How to make a YA book cover in 4 easy steps!

Okay guys, this is totally a spoof entry.  But after seeing about 10 YA PNR books in a row that looked like near-identical copies of each other, I decided to tell you how you, too, can create a bestselling YA book cover!

Step 1

Find a great background.   This should preferably be something gothic or haunting.  I chose this photo of my own that I snapped up in Maine a few winters ago.

Nice Background

Step 2

Find a nice photo of a girl wearing a prom dress.  The more risqué, flowy and colorful this is, the better.  And be careful about the model you choose — she has to look steamy, pouty, angsty, tragic, or terrified.  OR, as an alternative, you can choose a back-view photo of said girl.  Oh, more requirements.  She must be Caucasian, stick-skinny but well-endowed, with long hair that is preferably blowing in the wind.

Here is my girl, courtesy of eidress.com, situated nicely against my background.  Don’t worry about silly things like lighting or perspective.  That’s not all that important.

The requisite prom dress photo

Step 3

Now at this point, you can add a title and call it quits, OR, even better, you can add in a photo of a shirtless hunky young man, looking as angsty and pouty as the girl.  While the girl must be in a prom dress, the guy must look as tattered and scruffy as possible.  He should be posed behind the girl.

I found my young man at Shutterstock, hence the watermark I left visible to show where I got it.

Shirtless Hunk – check!

Step 4

Now all you have to do is select a title.  This should be a single word, and it should be edgy, angsty, unexpected, or obsolete.  Opening a thesaurus at random and selecting the most pompous word you can find on the page is a good trick.  Or choose from a list of women’s perfume names.  The title should be written in as dramatically flowy a font as possible, or something hard, cracked, edgy and unexpected.

I think Flux is a pretty fantastic word, so that’s my title.

Voila!

And there you have it!  😉

Hope you enjoyed this very tongue-in-cheek post.  (N.B. — NO.  No. No. No.  I am NOT writing a YA PNR titled Flux.  Just no.  Hence why I did not put my own name on this…..thing.;)

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  1. I swear, this is too true.

  2. Hello, me again. Just wanted to let you know that I’ve nominated you as one of my fifteen blogs for the One Lovely Blog Award! Please check this out to see how to accept it: http://shroudsofsilver.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/the-one-lovely-blog-award/

  3. Funny! It seems like it’s the same formula for Romance novels, except the girl and the hunky young man must be embracing. The racial aspect of what covers sell books is a sad comment about the market.

    1. Unfortunately so. =( The racial aspect and the image aspect both are quite disturbing. Regarding the latter, I’d actually heard that when they were making a cover for The Girl of Fire and Thorns, it started off with one of those slim, gorgeous girls on the cover. Well, that doesn’t exactly fit the main character….so instead of redoing the cover with a model that fits Elisa’s character, they opted for a stylized design cover with a tiny little face instead. *sigh*

  4. I laughed so hard reading this! I guess it works so publishers keep spitting out the same cover. Shame though, imagination has gone out the window.

    1. ^_^ I’m glad you liked it! I had a blast writing it. 🙂

  1. […] us started with a bang yesterday with her fantastically funny (but sadly all-too-accurate) post on creating a YA cover for your novel.  If you haven’t read it yet, do.  Hopefully it will make you […]

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