Design a Nonfiction Cover That Sells: The Quick Book Cover Model

Hey, revenue writers. Welcome back to the Revenue Writers podcast. This is your host, Chris Stanley. And today we're going to wrap up this series on the Power Promise. Now, the Power Promise, as a recap, is all about making a super powerful promise to your reader before you ever write a single word of your book. We've talked about how determining what problem in person and point of view, which is also your solution usually that you're presenting in the book should be really clear in the title and subtitle. And so I want to talk today about book covers because book covers really let people know who the book is for. We've told them what problem we're solving. We've told them maybe even a glimpse into how we're doing it. We've hooked them with something interesting in the title. But the book cover tells it whether it's for a guy who's a survivalist or for a stay at home mom or for or corporate CEO or for a work at home dad. Right? So these covers, if you think of it in fiction, it's a genre feel. If you look at a book, you judge it by its cover, right? Oh, that's science fiction. That looks self published. This looks professional, right? Oh, this is a thriller, this is a fantasy. But in nonfiction books, what we're talking about, the same thing happens. We make instant judgments on who that book is for. Is that book for me or is that for somebody else? And so the book covers that final piece that lets the reader know in an instant, ah, this is for me or it's not. So I have a methodology I use for this called the quick book cover model. And I create all my own book covers Now I've published 30 books and I bet 25 of those I've done the covers on. I would at least over for sure. Over 20. I might be exaggerating on one or two. I might have forgot one or two. But most of them I've done myself. And here's how I do that. So we're spelling out quick with an acronym. So Q is qualify what a good selling book cover looks like by finding three you like the feel of on Amazon and make sure they have over 1000 reviews on them. So you're looking for the New York Times bestsellers, you're looking for the nonfiction books. The top of the chart in your field. You don't want to grab. You don't want to. If you're doing a ketosis weight loss book, don't go model after a ketosis book. Okay, Maybe go from how to Be diabetes or something, you know, one step away from you. You don't want to model after direct competition. That's just not cool. It makes you blend in too much. But you're just looking for. You're using, though, in the you is to upload those designs into Canva or book brush. And you upload those designs, you say, okay, they put the title in the middle. Let me do that, recreate it as close as I can. You can use AI like Chat gtp, upload the COVID and go, hey, what font is this? Canva. And 90% of the time, it gets it dead on. It'll give you two or three options and one of them's it. But you're going to recreate that cover as close as you can to where now you have the balance. You don't have to be a designer. You just have to mimic what a designer is doing. And so, you know, I'll actually recreate it with their words, their colors, everything as close as possible. And then I. You start inserting the elements and recreate that book cover as close as possible. So that's what we're just talking about. That's the I. And now, see, you customize the COVID to you right now, you're going to start swapping out their title for your title. You know, that font's good, you know the spacing's good, but all of a sudden you put your title in, it looks totally different. Then you go, well, I don't want a picture of a baby on mine. I want a picture of a bulldog. Right? That looks totally different. Oh, and maybe your colors are bright blue. And this person colors were dark green. Okay, well, now again, we're separating oursel out by making a U. We are modeling, we are structuring the COVID based on what works, but now we're making it ours. And then so the last part is after you've customized everything, like, man, that's my book cover. And it looks good. Trust me, you can do this. You can make it look good. And then the last one is K. You make it Kindle ready. So you make it the size it needs to be for Kindle or the other bookstores, you make it a size it needs to be for paperback or hardcover or whatever you're doing and ready for export. And that's how you make your own book cover. Absolutely free. If you have a canvas subscription for like 20 bucks a month, you can make your own book cover. Book brush is amazing, but it's only for books. So Canva seems to be more flexible for most people, so I recommend it normally. But I love book brush as well. It's a very similar tool, but just for authors. So that's how you can make your own book cover. I hope that helps you avoid having to pay hundreds or even. I've known people paid over a thousand dollars for a book cover before to where you can have a really good professional book cover. I don't know, Chris, if you really know what you're talking about, go look at my book covers. Go see what you think about them. I've modeled them after other people in concept. I didn't steal their design. I just modeled the structure, what they were doing, and then tweaked it to make my own once I knew I was at a good starting point. All right, hope that helps you guys create your awesome book cover. If you make one using this strategy in this quick book cover model. Message me through substack or email me chrischris-stanley.com I would love to see it. I love seeing people elevate their book covers from, you know, the Canva template template that looks self published to man that looks like a book cover. All right, talk to you guys later.