#401 – Designing Book Covers for the Digital Reader with Jake Clark

0:06Hey, writers, you're listening to the Kobo Writing Life podcast, where we bring you insights and inspiration for growing your self-publishing business. We're your hosts. I'm Tara Kremen, director of Kobo Writing Life. And I'm Rachel Wharton, author engagement manager at Kobo Writing Life. On today's episode, we had the pleasure of chatting with cover designer Jake Clark, With over a decade of experience and thousands of covers produced, Jake Clark is a book cover designer who specializes in crafting visually striking, genre-accurate designs that help stories sell. We had a great conversation. I just personally love talking to anyone that is so passionate about the work that they do.

0:49but I think it's so insightful for authors. We talked about cover design, how you should really view your covers as a piece of product marketing like that you're selling to readers. He had some really great insights on giving feedback, how you should be honest but nice, which is like such a no-brainer but maybe we need to say it out loud. And then we also talked about cover trends as well, what is working at the moment, about why you maybe shouldn't rely on trends too much but also just his opinion on the trends at the moment. So I hope you enjoy it. It was a great conversation. Today, we are joined by a cover designer, Jake Clark.

1:26Thank you for joining us, Jake.

1:28Jake Clark: Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and the work that you do? Yeah, I'm Jake Clark. I'm a full-time book cover designer. I've been designing book covers now full-time for about a decade or so and then probably all together probably about 12 to 13 years or something like that somewhere in that that vein so I have a degree in graphic design from the University of South Carolina and I spent the first first 10 years of my life doing graphic design work for a print company in the town that I live in and then started doing started dabbling in book covers I had twin daughters and all of a sudden I needed to have I need to have more money and so I started trying to find ways to try to get more more income and found book covers online and working on it at night after the girls had went to bed and it just kind of took off from there over like three or four years and I finally had to decide do I stay where I'm at or try book cover design for full-time a full-time career and here we are you know a decade ish later and I'm doing it all the time so I do a lot of sci-fi fantasy are my main two genres that I do I tell everybody that I grew up drawing guys with swords and spaceships and stuff and now i get to do that for a living and that's the two main genres i focus on but i've done probably every genre you know across the board in terms of broad term genres from non-fiction fiction romance thrillers mystery you know you probably named the genre and i've probably done something adjacent to it uh as far as it goes i think my last count was around 2 000 plus covers done so uh it has been quite a quite a catalog of uh of it so and And in doing all that, I have made all the mistakes and seen all the successes of what a good cover can do and what a bad cover can do.

3:14Jake Clark: So yeah, that's me. I feel like we ask this question of authors a lot of the time when they go from being a part-time author to that being their full-time gig. So I'm really curious what kind of motivated you to give cover design your full-time attention? Yeah, to be honest with you, it'll be my daughter's. And it wouldn't be the monetary side of it. But all of that was a benefit. I had been doing it, like I said, in the evenings and stuff, part-time. The girls would, like I said, we'd put them down. And then I'd watch a little Netflix with my wife. And then she'd go to sleep. And then I would kind of start working or whatever.

3:48Jake Clark: And it kind of grew and grew. And I really loved it. And it was a really fun and creative process, being able to be the one that kind of comes up with the whole idea and concept together with a client or whatever. In my other job, it was usually business cards and envelopes and forms and nothing that fancy. But what really kind of pushed me over the edge was I had got to the point where the business kind of had a pretty good clientele. And I couldn't juggle both jobs anymore. And I knew that when my daughters got older, I would tell them to chase their dreams, whatever they want to pursue. And I thought, I can't be a hypocrite and not do it myself.

4:26Jake Clark: Even if I can only do it for a year or six months or whatever, you know, I have to try so that I can tell them the same exact thing that they have to try and pursue it to see where it leads. And it's been the best decision I have made. So, you know, here we are. That's so sweet. You're able to like model like following your dreams for your daughters. I think that's awesome. Your tagline is badass covers for badass stories. Can you tell us about this? I wanted to know how you define a badass in the design sense. For me, it's, you know, badass is going to be probably a subjective term. If you look at my portfolio, you're going to see a lot of dynamic covers, a lot of character centered ones.

5:08Jake Clark: I grew up reading comic books and that kind of stuff. So I really like character focused pieces, which sci-fi and fantasy, you know, fit really well into that. So I do a lot of dynamic ones where maybe it's an odd angle or just a really nice frame image where the character is somehow highlighted in a way. Or the subject, it doesn't have to be a character, it could be a ship or it could be anything. It's highlighted in a really unique way. So again, it's a bit of a subjective term as far as it goes. Just a really well done cover, I think, can be badass. Whether it's a non-fiction cover that doesn't have a lot going on, a minimal approach.

5:43Jake Clark: or whether it's a fantasy with the guy with the sword or whatever. But the whole concept behind it is creating something that makes somebody stop and go, man, I like that cover. And then if you can do that, you can get the reader to check out your work more. And like you mentioned off the top, you've been designing covers for a decade. You've done over 2 ,000 books, which is bananas. So what's the first thing you look at when you're beginning the design process? And has that initial thing changed throughout the 2000 books? Yeah, it's definitely evolved as far as it goes, because I've evolved or, you know, evolved as a as a professional.

6:23Jake Clark: And early on, I did a lot of, you know, I'll take my leave from the client, you know, what they say, kind of what they want, that kind of stuff. And then over the course of my career, that's kind of changed where I step into my own. And I go, well, that's a great idea, but maybe we should approach it this way. and over the course of a decade I've kind of developed a process that I kind of bring into all my covers and I try to bring that approach to all of them so that we end up with a really cohesive and strong piece at the end and it's not failed me for the most part when it's applied appropriately and so yeah I mean I'm more you know I guess confident in my own opinions and confident in my own thoughts and that kind of stuff which actually leads I think to a better product when it's all said and done.

7:09And at Kobo, we're just digital, so we're not ever working on physical books, so it's just e-books and audio books. But that's more and more the focus is now sort of on digital reading, so it's not always going to, you know, the customer isn't going to be able to browse the book physically. So what kind of design choices do you have to make to ensure that the cover being so shrunk down? Because that's kind of the downside of the digital world, is that the cover is so itty bitty. Like we always try and advise authors of like, you know, making sure you're using the space in such a way that's impactful, but curious about what your angle is on that.

7:45Jake Clark: Yeah. Small and fast. That's the, that's the way things are browsed at these days. You know, it's a, it's a small image and this was probably three or four years ago, but I read an article on Netflix where they had, uh, I guess on their backend algorithm, they can tell how long people spend looking at thumbnails and it was like less than a second it's like 0.8 uh seconds it's how long you know they spend looking at a thumbnail before they might go on or decide to you know find out what that show is or whatever you know and the same applies to us i mean same applies to readers you know they're just it's it's scrolling it's just the it's just the the flick you know you gotta you gotta go quick and you gotta have something that's going to be able to capture the attention really really quickly and so uh kind of the backbone of uh of of my process is simplify amplify.

8:32Jake Clark: So you simplify the cover down to the elements that you need. And those elements aren't always what the author thinks they need, but you simplify the cover down to the elements, one or two elements I think they need that for the cover. And then you amplify those elements so that when a reader in that market sees it, they can connect with it really, really quickly. And so that, that process kind of has helped me really cut down on a lot of stuff. And when I approach it with a client like that, because most of the time, most of my clients come come with a whole bunch of ideas and they want to show a whole bunch of things all at once on a cover and I can understand that because they want to be able to convey this awesome story they wrote to their reader market you know they want to know oh it's got this in it's got this and it's got that in it and that actually runs counter to what they really need to be presenting to to the market and so we simplify it down amplify those points and then usually end up with a pretty solid piece I want to stay on that piece of how you work with authors a little bit actually because I think that's so interesting that you have to sort of maybe present them something that they weren't expecting and like veering away from what they're telling you about the story but just curious about how you work together and like do you have tips for authors like what's really helpful for them to actually provide to their cover designer yeah I mean as far as it goes I mean every cover designer is gonna probably want different things you know and for that so there will be a little bit of subjectivity but for me an author can bring I want to hear their ideas I do want to hear what they want to have on a cover because sometimes there's elements on there that they mention that, hey, we probably should focus on, but it really depends on the market that they're going for.

10:01Jake Clark: And one of the ways that I, and this is something I've developed in the last year or so, is I'll tell my client to stop and not think about this as a book cover because we look at book covers like they're pieces of artwork or they're representative of the story, which they are these things, or they can be those things, but you first need to look at it like that's a product packaging. You've got a story that you've written and now you need that story wrapped in a product package and you need to deliver that to a market. And when you say those words like that, most of the time authors, it causes them to pause and go, I don't know anything about product packaging or taking something to a market, especially if they're a new author.

10:40Jake Clark: Now, if they've been in the game for a while, they're going to probably know some of this stuff, even if they don't frame it in those terms. But when you say those words, it causes a jarring thing where they go, I don't know anything about that. And so then you can kind of get a gap in there and say, okay, well, now that's what we're going to do. We're going to take this product, this store you've written, take it to the market. Let's look at what the market is looking for. Let's look at the market, like what do they need? What are the readers in that market are attracted to? One of the easy metaphors I give is if you're in the cereal aisle at a grocery store, you know, and even before you get to, imagine you're a consumer, even before you get to the cereal aisle and you're wanting, you know, Lucky Charms or you're wanting just a sweet, sugary goodness cereal.

11:21Jake Clark: Well, you already know in your head what you're looking for. You're looking for bright colors, cartoon characters, whatever. If you're looking for healthy cereal or you're looking for cleaner packaging, berries and strawberries and banana chunks or whatever, you're looking for all these things that are going to trigger that in your mind. And so you need to take that same mentality to the book cover because the readers in the market have that same approach. Like if it's a fantasy reader, they're going to be looking for certain things that are going to trigger their fantasy reaction. And so you can lean into those things from your own story to be able to connect with those readers.

11:56Jake Clark: And so that's kind of an easy way to look at it to kind of when I start boiling things down to the things that need to be on the cover. That perfectly segues to our next question, which is, like you mentioned, readers have a preconceived notion of what they're looking for in a cover. Like you said, if they're looking for a fantasy book, guy with a sword. If they're looking for romance, less guy with a sword, probably. So how do you balance fitting in the tropes and readers' expectations while still getting the covers to stand out on the shelves, either digital or in the real world? Exactly. Yeah, that's going to be the you're going to I have found it to be kind of a very fine line to toe, because if you go too far into what a reader expects, you're probably going to end up having a cover that really looks like other covers, almost to the point where you could just swap titles with another author and nothing would be any different.

12:49Jake Clark: One of the great tropes I can give you is urban fantasy, the girl in the leather jacket and the blonde or brown hair. Those things are great and maybe we can lean into that, but if we're going to do that, we need to present her in a way that makes her stand out. And you can do that a whole bunch of different ways that can cause you to have kind of your own individual identity with it, whether that's how you frame her, how you light her, maybe the different styles or typography we use, but there's a lot of different little levers that you can pull back and forth that kind of will keep you in the field of what readers expect, but also because of how you presented the concept allows you to stand out in a way that other people don't.

13:26Jake Clark: And so that's where, like I said, the badass covers for Badass Stories kind of came in because I try to punch up my covers in a way that, you know, they do look nice. They look like they fit the genre, but they also stand out because of how they're presented to the reader. How would you balance it if an author came and wanted to do like, hey, I want to like this. Nobody's ever done this sort of cover in this genre before. Would you sort of meet in the middle or would you gently sway towards like you have to stick a little bit within your genre expectations? I'm going to be honest with you. If you're hiring me, I'll do whatever you want to do.

13:59Jake Clark: You know, I don't know if you guys ever seen Thelma and Louise. We can hold hands and run off the cliff together and you can pay me on the way down. It can work. It can work. Also, it cannot work as far as it goes. So like when you when you do that, when an author comes at me with a concept that is very, very unique to the genre, I definitely will present the idea of, hey, this might work, but this may be terrible, you know, as far as it goes. And what I mean by that is because people expect to see certain things. And if your book doesn't hit some of those things, then readers who are flipping through really, really quickly might have a, they'll just flip by it.

14:37Jake Clark: They'll think it's been misplaced in the algorithm or it's not supposed to be there. I don't know what that means, so I'm going to flip on by it and keep on going. You know, you risk the idea of being overlooked, but if your book is a success, you also have the benefit of being possibly a trendsetter in the genre. A great example would be, you know, the Twilight series with the little images of them holding an apple. You know, very simple, very minimal. That wasn't really a thing. And then all of a sudden, everybody did it. You know, the Fifty Shades of Grey cover, when it popped off, you know, it was just a tie or something like that.

15:15Jake Clark: And then all of a sudden, all the romance people had the same exact kind of stuff. You know, it's happening right now in a lit RPG, Dungeon Crawler Carl. I'm sure you guys have heard of that guy. Not the new covers he has that are more silhouette driven, but the ones of the character on the cover. He's running on that first cover. He's running away from a monster. Characters running away from a monster have exploded in the scene because people see that it works, and then they're going to just, they're going to come. So, I mean, you know, and I don't think, I wouldn't say Dungeon Crawler Carl's original cover was a cover that was outside of lit RPG as far as it goes.

15:49Jake Clark: But it became a trendsetter. You know, it became really popular and people began to follow suit. And so you do run that, you do run the benefit of doing that when you step outside of genre expectations for a cover. But also the bigger chance is you're probably going to get overlooked. So it's a very risk, high risk, high reward, but, you know, it can happen. So I tell my clients that if they want to keep going, you know, we'll go that route and see what happens. It sounds like your process is pretty collaborative with the author kind of going back and forth on concept and design. So I'm wondering if you have any advice for authors on giving productive feedback to a cover designer or something that is helpful in the design process.

16:32Jake Clark: Yeah, when we're giving feedback, I mean, obviously for me, I remember reading an article one time. If you guys know, he's a fantasy author, and I'm blanking. Gene Wolfe. He's a fantasy author, big name guy. He doesn't write a lot anymore, but in the 90s and stuff, he wrote a bunch of really popular books. The Dread Empire and all that kind of stuff. Anyways, his covers were done by one of my favorite artists, Raymond Swanland. And I get a lot of inspiration from Raymond Swanland. So if you look him up, even though our styles are not the same, I love his movement. I love his angles. I love how he approaches things and that kind of stuff.

17:06Jake Clark: And so I've always been a big fan of his work. And to me, he's a top five artist that I've ever seen. Anyways, I remember reading an article one time from Gene Wolfe, and Gene Wolfe said he hated his Raymond Swanland covers. And I was like, what? Man, these things are great. What is wrong with you? And he might not have said he hated them. He might have said I dislike them or something like that. I don't want to misquote, but he didn't like them. And so I've always remembered that. So when I have an author, it's a very collaborative process. I want them to be able to be happy with their cover, to be proud of their cover, to bring it to when they show it off to people.

17:38Jake Clark: Because if they're excited about their cover, they're going to be more happy to kind of push it out and be happy to show it and that kind of stuff. So I definitely want them to be happy with the process and the product and all that. So feedback, when you're giving it, I would say be honest. We're professionals here, and I can take negative feedback if the feedback is bad. And I always try to leave that window open. So if a client feels weird about saying, hey, man, I don't like this, like, it's okay. You can tell me. It's not going to hurt my feelings. You know, we can move forward. Usually what I've done before that is we've talked about the concept, talked about where we're going, said that when they see the proof, they're not surprised by what they're seeing.

18:15Jake Clark: But, again, leaving that door open for honest feedback. And be honest. And I would say if you're going to be honest, also, you know, don't be mean. You know, I've had some authors I've had some authors like some really mean stuff as far as it goes about how they didn't like my work I had one author one time say that the Character's face made him want to puke and I was like I get it. You don't like the character's face It's fine man. We can you could have said that a little better But you know so be kind be honest you are the one typically if you're if you're hiring the artist out you're paying for Their work and stuff and so just be cognizant of that relationship as far as it goes Also, one of the things I've run into is sometimes authors, I think sometimes authors think book cover designers are against them, you know, in terms of the process.

19:01Jake Clark: And I've never met a book cover artist who wants to do a bad job or have a bad cover. Like I've never met anybody who wants to do that, you know. And so if an artist pushes back with an idea or a concept or whatever, you know, I would say maybe sometimes trust their input or at least take it into consideration. you know it can lead to a better spot sometimes depending on the situation i mean there's going to be there's going to be exceptions to the rule and all this kind of stuff where somebody can say well this artist did this to me or whatever and i can understand some of that stuff because we're not all the same you know we don't always we don't all operate in the same the same guidelines the same rules but um but being honest and being and being kind in how you deal with deal with feedback especially if it's going to be toward the negative or whatever and one other thing i would say, don't copy and paste feedback from Facebook or say, or say, you know, I took this to my writer group and here's what they said, or I took this to whoever and here's what they said.

19:55Jake Clark: They didn't hire us. You hired us. And it's cool if you agree with that information, if you agree with that feedback, but tell me in your words, because when you toss in other people, now I'm having to placate other people. That can be kind of weird sometimes. So I just keep it, you know, between you and the artists as far as it goes in terms of the feedback. That sounds like solid advice. There's an art to giving feedback well, you know, so it's a good thing to learn. And especially authors, if they're working with like editors and like proofers and things like that, like you're probably always having to give feedback.

20:22So it's a good skill to hone.

20:25Jake Clark: For sure. You use 3D modeling in your work. So can you talk to us about this or like walk us through the process and what that looks like? yeah that's how i start my original cover started out more silhouette and minimal and that kind of stuff with a little bit of paint overs and that kind of thing and then as i kind of got into 3d that's where i kind of took my took my growth from there because i was able to take the model and be able to you know give the idea of i'm playing with action figures and i can just dress them up and then you know light them how i want them and that's essentially what you're doing in a 3d environment but it allows me to get a lot of things done really quickly um and it gets a lot of groundwork done really quickly because i mean i can get the lighting right i can get the the outfits right the especially if i'm dealing with something that's a fantasy or sci-fi i mean obviously that those things fit really well um but i have learned over time now that it has a lot of applications past just you know fantasy and sci-fi type stuff i did i did a non-fiction book about the liberty bale about a couple months ago and i was able to take a model of the liberty bale and drape an old colonial flag over it and the piece ended up really really looking really really nice and it was all 3d model but it looked like a you know a photo of the of what it had of the liberty bell and a flag so so i mean there's a lot of applications for it for me it just gives me a lot of control that i can do um and so what i do is you guys can see it but i have this computer right over here this is my 3d modeling computer so i do all my stuff over here and then i render my stuff and bring it into photoshop and in photoshop i do my final touch up touch ups or paint overs or whatever I need to do to kind of finalize the piece with typography and all that kind of stuff.

22:03Jake Clark: So, so yeah, that's, that's, that's basically the general process. And for those of us who have the computer skills of Microsoft paint, could you kind of explain what 3d modeling entails? Okay. Yeah. Um, you take a base mesh is what they're called, right? And so it could be, it could be a model of a person. It could be a car. It could be a spaceship. It could be the Liberty Bell and you have it inside of a of a 3d atmosphere or a 3d 3d virtual realm world or whatever and then you can texture that however you want it so you can apply different textures to it like if I wanted the Liberty Bell to be covered in neon tattoos I could get a texture like that and wrap it around the model and it would look like that would make any sense but you could so you can texture it how you want to and then you bring in the lighting and so you can you can light it how you want it if you want a dark light where it's kind of a moody or ominous lighting you can move those things around inside that 3d world and you know you're going to get different looks and different effects and then you got a camera that you put in the world and you can move it around again to get different angles different poses and that kind of thing and so it allows for a lot of flexibility and also a lot of control at the same time you know when i have a series that has the same character across multiple covers it really allows me to you know keep the consistency of the character, but also show them in different ways really quickly and offer over a multitude of different looks and stuff like that.

23:28Jake Clark: So did that answer the question? No, that's really cool. It could be more in-depth than that, but I didn't want to, you know. No, that's perfect. And like, from my perspective, that's what I thought it was. But then I was like, what if I'm thinking of the wrong thing and then nothing I ask makes sense? So thank you for the overview. And I do think it's just a matter of time before we have a romance novel about an anthropomorphic Liberty Bell with neon tattoos. I'm gonna tell you, there are some, there are some genres out there that are very, very niche. Uh, you know, one of my, one of my cover designer friends, she designs a monster romance.

24:00Jake Clark: Didn't know that was a thing, you know, but it is. And Hey, whatever floats your boat, you know, uh, there's all different flavors of ice cream. And so, but it's the thing. Yeah, for sure. If you can think it, it exists. I believe it. I believe it. I wanted to ask you about how, because a lot of the authors that we work with, it's a lot of serialized books, right? Because series are so great for hooking readers into getting them into the next book and the next book. So when it comes to a series that you're designing, how do you create that cohesion, like while allowing it to evolve? And so they're not quite the same or does it is it dependent on project by project?

24:39Jake Clark: the approach would essentially be the same across all of them uh even if the even if the the uh styles or you know the end result kind of looks a little different but i mean when you're developing series i mean there's a lot of things that end up being really really really simple to just repeat over and over and over again because i mean you're essentially developing a brand for that series and so when you're developing a brand it's all about being consistent so consistency across the whole entire series which is like you know your typography is always the same uh in terms of placement uh typically you know all the all the text is handled in a very similar manner across the board so that when they're side by side they all look like they belong um and when you even when you just do that one thing uh just that one one idea uh you can then change out your you know if it's the same character if you're going to do them the same different pose every time where it's the same character focused you can do that or depending on your series if it's you know different characters or that you want to highlight you can still keep your your typography and and and all that the same and swap out the character and then you still you keep the same look across the board um but there are some nuances in there as far as it goes and sometimes the author is overlooked one of the things that happens a lot is i'll have an author who will be like uh my first book is titled january fever and then the next book is It's called February is Cold and I'm Lost and I Don't Know What to Do.

26:01Jake Clark: And it ends up being this 15-long word title, and there's a disconnect in that. And it's like there's a consistency. Even as you're developing your series, your titles need to kind of stay in the same kind of vein as far as it goes. That happens more than I would think because you'd think it'd be something that would be kind of obvious as far as it goes. You want them to all play off each other or something like that. But that does get lost sometimes. And I have sometimes I'll have an author who with fantasy, you know, book number one, we're character focused on the first one. And then the next one, they want to do a castle shot with no characters.

26:38Jake Clark: And, you know, you can do that. But in my opinion, you're breaking the you're breaking the image cadence of your covers. And so might not be the best thing to do, especially if it's early on in the series. If you're on book like 15 or 16, you can kind of just do what you want to because you've got you've got everything developed up. and you can just kind of play with it as you need. But if you're really grounding that series out, books one, two, and three and onward, they really need to have a good cadence in terms of how they look across the board and similarity. We touched a little bit on cover trends and how trends for genres can shift pretty quickly sometimes.

27:16And one nice thing, especially in indie publishing, is the power to rebrand your covers to stay on trend. Do you have any advice when the right time is for an author to rebrand their covers? Because you obviously can't follow every trend or you will be, I mean, you'd be great because you'd be, you know, breaking in the dough. But obviously that's not a realistic expectation for authors.

27:40Jake Clark: It would be, again, a subjective thing. I mean, because there's a lot of things that come into play there. Like, are your sales not that good? Well, it could be the cover that is the reason why your sales aren't that good. And you need to rebrand your cover. It could also be that you're not advertising to the right people. It could be that, you know, there's a lot of things in there that kind of be the reason why your cover may not be performing. Because that's usually the only reason you'd want to probably rebrand is if your covers aren't performing like you think they ought to perform. So there's a lot of nuance in there.

28:09Jake Clark: I would definitely say, you know, at least give it six months to a year to at least really get it out there, get it in the world, get advertising behind it or however you're doing that, newsletter swaps or whatever you're doing to try your best to get it out there. Give it some time to get out there, get it in front of some people. And then if you're still not getting that return that you think you ought to get, I would start asking some professionals. You know, ask a book cover designer. You know, I consult with people all the time who don't hire me. They just ask me, what do you think about this cover?

28:41Jake Clark: You know, does it hit or whatever? And I'm happy to give them some feedback as far as it goes. Ask a designer or ask somebody, you know, or say, hey, can I give you 50 bucks and pick your brain, you know, and see what they say. And not necessarily just a cover designer. It could be you could ask somebody who's a publisher or an editor or anybody. And I know author groups usually have a little close-knit group of people where so-and-so knows so-and-so. They can put you in touch with so-and-so. So, you know, so use those levers to kind of, you know, get some information about why it might not be working really well.

29:11Jake Clark: And then and then you can kind of go from there. But at least give it some time, you know, give some time to be out there in the market to be seen. And then, you know, kind of make your decision, you know, from there. So I wonder how quickly you're going to regret saying on this, just ask me and I'm happy to. You're just like throwing your time out there. It's like, oh, Jake, I see her all day long. Some days I spend like two hours answering emails and like it can be draining. But I mean, you know, and that's not usually going to be giving people feedback. It's just going to be awesome. I'm used to the other side of the process of communicating and talking to people.

29:44Jake Clark: So it's all good. Just wanted to check. OK, I wouldn't have said it if I didn't if I wouldn't open the door for it. That's fair. I want to go back to the series just briefly, because one of the things that Kobo readers love are box sets. and sometimes I think that that can be a little bit of an afterthought of a cover and whereas we don't like there's I know there's some platforms that don't accept like the plain white backgrounds like we'll accept them but it makes it really hard for us to promote them because we've already talked about how small your cover is it makes it even smaller you're talking about the 3d box set exactly yeah so I'm just wondering what what is your tactic with with box set covers because I always like to tell authors to like think about it as an ad for the series which maybe aligns in what you were saying again about like it being a book product.

30:31But yeah, curious your thoughts on like a successful box set cover.

30:35Jake Clark: Yeah, my big advice is kind of what you just said there as far as it goes, because if you're putting out a box set, you know, you're looking to either a capture people who didn't want to dive in on the individual covers or the individual books, or B, you're actually looking for people who've already skipped over your work. And so and maybe you snag them on the deal of getting, you know, three for one or whatever the price is or whatever. But my biggest thing is to look at like it's a fresh cover and to not approach it necessarily in the same way you approached all your other covers. So in my opinion, I would encourage at least the thought of thinking about this like it's a new cover for my series.

31:15Jake Clark: Because either A, like I said, let's say you're putting out the trilogy box set. So you're putting out books one through three. Well, if you do the same cover, like if you do a, I do them all kinds of ways where I'll take maybe book cover one and we just change the title over to such and such trilogy or whatever. It's the same image. I do them where I splice the covers up where it's like a three, three-way thing where somebody can see it and say, oh, it's three covers. And, and, and, you know, you see that kind of that, that fracturing or that, that splicing on the cover. You know, I see, I do that as far as it goes.

31:46Jake Clark: Those are some of the more economical ways you can approach it. But typically, like I said, the readers have already seen your work and they've skipped over it. So why don't you try to snag them with a new look? Snag them with the way that, you know, let's just say for fantasy you had Guy with a Sword on books one through three. Well, then on the box set, don't do Guy with a Sword. Do the castle image. Do a close-up of maybe just the sword, more of a symbolic look or whatever, you know. Try a different typography if you want to. you know you can kind of have a lot of flexibility there in my opinion to catch more people in your reader market and you know so it's a nice an opportunity there for you to be able to kind of for people to be able to see things see your work again in a fresh light so i think that can be missed a lot of times and so you can if you want to keep your typography the same so that there is that consistency so that you can tell so it's a it's a all of a ball in the same brand you can do that but again might be a great chance for you to just do something different with your image or how it's approached or how it looks so that people can see it in a different way.

32:48Jake Clark: I've done that a time or two. And some of my authors have had, you know, some success with that in terms of getting getting it back out there, you know, as far as it goes. One of the things when people have seen the image over and over and over again, especially if you've been advertising the box set, seeing the same image again, might not be the same draw or pull that they think it's going to be. I think that's such good advice of like really considering it as its own thing to market and not just like a reproduction. because I think sometimes it can be overlooked that it's like, actually, you have this new thing that you can sell to readers.

33:21And yeah, using the box set cover. Yeah, I think it's such an important part that it shouldn't just be kind of like, oh, I'll just throw them together and put it up there. You can have fun with it and make it really impactful. And you never know where that might lead.

33:34Jake Clark: I mean, because you've already got the results of your covers and how they perform. And if they perform well, then maybe your box set needs to be the same thing. But, you know, if you're looking for trying maybe to see what we'll do in the market, you never know. That look might be what really, really upticks your sales and reaches an audience you didn't know you had. And you mentioned typography there briefly. So I wanted to ask you about that, about how do you choose typography that feels fresh? And also, I'm just curious, too, is it led very much by the author's brand overall or does it depend on the book?

34:10I'm just curious about how you approach the typography.

34:13Jake Clark: In my experience, it's usually led by the genre. Usually the author's brand themselves doesn't have much to do with it. Although I do have some authors who are very, very peculiar about how they want things presented as far as it goes. And that's okay if that's how they want to do it. I've got one author who his whole thing is his name is the top one-third of the book cover. That's it. His name is billboarded across there all day long. I've talked to him about that. like I don't you know you're kind of losing some real estate here I don't know if that's the best I you know that's what he wants to do and that's cool you know to each his own in that regard so there are some people that have some peculiar things on there you know as far as it goes and so if there is that going into it I keep that in mind but usually I let the genre and kind of how the cover feels direct the typography that I choose you know if it's if it's a grim grim fantasy story then I'm probably going to approach it in a way that the typography will align with that but also still fit the genre you know i take in what the genre typically has and then try to create a a unique look to the author's cover um so that it still looks like it belongs but also it has its own kind of legs and can stand on its own i do a lot of font bashing which is where i take like one or two fonts and then i kind of push them together like so i might take the way this the way the the bottom of this t is handled on this font and then i'll this is in fantasy more than anything else but i'll take how the bottom of this t is handled and i'll mash it up with the way this t looks on this other font.

35:39Jake Clark: And so you end up with a really unique looking titling that nobody else has. It's not a font anybody can get a hold of. It's something that looks unique to them. And it just kind of adds a level of independence is the word coming to my mind, but it's not independence. Individuality. That's the word I'm looking for. Individuality to it. So we all know the saying, don't judge a book by its cover. But obviously, based on this conversation, when it comes to literal book covers, that is not the case. We're all just judging book covers. And back at the beginning of this conversation, you mentioned something about how you boil down a cover to two really important elements.

36:14And I'm curious what those elements are. Like, what makes a successful cover, in your opinion?

36:20Jake Clark: Ooh. Big questions. That's a deeper one. Because I will say, back to the cereal aisle analogy, there is no leprechaun in the box. We look at Lucky Charms, and we buy Lucky Charms, but there's no leprechaun in the box. And so that's one of the things I try to get my authors to understand. A lot of authors, especially in the fantasy and sci-fi world, they want to create a cover that is representative of a scene or of something that actually happens in the story. Don't do that. That's usually never a good idea. And so I like to give the idea of there's no leprechaun in the box. So when we're simplifying the elements down to what needs to be on the cover, where's our leprechaun at?

37:04Jake Clark: What's the thing that's going to be the hook for the story, you know? And usually that comes out when you read the brief or you talk about, you know, a lot of my clients, we have like Zoom meetings and stuff. And we kind of talk back and forth about the story and about the spirit of it and kind of the bigger elements and that kind of stuff. And so like usually in that conversation, like a discovery conversation, things kind of come to light. You know, you go, oh, this is kind of where I would put my attention. You know, again, giving back the fantasy, you know, it may be about the guy and his journey.

37:33Jake Clark: So you focus on him in a way that is unique. And you put him in a situation on the cover that represents the spirit of the story, even though that might not actually happen. Again, you know, the leprechaun. This scene does not actually take place, but let's present it like a way that the reader connects with it emotionally. That's why we buy the Lucky Charms. We want the sweet, sugary promise that that's going to give us. And so we lean into that. And so even when I'm doing the non-fail, back to the Liberty Bell and the cover that I did a while back, same kind of thing. Obviously, there's no Liberty Bell inside.

38:14Jake Clark: There's no actual image there of it. But, I mean, it's about the Liberty Bell. And so like the flag was draped over it. That never happens in the story. But we wanted to capture the spirit of what the story contains. And so that's how we presented it to the – it was just to a publisher. That's how we presented it to the client. And it worked out really well. But, yeah, you're looking for that leprechaunish type element that's going to be the hook that pulls in the client. And that can be anything. It can be, you know – and another thing is there's no one right way. I mean, I'm a designer. I approach it this way.

38:47Jake Clark: if you hire another designer, they might key on something else that can be just as important or just as strong, but it would be different from how I would approach it. And so there's a lot of different ways to, one, you're not trying to, a lot of clients think they're trying to nail one real quick, one small peg to get this right. And there's a lot of different approaches that somebody can take to really end up with a really strong cover that captures the reader market. Just for clarity, when you say something that's not necessarily in the story, You're not talking about like going way out. Like if you're writing a fantasy book and there's no dragons, you don't put a dragon on the cover.

39:22Jake Clark: Yes. Yeah, for sure. You don't want to lie to your people. No, no, you don't want to, you know, you don't want to present it in that way. But typically there's a lot. You can take the elements that are in your story and present them away on the cover. That's going to make the reader say, I want to I want to know more about that. You know, like, well, another way, if you want to drop, if you want to look at another product packaging, you know, Michael Jordan shoes. you know Michael Jordan's not in the box but people buy it because they want to feel like Jordan they want to feel they want you know I want I want to be that guy I want to be I want to perform like that and so same thing with it doesn't matter the genre like the way you present it to your reader market you want them to go I want to feel that I want to I want to connect with that so you know if it's a fantasy guy and he's holding a sword against the charging army I want to be that guy on the last stand of the heel you know or if it's a romance you know how you present those characters on the story cover or if it's a a minimal a non-fiction book about you know self-courage or whatever you know you want your you want your audience to go i want to i want to connect with that because how it makes me feel and that's the bigger hook of it all is that emotional connection that you want to you want to create and that usually is created through just one or two elements that are highlighted on the cover the cover may look extremely busy like if you look at some of mine you know i've got battlefield shots you know where there's a lot lot of stuff happening.

40:43Jake Clark: There's little guys blowing up in the background. There's all these little elements and stuff like that. But the feel is there, you know, it's simplified down to that feel of that battlefield atmosphere where the, when my sci-fi readers see it or whatever, they go, I want to be in there. I want to be in that, you know, it pulls them forward. So, I mean, it can be, again, it's a subjective thing and it can be a lot of things that, that, that can connect with a reader, but you want to pull that connection in with the, with the emotional side. So. You've given us such good advice and we've touched on a lot of like trends or things that work or don't work.

41:14I'm just kind of curious and I know this is maybe like it's going to date the episode if we ask you what what trends are you seeing now? So I'll ask you that, but also maybe what are you enjoying working on right now?

41:27Jake Clark: Let's see. Enjoying working on or I guess I'll I'll do the trends first as far as it goes. Trends. I mean, there's a lot of any genres going to have trends going on at all the time, you know. And I will say that if it's a big trend or it was a big trend, you can probably still use it. So like I said earlier about that leather jacket girl, you can probably still use her. Even though that might be faded a little bit in urban fantasy, if you do it really well, you can probably still use her. Fantasy, for example, Guys with Swords, been a trend since the beginning, and it will continue to be a trend from here on out.

41:59Jake Clark: So there's some timeless classics that all genres will have. But the trends would be very, very specific to the genre. Like I said, lit RPG, characters running away from monsters. All of a sudden, that's a big trend, and it's going to be because of Dungeon Crawler Carl. You know, the other, and I don't want to open up a can of worms here, but the other trend I see is AI covers. You know, and not to get down in the weeds of that, but that's a trend you see. And I'll tell you, I'll tell listeners now, people can tell, you know, because it's just like hiring me. If everybody hired me to do all the covers, they would all look the same.

42:36Jake Clark: and that would get really boring really quickly you know because oh there's another i mean i would like it but you know oh there's another jake cover you know um you know so uh i would saturate the market and when you do that you lessen your impact because now you look like everybody else because author a can get the same product even though it might have different characters but the style quote unquote is still going to be there because they use the same you know uh ai engine to create the cover so you get the same exact look and so um like i said earlier about you could swap the titles around you get that same effect um but that's a big thing now right as far as things that i'm working on that i'm enjoying oh man uh i'm working on some sci-fi covers with some armored guys you know the you know halo spartan master chief type guys those are always fun because i like those um i'm also working on a um a romantic vampire series uh like i said back in 1800 or something like that you know and so I'm definitely outside of my norm but the publisher came to me and asked me if I had any ideas about how I would approach it and so I pitched them some of my ideas and they were like great let's go see it let's see what happens and so working on that's been really interesting because I'm able to you know work on a different level you know I don't have to have somebody getting blown up or something like that on the cover you know it's a much more softer approach but also I'm getting to play with dark moody lighting and I'm a big fan of that kind of lighting the noir you know where you don't always see their faces lit fully and it's more about the atmosphere and the mood that the scene that the cover kind of evokes i really like that approach or that style i don't get to do it very often so that's been kind of fun so i've got a nuclear viking cover coming up which i'm excited about so it's about vikings on nuclear sub so i mean way out there but like when the guy sent me the brief i was like dude you had me at nuclear Vikings.

44:28Jake Clark: What do I got to do to get this cover in my queue? What do I got to do here? Well, post World Cup, the Vikings are going to explode, I think, because of Norway and Holland. I just foresee a bunch of Viking dudes being around. That's it. That's the butterfly effect that causes the end of the world. So yeah, there's always something fun going on. So I'm real blessed to be able to dabble in all these covers. Do any of the covers that you work on influence your reading choices? Like if you are deep in designing sci-fi, are you then like, you know what, I could really read about some like space wars right now or is it vice versa?

45:07Jake Clark: Yeah, I would say that that happens as far as it goes, you know, especially if I read, I grew up reading fantasy and sci-fi, but then as I've gotten older and I never thought about that exactly. But even now that you say it, I can see those trends kind of happen. I did a Texas noir, modern murder type book, kind of a dark southern, true detective type style, cover probably about three or four months ago. And I've been on a kick. I read some Nick Palazzotto, if I say his last name, which is the guy that did True Detective the first season. And then I've done some other things that would be, I've watched some other stuff that would be along those lines.

45:50Jake Clark: And I wonder how much that influenced me. Like, I don't even realize that it's pushing and pulling me to different genres and stuff. I mean, it's kind of inevitable. You're spending so much time on it and thinking about it. You want to dive in deeper. Yeah, exactly. Well, it's been such a pleasure chatting with you. I always love chatting to somebody who's so clearly passionate about the work that they're doing. And that comes across so well. And just really appreciate your time and glad that we got to connect. where can listeners find you online and learn more about you yeah you can find me um at j caleb design so the letter j the word caleb and then design you type in those and you're going to find me uh anywhere on all on all the major social media outlets uh jcalebdesign.com you can find me there and connect with me but uh i am full-time i am here all the time so don't be don't hesitate to reach out even if it's just for opinions you're throwing that out there That's it.

46:43Jake Clark: If it's just for an opinion, I'll be happy to give it. Well, thanks so much, Jake. It's been a pleasure. Yeah, it's been awesome. Thank you guys for having me. Thank you for listening to the Kobo Writing Life Podcast. If you are interested in taking a look at Jake's covers and learning more about him, we will include links in our show notes. If you are enjoying this podcast, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe. And if you're looking for more tips on growing your self-publishing business, you can find us on all the social platforms. We are at Kobo Writing Life on Facebook, Blue Sky, Instagram, threads, and TikTok.

47:17This episode was hosted by Rachel Wharton and Tara Kremen with production by Terrence Abrahams. Editing is provided by Kelly Robotham. Our theme music is composed by Tearjerker. And thanks to Jake for being such a great guest. If you're ready to start your publishing journey, sign up today at Kobo.com slash writing life. Until next time, happy writing. you