understand that you're probably going to want to update your cover in the future no matter what.

Yeah, and I agree. I mean, everything you said is accurate. It's, you know, like I was talking about with retro fonts, there's a time and a place for it. But you know, if I'm going to use this retro looking typeface, which doesn't mean, okay, let's go back. If I'm going to use that typeface, I'm going to pair it with something more modern. Right. So something with like a sans serif. I might even choose Gotham because I love it so much and you know, something really modern to pair it with. So it does last longer. So we're not making the whole book cover look retro. We're just using a font that's in trend and, or on trend and then pairing it with something like I said, more modern. And I think that that can last a long time. It's about how you use it and what you're pairing it with. I, you know, I would never take a trend and, or like multiple trends and use them all. I mean, that's definitely not what we want to do. You know, the color, the color, the color combinations that we talked about before. I think that is, it is a risk. But colors are always going to be on trend. So I mean, you're not, you're not losing anything by doing that. And all you're doing is setting yourself apart and standing out from other, from other authorities. But what I would do with those, you know, wild colors, let's call them, I would do, I would tame it down with my font choice. So it's really that balance of, like, I'm not shoving this trend in your face. I'm using a little, a little piece of it to stay, you know, I can't even think of the word. I am totally my game. But, you know, you're, you're staying relevant. That's what I'm looking for. But at the same time, it'll last.

Awesome. Thank you. And that, that is a great point. As well as how to, how to use some of those elements but not go overboard. So that does stay. Let us pause really quickly with the questions. Let's do a prize. So we had the hashtag casserocks and you've had plenty of time to put that into the chat. So let me get, get our giveaway tool queued up and let me share screens that you guys can all see that I'm not cheating with this. Where is our giveaway tool? Okay, so let's do hashtag Cassie rocks.

Whoops.

Not rock rocks. There we go. Okay, 20 entries. Let us see who is going to be the winner or this. Alana, it's been quite some time since you won. How awesome. So, Alana, you should know the drill, but since it has been a little bit, if you don't, then please email me at Team T A M book launchers.com to win your prize. We're doing a book edition for prizes today, so last time, let me just go over what those five options are. We've got Self Publish and Succeed, Self Promote and Succeed Rise of the Reader by Nick Hutchison and Self Publishing for New Authors by Dale Roberts. And then number five is Advanced Self Publishing for Authors by Dale Roberts. So let me know which of those five books you would like and I will get it sent your way. So a couple more questions. We've got just a few minutes left. I'm not sure we're going to be able to get to all the questions, but I want to power through as many, many as possible. So this one is interesting and it does kind of go back to what we touched on earlier. Jason. So I'm an art director and already designed a fully working cover, but I wanted to see if you'd rather design something from scratch on from your own perspective or if you'd rather see what I did.

So there's, you know, it's interesting that even that those covers I was showing you with the glasses, he had created his own cover and it was actually a really good cover. So I, you know, recreating them, I felt like he was really on, like a good track and. Does he need me? No, but I'd love to, you know, give different options. I think seeing your cover and how you created it tells a lot about what you like and what you don't like. So if. Whatever colors you used or fonts that you use, that tells a lot to me about what you're happy with. And so. Thank you. Things that I should either include or don't include, but, you know, it's. It is helpful to see that. I think it's worth it to show your designer what you've built. Absolutely.

Great. Thank you. Okay, let's see. So let me get rid of that one, since we just answered that. This one from Kathleen Flynn. When you're searching for images, what is your bandwidth? Professional programs, Internet. How do you access original artwork?

So when I'm searching for images to actually use on a cover, we used. We use stock photos, but sometimes I'll take a stock photo. And like just the other day, I really liked the background of the stock photo, but I didn't need what was in front of it, and I just wanted the background. So I downloaded that and AI got rid of the fifth, got rid of the person so I could use the background for a cover. The stock photos. I have rules when I look at stock photos. I never put a stock human on a cover. And a lot of that, you know, dates back to what we were talking about with putting yourself on the COVID If I put a stock person on the COVID people think it's you, and we don't want that. I do use them, but it'll always be, like, from the. Like, the back of them, or I use someone where I just kind of, like, cut them off here. But as far as, you know, searching for images, I think it depends. Am I searching for art that I want to use, or am I searching for inspiration? And when I search for inspiration, I have all sorts of websites that I look at. But I also do, like, you know, when we're talking about the woodworking cover, I will type in to Google Woodworking books and see, like, what is there. Just do a general search and see what's out in the world. And so for that, it just kind of helps guide me a little bit. But the. I mean, I spent a lot of time looking at images. That's really. My husband calls it my research period. And it's when I, like, really sit down and immerse myself in imagery. And I. I'm saving images into a folder for that client, and I'm just pulling and pulling and pulling different images to help spark that conceptual side and start getting me to a place where I can go into Photoshop and I can say, okay, I have some concepts. Now I'm going to start building these out.

And when you are talking about stock photos, you're predominantly using Adobe stock photos, correct? Yeah, there are a lot of other stock photo sites out there. Adobe has really good licensing. There are other places that you have to be careful, like Pixel and even deposit photos where if you're using images of people, for instance, they may not have model releases and things like that that you have to be aware of to use on book covers. So it's good to, you know, choose a high quality stock photo source. If you are looking for photos that are in the like Creative Commons that can be used without a license, then something like Wikimedia Commons can be a good place to start that search.

And even when I'm pulling images from Adobe stock, I'm. I mean, I could for one client pull five photos because I want what's in this photo, but I want what's in this photo. And that's really where the designing comes into play. Right. Like I'm using, I'm taking little things and I'm now putting them together to create the COVID that I want. I'm never going through Adobe stock to be like, where's the one image that I can find that'll just bow on this cover and I can put the type over and I'm done. So it's, it's, you know, I'm definitely looking and I'm as I'm going looking at all these photos, I'm coming up with those concepts in my mind.

Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you. Okay, let us. We are going to. There's one more slide that Cassie is going to bring up that I will talk about and then we are going to do one more winner. But while we're doing that, if you would like to. Right in the chat, we would love to see it. You know, just your thanks for Cassie and Elissa taking time out of their Saturdays to present all of this. But I would love to hear what your favorite takeaway was from today. So if you'll type that into the chat, that will be lovely to hear. But Cassie, if you want to go ahead and pull up that last slide, I will dive in and go over that. We need dramatic music while we wait or like, like Jeopardy music or something. There we go. Okay, let me.

First thing that came to my head was the Jeopardy music. Here, let me get to your slide. There you go.

Okay. And for whatever reason that is a little small, probably from the comments, so let me pull it up in, in slack just so I can read it a little bit.

Better.

All the viewers are probably able to see it, but from my perspective, it's small because I've got all your comments on the side right there. So this is something that I said at the beginning. We've done this for three years now and this is something that Cassie, I'll take you off stage just so you don't have to be up here while I'm talking about this, that we get asked all the time. There's already been people asking about this in the chat and it's like you had esp. Guys, you're already thinking about this. So we are experimenting this month right now in February 2025. So our design services are usually only available to our full service authors. So this month we are changing it up, we are experimenting and we want to spread the love by offering limited spots to non members as well. So for $750, our cover design package will include keyword category and competition research, a title brainstorm with our entire team, even Julie weighing in, and then front cover design, three initial comps and then revision. So if that is interesting to you and you're one of our non clients, because if you're one of our full service clients, you're already getting this. Don't worry. So if you are a non member, if you're interested, please reach out to us via TeamokLaunchers.com to reserve your spot. So that is T e a m booklaunchers.com to reserve your spot. And again guys, we are experimenting. This is something that we have never offered before. Not once, never. So if you're interested then I would recommend reserving your spot today by emailing us@teamkook launchers.com so that is something pretty cool. Let me get to our last prize winner and I accidentally did pull this while, while we were already going. So I'm just going to show you the person that it came up with. I apologize that you won't get to see all the little names coming through and everything, but this person has been here and participating and that is Henning Fetch. I'm not quite sure how to say your last name, but Henning, thank you so much for participating today. You are our final prize winner for today's Deep dive. So we've got those five book options that you can choose from. Please email me henningeamooklaunchers.com with your mailing address and your prize of choice. So whichever one of those books you would like, please let me know which one you would like me to send to you. Awesome. Okay guys, well, I think I'm going to stop sharing screen and let us go through some of these. Thank you so much for all the insights. Oh, and Henning, you were the one who just won. How perfect. Oh, and how lovely. I will reach out to you when my next book is ready. Love to see that. KJ said, I enjoyed seeing all of Cassie's book cover designs. Thank you. Let's see. Reba. Thank you. Elissa and Cassie, favorite takeaways? Seeing the comparison of book covers side by side. Absolutely. Isn't it so fascinating to see the the reasoning behind some of those different design elements? Someone said I'm thinking of using fiber. So all of these tips are so helpful. Absolutely. Invest in quality. Yes, quality does make a difference, especially when it comes to your cover design. Karen said using different fonts. Thought I had to just use one. Oh yeah. So that was very interesting for you then knowing that you can use multiple and actually that combos can sometimes be better. How awesome. Number two. A book is judged by its cover. I think I like that one. Awesome, guys. Well, we have about 60 seconds. Not even 60 seconds. We've got about 40 seconds left before we are going to call this. So thank you guys so much for being a part of this deep dive. We will be having a deep dive next month, of course, and I don't know what the topic is off the top of my mind, but we will be having a another deep dive next month. Thank you so much to all of our prize winners. Thank you to everyone who joined in and commented and a special thank you to Elissa and Cassie as they took time to not only be here on a Saturday, but to research this and to present you with their knowledge and expertise and putting that presentation together for you guys. So thank you all around. I hope you have a lovely rest of your weekend and we'll see you around, guys. Bye everyone. Thanks for tuning in.