Your Book Cover Is Your #1 Marketing Asset: Here’s How to Get It Right with Ricardo Fayet of Reedsy

Ferol Vernon (00:03.328)

I turned the countdown off. Okay.

I’m used to the like three, two, one, you know, that we must have turned it off. So that was not. Did you get it? I didn’t see it. Okay. Okay, here we go. Ready?

Ricardo Fayet (00:09.995)

I got it, I got it on my end. Yeah, I got it.

Ferol Vernon (00:18.104)

Hello and welcome to the Written Word Media Podcast. I am Ferol Vernon, and today I have a very special interview. I have my friend from a long time, Ricardo Fayet, here with us, co founder of Reedsy. And Ricardo, I think Reedsy has been around around in the sort of indie author world almost as long as Written Word Media. How long have you all been around?

Ricardo Fayet (00:41.667)

Since 2014, so yeah, I think so.

Ferol Vernon (00:43.822)

2014. Yeah, about the same. So we’ve both been doing this for a long time. and the topic for today that we want to talk about is cover design. And part of the reason I wanted to talk to Ricardo about this is Ricardo has literally written the book on book marketing and puts out some amazingly interesting content on book marketing. And here, obviously at Written Word Media, we’re all about marketing and getting more readers. And I wanted to have an open conversation around

you know, one of what I think is the most important assets for an author’s book, and that’s their cover. So Ricardo, you know, why don’t we jump right into it and and tell us a little bit about like, you know, how you think about an author and their cover and you know what that means from a marketing perspective.

Ricardo Fayet (01:32.653)

Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for the incredible introduction. I dedicate, I think, an entire chapter, but I should have dedicated more in the book to cover design because it is the most important, I think, marketing element that authors can have at their disposal. And it’s also one of my personal pet peeves because I still see… Most authors, I think, realize at one point or another that they

Ferol Vernon (01:44.236)

Yeah.

Ricardo Fayet (02:02.35)

need an editor or that they want an editor that needs someone else to look at their manuscript. But I still see so many authors absolutely convinced that they can do the cover themselves. And when I see the result, that is 100 % one of my top pet peeves. The way I think about the cover design is obviously the first thing that readers are going to see about your book. And I think for a long time I described it as like your number one

conversion elements or the thing that makes readers decide whether they’re gonna buy the book or not. But I actually think it happens even earlier in the funnel. It’s what stops readers when they’re going through a bookstore. It’s what makes them stop, look at the book and pick it up. And so online, that’s what makes you basically stop scrolling through Amazon or Apple or Spotify or TikTok or wherever and go, I like this, this looks interesting. And so you pause and you start reading.

Ferol Vernon (02:52.352)

Right.

Ricardo Fayet (03:01.313)

And so that for me is like the number one goal of a cover is to make the right readers pause and go, wait, this looks like something that could interest me.

Ferol Vernon (03:13.278)

Yeah, so that’s an amazing, an amazing introduction to the to I mean, I couldn’t agree with you more. And I think, you know, we’ll dive into all these things. But you said like, you know, that’s what makes people stop scrolling. That’s your advertisement, which I think is a great way to put it. But, you know, what are the elements of a cover that does make somebody stop scrolling? And, you know, is that different per genre or or what do you think?

Ricardo Fayet (03:36.996)

I think it differs from based on the cover type, on how the cover is produced. But say the main elements of a cover are always going to be the same. It’s going to be the image, so basically the background, And then there’s going to be the text on it. These are the two big elements. And among the text, we’re going to have usually the author name. 

Ferol Vernon (03:55.784)

Yeah.

Ricardo Fayet (04:03.481)

the book title and then sometimes you’re to have the series title. Sometimes you’re going to have a blurb from another author or you’re going to have like a little widget for winner of an award or like something to help with the marketing. So for my book, How to Market a Book, I have the title, the subtitle and the author name and that’s it. And for me, there goes my second pet peeve when it comes to cover design is

most authors, when they think about the cover, they think about the image. I need this really perfect image for my cover. I needed to depict a castle because that’s where the main conflict happens and the dragon who guards the castle and also need my protagonist. And I also need the protagonist to have a sword. And I need the symbol in one corner because that’s like the symbol of the magic system. And I also need a forest around the castle and all these things. they somehow have very specific image in their head.

the image to me is almost less important than the text itself. So I really want authors to think about not just the image, but how the text is going to play with it. And especially in an age of AI, and I’m sure we’re going to get into this later, it’s relatively easy to produce beautiful, breathtaking images. But 99 % of the time, I can spot an amateur cover, even when done with AI.

because of the text, because the text doesn’t look right, because it looks like the author just placed it there using their limited font and design skills, or an AI placed it on there without really thinking too much about how it integrates with the cover. yeah, for me, the text is really what separates an amateur cover from a professional one. It needs to have texture. It needs to, again, play with the image. And a lot of the best covers in a lot of genres, especially Romanticina,

they’re very much text-driven. The text makes up 80 % of the image and there’s daggers and vines in between the letters and there’s this whole interplay between the text and the image. And I think that’s what the really good covers achieve. It’s both elements that blend in, play with each other, and yet the text is still readable, which would be the third pet peeve is you place text on it, but on a thumbnail size, I cannot see the author name or I cannot read the title or the series title, etc.

Ferol Vernon (05:58.928)

Yeah, right.

Ferol Vernon (06:26.852)

Yeah, I think that’s such a good point. And like we we see this all the time. So for written word media, the bulk of our, you know, promotions are driven by email. And the overwhelming way people open their emails is on their phone. Right. And so you think about the first time, you know, one of our readers discovers a book, it’s often on their phone. And you think about how big that thumbnail cover image is on your phone. And it’s, you know, maybe not even an inch or like a few centimeters wide. And like that’s the impression. So, you know, small text never works. I think.

You know, seeing just exactly what you mentioned, large text that’s actually woven into the fabric of the design is is becoming popular, probably because it works.

Ricardo Fayet (07:03.331)

Yeah, as long as it’s legible, it’s what works best in my opinion.

Ferol Vernon (07:07.887)

Got it. Okay. So you mentioned AI. And obviously, you know, AI is grabbing headlines, not just in our industry, but everywhere. I don’t think you can open any kind of publication without hearing about it. and image gener generation is certainly one of the big things that people are using these AI tools. So I wanted to just ask, you know, open-ended a little bit, you know, how is Reedsy? maybe you can explain a little bit about the Reedsy marketplace for our listeners, how it works, and then how are you guys dealing with?

the use of these AI tools, which is so prevalent everywhere, but has, you know, a very specific treatment probably in the book world.

Ricardo Fayet (07:47.182)

Yeah, it’s a really good question. So the Reedsy marketplace is as it sounds, it’s an open a la carte marketplace where authors can come in and look for editors, cover designers, illustrators, marketers, ghostwriters, website designers, etc. So pretty much anyone you’d ever need to hire throughout your writing career. And what makes us different or special is that we really vet the people on the marketplace. Like we reject…

around 95 % of applications to be listed as an editor, designer, etc. To make a lot of people unhappy. But the people who are on the marketplace, they usually come from a traditional publishing background or they’ve worked with really good indies or they’re just extremely talented when it comes to design, extremely talented designers or illustrators, etc. who we’ve handpicked basically.

Ferol Vernon (08:20.449)

Yeah.

Ricardo Fayet (08:41.547)

With AI, obviously, we had to implement some kind of AI guidelines both on the author side and on the freelancer side. And our main guideline for freelancers revolves around two main pillars. So the first one is transparency. If you’re going to use AI for part of the process, you should let the author know and get the written consent about it, whatever you’re going to do. Even if it’s small or…

Yeah. And the second part is the fact that you should still be able with your use of AI to fulfill the entirety of the contract. And when it comes to cover design, one of the big closes that we have is that the rights pass on to the author, right? Whether that’s like the full rights or it’s a commercial license I can use for the image, reproduce, et cetera, the standard license that you need for a book cover.

So essentially what we tell designers is if you use AI in part for something, one, you need to let the author know exactly what you used it for and get their consent. And two, you need your responsibilities to make sure that the final product is copyrightable. So if you generate just an entire cover point blank with AI, don’t modify anything, that’s not really copyrightable at this point.

Ferol Vernon (10:09.504)

So I yeah, I want to double click on that. That’s something I didn’t know. So so you’re saying if I use an AI tool, I use Gemini, Nano Banano, or any one of these image generation tools, that image is not mine.

Ricardo Fayet (10:24.825)

So don’t know what the latest legislation is about it. From what I read, you own the copyright to the arrangements of elements that you’ve created with AI, but that’s not exactly the same as owning the image.

Ferol Vernon (10:42.695)

Interesting. Okay, got it.

Ricardo Fayet (10:44.857)

So what we want to make sure is that if a Reedsy designer creates a cover for you, you have the full rights to it, as if it were like a completely normal image without any AI use in it. I would say that the majority of our designers don’t want to touch AI, right? Designers, illustrators, et cetera. At this point, they don’t want to touch it. We get a lot of no AI disclaimers on profiles and things like that. The ones who do…

Ferol Vernon (11:01.032)

Really?

Ricardo Fayet (11:12.377)

they use it for either at the concept stage, right? Because creating concepts, we can get into it if you want, but creating concepts can take a lot of time for a designer. And at the end of the day, it’s only so that the author picks a direction and then the designer goes on that direction. So that’s one place where we see designers using AI just to create these concepts and then they just like the author says, okay, like this and they draw the thing from scratch following that direction. Or for specific parts of the…

Ferol Vernon (11:37.737)

interesting. Okay, cool.

Ricardo Fayet (11:41.698)

of the cover. For lot of historical fiction, sometimes you don’t get the exact image that you need from stock photography. so AI can be great for that because you can get the exact gown in the color that you wanted and that you describe in the novel and then everything else on the cover except for that gown is going to be hand drawn and designed. So for things like that, there’s

Ferol Vernon (12:06.516)

okay.

Ricardo Fayet (12:10.091)

enough modification of the image or integration of the image that the final product is 100 % copyrightable.

Ferol Vernon (12:17.159)

That’s really interesting. So I didn’t realize that. So do you have a sense for like what portion of your you call them freelancers, but you know, for the sake of this pod, we’re really talking about cover designers, but like for what what portion of those designers are sort of like, you know, hard stance, no AI versus those that that use some of it? Do you have a sense of those numbers?

Ricardo Fayet (12:26.243)

designer.

Ricardo Fayet (12:37.601)

I don’t honestly, I don’t know. I don’t think we have an easy way of getting that data, but I would, from what I’ve seen personally on the marketplace, just looking through it, I think I would say the majority are no AI.

Ferol Vernon (12:43.463)

Yeah.

Ferol Vernon (12:54.215)

That’s so interesting. And so do you th do you see, because obviously, you know, you go into one of these AI tools and you tell them to create a book cover, it’ll do it for you.

Essentially. are you seeing more demand for book cover jobs or less? Or like, you know, as someone who’s sort of watching the marketplace, what are you seeing from a trend perspective now that these new tools are available?

Ricardo Fayet (13:19.161)

Yeah, so I just had a quick look on the marketplace and I have like around a quarter of designers who specifically write no AI on their profile. So that’s… Yeah, doesn’t mean that the other 75 % use AI. It just means that these are like bothered enough by it to write no AI on the profile. And in terms of trend, we’re actually quite surprised. Like I think…

Ferol Vernon (13:27.174)

Yeah, wow.

Ferol Vernon (13:39.417)

Right, yeah. Yep.

Ricardo Fayet (13:46.776)

The requests for cover design grew by around 40 % since last year from 2025 to 2026. So we’re actually going to getting a lot more requests for cover design despite the capabilities of AI generation when it comes to covers.

Ferol Vernon (14:02.043)

Yeah. That’s amazing. Yeah. I mean, w we’re seeing you know, on our end a surge in demand for marketing services as well. I think, you know, it’s interesting to to guess at that, but do you think that any of that increase in demand has to do with sort of it becoming easier to actually get the first part of that process done, like the the writing aspect?

Ricardo Fayet (14:23.609)

I think so. We experimented similar demands for during COVID, which is when also a lot of people finished their first books and got into publishing. yeah, I do think that AI tools play a role in some authors or aspiring authors finally finishing their manuscripts with the help of AI and then going to Reedsy for editing, design, et cetera.

Ferol Vernon (14:32.516)

Yeah.

Ricardo Fayet (14:50.539)

We definitely expected it to extend for editing, less so for design. And it was a nice surprise to see the Surgeon in cover design work. And I think, yeah, I can probably see a future where you still go to designers, but they might be cheaper because they use AI for part of the work. Because I would say AI sort of removes, it doesn’t remove, but it makes a skill.

Ferol Vernon (14:54.585)

Mm-hmm.

Ricardo Fayet (15:18.521)

of drawing or creating the image more accessible. But it doesn’t make the judgment call based on the market and the graphic design knowledge more accessible. Like I can ask AI for a cover for my Arthurian fantasy book by giving it a description of what I want and the AI will probably produce something that looks like what I want and I’ll be happy with it.

But that doesn’t mean that it’s a cover that has a chance to actually sell because what I want as like, know, a newbie author who hasn’t studied the market, et cetera, is not what readers in my genre necessarily want or expect from a cover design. So I’ll be very happy as an author with my cover, but then I won’t get the sales that I was hoping to get.

Ferol Vernon (16:07.799)

Yeah, I think that’s a really good point because this sort of, you know, this judgment that you have to make as an author from a marketing standpoint, you know, that’s not going away. Right. So I think that’s the that’s the piece that we always really stress when we talk to people. Cause we have we have authors all the time come to us and ask us, what should I do differently? What should I do with my cover? And when we do that, you know, our sort of party line is like, have a professional do it.

Even you know, you can have a cheap professional do it or expensive professional, but have somebody else do it who’s who’s one step removed from the book than you. so Ricardo, from your standpoint, like when I’m going to create my cover or I’m going to make that judgment call, like whether I’m using AI, whether my cousin’s designing it, or whether I went and found somebody great from Reedsy, you know, what are the elements of that cover that I want to hit? Like, do I want to talk about the genre? Do I want to talk about the plot? Like,

What what are the things I should think about when I’m trying to craft that that piece of judgment that says, like, here’s what should be on the cover?

Ricardo Fayet (17:09.549)

Yeah, I think when it comes to cover design, genre, plot, tropes, it all sort of goes together. So when you send me the question over email, you use the word vibes, which I really liked, right? Because that’s exactly what you want to convey in a cover design. It’s like the vibes of the book. And a lot of times when you put yourself in the shoes of the reader, which is really what you should do when you’re…

marketing your book, right? When you’re thinking about marketing and cover design again is your number one marketing tool is like put yourself in the shoes of a reader and look at try to like detach yourself from your book your cover and look at your cover and think okay I’m a reader of like, know cozy fantasy My book is cozy fantasy if I were to see this cover in a bookstore like Would I stop would I stop look at it? And would it convey the vibes that I would expect from a cozy fantasy cover and obviously these

vibe expectations that have been formed by dozens or hundreds or thousands or millions of covers before me that have sort of shaped the market. And there are changes sometimes, know, sometimes, you know, symbols become more important than characters. But a lot of times, yeah, it’s sort of imitating what’s been done before generally works.

Ferol Vernon (18:31.581)

Yeah, so this is a good this is a debate that I have all the time and I have an opinion on it, but I’m curious what your opinion is. So like I can have a cover that fits perfectly with my genre. So you think about I’m a reader, I go to the Amazon page for the top 100, you know, to use your example, cozy fantasy. Am I better off hitting the genre note perfectly so my book looks like all the other ones, or am I better off breaking the mold so that mine stands out?

Ricardo Fayet (18:57.539)

Yeah, I have the same internal debate. We have the same internal debate at Reedsy. That’s a million dollar question. And my answer is, if you hire a true professional cover designer who is really specialist in your market, they should be able to achieve both. So that really, really delicate balance of creating something that perfectly fits and yet has that special element that still stops people scrolling.

Ferol Vernon (19:02.547)

Yeah.

Ricardo Fayet (19:26.155)

and go, ooh, that’s interesting. So you want to stop people scrolling with something that’s a bit different, but at the same time, you want to all the genre notes. If you’re not going to be able to achieve that, either because you’re not hiring a professional cover designer or for whatever reason, through your work with them, you feel like you’re not going to be able to achieve that, I think it’s always safer to stay closer to the genre expectations rather than to try to break them. Because if you’re too close,

the breaking, then the cover is not going to work. It’s going to be a total disaster. If you’re too close to the sticking, blending in, it’s not going to be a disaster. You can still sell and the cover is probably going to be 80 % fine.

Ferol Vernon (20:10.854)

Right.

That’s right. Yeah. So it’s sort of like when you when you when you stay on genre with your cover, you sort of have downside protection, right? To use your words, it’s not going to be a disaster. Whereas if you try to br break the mold, you run that risk that it is a disaster. Right. And I think for a lot of authors also, you know, you go through the cover design process and you know, maybe it’s a little faster than it used to be with some of the new tools, but it still takes some time to go back and forth with a with a true professional. And, you know, if you if you get that wrong, then you have to

Ricardo Fayet (20:23.715)

Exactly.

Ferol Vernon (20:42.566)

redo it or start over, right? And that that can be a big both lost in in money, but also in the time and investment that it went into creating it.

Ricardo Fayet (20:50.541)

Yeah, and a lot of times you don’t, mean, even the most knowledgeable authors out there who’ve written the same genre for years, you never know exactly what the perfect cover is going to be. I was talking to an author at Ning who had a specific set of covers for when they first released the series and then they recovered because they thought they could do better and sales tanked. And so now they’re re-recovering.

Ferol Vernon (21:17.274)

Yeah.

Ricardo Fayet (21:19.319)

And hopefully the sales will recover. it’s complicated, right? Even if you have complete knowledge and you know what you should do, etc. You never know exactly what the perfect cover is going to be. And that’s why a lot of times I tell authors, obviously you come in with your own ideas, your knowledge of the market, but trust the cover designer you hire, especially if they know your market. If you’re hiring like,

Ferol Vernon (21:21.531)

Yeah.

Ricardo Fayet (21:49.696)

your nephew who does great children’s book illustrations and you want them to work on your YA novel, you’ll have to give them direction because maybe it’s the first YA novel they do. But if you’re hiring a professional YA cover designer who’s done the covers for top books and top authors out there and work with the top publishers, then they’ll know more about the market than you do. They’ll know more about what has sold in the past than you do and

They’ll know more about exactly how to portray your cover, how to put your story on the cover, so that it has the highest chance of success. So trust your cover designers, basically, would be my advice.

Ferol Vernon (22:31.918)

Yeah, I think that’s so important. I just want to underline what you said that, like, you know, a good cover designer, you know, much like a good editor, is gonna have the experience that you don’t have, right? You as the author, you’re the sort of chief creative officer of your own little empire, right? So at the end of the day, you’re making the decisions, but you have to rely on these people who a lot of times are contractors in this in this business who have done this before. And, you know, their their experience is valuable and ultimately it’s your decision. but I think that’s really, really important.

Very well said. Trust your trust your designer, trust your editor, and then you make the calls.

Ricardo Fayet (23:07.201)

Exactly. Yeah.

Ferol Vernon (23:08.91)

So I think you you mentioned something really interesting that I was gonna talk about later in the conversation, but since you mentioned, I wanna drill in a little bit. You talked about recovering and you shared the story of that author that that you met. What you know, recovering is one of those things which is, you know, is basically just changing your cover. And with eBooks, that’s become a lot easier. But if I’m an author listening to this show and, you know, a lot of them are indie authors or publishers, how do I know when the right time is to recover? Is is recovering something that can

Restart sales? Is it a way to pour gasoline on the fire of a book that’s already succeeding? How do you think about that when authors start to think about maybe changing the cover?

Ricardo Fayet (23:48.314)

Yeah, recovering is a tough one because it’s a significant money investment, especially if we’re talking not just about a book, but about a series. And it can backfire like we just saw. So it’s not like a foolproof thing of like, wait five years, my sales are down, I recover and poof, my sales go back up. I think there can be two reasons for recovering. The first one is if

Ferol Vernon (23:56.556)

Right.

Ricardo Fayet (24:18.569)

you think the covers are wrong. Because based on personal experience, maybe this was your first series, since then you’ve written more in the genre, you’ve tasted different types of covers and you’ve realized actually these are not the first ones that I had done that were not right. Or the genres changed. You were writing erotic romance, BDSM romance before 50 Shades of Grey came out.

and the covers all started using objects on them instead of characters. And your covers have characters, probably a good idea to recover and go with the trend of the objects. And that happens, we’re seeing the trend and romantasy of the type-led covers with the vines and the daggers and all that. Trends change. I don’t think they change as often as we think. I don’t think there’s a lot of genres where you have to change the cover every five years.

Ferol Vernon (24:49.878)

Right.

Ferol Vernon (25:06.764)

Uh-huh.

Ricardo Fayet (25:16.217)

But it can happen. It can happen. And the second reason is if your sales are down or the book’s never really done well, and obviously you think the cover might be a problem, but you’re not sure. In those cases, I would test everything before I test the cover. I would change the book description. I would change my tactics, whatever I’m doing. I’ve been running Facebook ads, I would try Amazon ads. I would try press promotions. I would try a lot of things.

But probably the book description is the easiest one to change. And I’ve seen a lot of authors changing their book description and having great success with it. So if nothing else works, then I would look at the cover. And before doing a redesign, ask author friends, run a poll among your readers if you’ve got a reader group, email written word media support to ask them their opinion about your cover.

Ferol Vernon (26:08.658)

Yeah. We’d love we love hearing that those the the we love hearing about that kind of stuff. We get all kinds of inquiries that people ask us and it’s really awesome, you know, that people feel comfortable asking those questions. But we have people we have people there that are willing to willing to help.

Ricardo Fayet (26:23.799)

Exactly. so do we at Reedsy. One experiment, we’ve done this experiment a couple of times, but what we did is basically inviting submissions from authors, from their books and their covers, for books that weren’t necessarily doing super well, and inviting them to submit their books. And what we do is we’d pick like 10 or 15 and we’d recover them at no cost to the author. And then we’d run Facebook ads. think we did Facebook ads the first time and Bookbub ads the second time.

to compare the results. And we could do that with potentially Written Word Media in the future. That would be a cool collab. And compare the click-through rate. And I think in 90 % of cases, thankfully for us, the covers designed by our designers did better than the original covers. But we had some cases where the original cover did better. So it’s not a foolproof thing, as I was saying. But usually, yeah. Usually it’s a good idea.

Ferol Vernon (26:58.877)

Yeah. That would be.

Ricardo Fayet (27:22.957)

Get some advice. If you’re not sure, get some advice, ask around. And if you suspect the cover is issue, then get some quotes from professional designers and get their advice as well. Most, the really good designers, they’re busy. They’re busy weeks or months in advance. So when you reach out to them saying, hey, I’ve got these covers. I’m thinking of recovering. Do you think I should do it or not? They’re not going to say yes just because they want your money. They’ve got enough clients lined up. They’ll usually be honest. And they’ll say, look, I think…

Maybe they say, I’d be happy to do a cover for you, but honestly, don’t think your cover is probably the problem at this point because it looks good. Then you’ve got a professional’s advice that you know is honest.

Ferol Vernon (28:04.849)

Yeah, I mean I think that’s great. You know, everything’s a data point, right? So like the you reach out to your friends, like you said, you reach out to, you know, somebody at customer service, you reach out to a designer, like all this feedback is whether you like it or not, right? Those are all data points about what where you are and whether or not, you know, recovering is a good idea. And you know, you mentioned something about like themes change. And I think a really important analogy that I always talk to authors about is, you know, the design is like it’s like fashion design.

Right. Or like web design. Like every every cycle, you know, whether that’s five years or seven years or whatever it is, there’s new, fresh ways of the way things look. You know, bell bottoms are not bad pants. They’re just not in fashion now. Right. And those things change over time. And so I think it’s not, you know, if your cover is a little dated, that’s not a bad thing. It’s just that like fashion trends change.

Ricardo Fayet (28:58.649)

Exactly. And some covers are intentionally dated because some genres are meant for an older demographic and that older demographic is going to look at the cover and say, this looks great. Whereas a younger demographic might look at it be like, this is terrible design. Yeah.

Ferol Vernon (29:12.038)

Yeah, I’m not touching that. Yeah, that’s really interesting. So we’ve talked about this a little bit about like using a Reedsy designer and like I’m you know, there’s a lot of really talented people on your platform. You know, as an author who’s going into this process and whether I find somebody on Reedsy or not, how do I approach an engagement with a cover designer and make sure that it’s really successful? Like what are the steps I need to do as an indie author to make sure that that collaboration comes out with a really sort of beautiful.

and financially valuable piece of piece of work.

Ricardo Fayet (29:46.531)

Yeah, think most of the work happens before you reach out to them in putting together what we call cover design brief. And so we have an article about that on our blog. I don’t know if Written Word Media has an article as well on that or not. But if you…

Ferol Vernon (29:59.631)

We have some stuff but we can we’ll get that link and we’ll drop it in the show notes for everybody that’s listening so they can take a look at that.

Ricardo Fayet (30:05.625)

Yeah, I think the brief is most important part of it because that’s what you share with every designer and obviously you can then customize to each designer if you want to do that. really what they need to know is obviously what your book is about. So a brief description of the book, who the target market is, who’s the intended audience, what the genre is, any tropes and then…

Probably the most important bit is the inspiration. So some authors are really good at that and others less so. But again, you want to strike a balance between giving the designer enough inspiration about what you want on the cover without overwhelming them or limiting their design creation and their creativity. So one thing that can be great for that is mood boards. Creating a mood board on Pinterest of other covers, but not just other covers, perhaps other images.

drawings, illustrations, things you find out there that kind of express the mood, the vibe that you would like on your cover. And then obviously comp titles. Comp titles for the book, comp titles are super important for everything and they’re super important for cover design as well. if the top 50 books in your genre all have a similar style of cover, again, you’ll want to blend in. So the designer needs to know

Ferol Vernon (31:10.263)

Yeah.

Ricardo Fayet (31:32.665)

This is the genre I’m going for and this is the style of cover that I want. And that will also inform the type of designers you’re going to reach out to. Because the next step is going through portfolios. You can do this on Reedsy or through the websites, whatever. But on Reedsy, you can view the portfolios of one designer after the other directly on the search page, which is quite convenient because you can quickly browse and see which ones have created

covers in style similar to what you’re looking for. And usually your eye will automatically stop just like, you know, readers’ stop on covers they’re interested in. Your eye will stop on covers that you think, that’s the style I would like. And then you just, yeah, select those people, send them the brief and ask them for quotes. If you’ve really created a solid brief with clear expectations of what you want in terms of style, also in terms of deliverables, like be clear in terms of do I need just the ebook cover or will I want the paperback cover?

Will I need flaps for hard covers or not? Do I also want audiobook? So do they need to think about the square version? Do they need to think about social media assets? All these kind of things. So be detailed in terms of what you want from them in terms of deliverables. And if those two elements are clear on the brief, think you’ve avoided 90 % of the problems you can have down the line with a cover design collaboration.

Ferol Vernon (32:32.693)

good.

Ricardo Fayet (33:02.635)

And the next important step in the process I would say is once I’ve created the first concepts for you, that’s the other place where we see some issues, is if none of the concepts speak to you, don’t pick the one that you hate the least, to say it in a certain way, and say, well, this one maybe. Because for a designer, this one maybe means, OK, the author likes this one.

Ferol Vernon (33:13.781)

Right.

Ferol Vernon (33:22.152)

Yeah.

Ricardo Fayet (33:31.373)

I’m going to go in this direction and we can change it a little bit, but this is something you validated that you like. So if none of the concepts speak to you, explain why. Be honest and explain, I was expecting something different, etc. And maybe you’re going to break up with the designer at that point, which is fine. There’s usually a small kill fee involved. But it’s a lot better than you being in direction and then being, but change the color and change the background and change this and change that because

Ferol Vernon (33:59.754)

Change everything, right?

Ricardo Fayet (34:00.974)

Change everything. And then you get to a point where you’re frustrated because from the get-go you haven’t really gotten what you wanted, but you haven’t expressed it. And the designer is getting frustrated because they have to make a ton of changes which are not part of the initial contract or scope of the work. So both parties get frustrated and that’s when we see big fall-in-outs happening, where we have to step in and intervene as a third party and kind of mediate, issue refunds and all of that. So to avoid that, very clear, cover design brief.

And then at the concept stage, reevaluate if you feel like none of the concepts are working. A lot of times the author just says, look, none of this is working. I was expecting more something like this and this. Designer does another round of concepts and one of those just like hits, right? So, but it’s really better to be honest during the collaboration about the things that you’re not entirely happy with.

Ferol Vernon (34:51.41)

Yeah, I think that’s really important feedback. And it’s like, you know, I always tell people this like you’re the you’re the chief creative officer of your little empire, right? Like you’re making at the end of the day, this is your decision. Right. And so if you don’t like anything that you’re being presented with, you know, you have to say that. And I think having the courage to say that’s not always easy. But I think your advice is like really well taken. You explain that dynamic really well, right? Like it just makes everybody frustrated to go down a road when the initial

Ricardo Fayet (35:18.201)

Yeah, we see that all the time and I have quite a bit of experience in that. The more we can avoid that in the future, the better. I mean, we have less than, I think the stat is less than 1 % of collaborations that end up with a dispute. So like if you hire a cover designer on Reedsy, 99 times out of 100, you’re going to be happy with the end result. But since we do get a lot of cover design work, we do see fall on outs happening.

Ferol Vernon (35:42.562)

Of course. Yeah. And, you know, it y you mentioned that sort of like a kill fee or like a breakup. So, like if if I’m an author and I’m in the middle of one of these things where whether it’s contentious or not, but I’m just not happy with the work, how do I like express that, you know, without offending the other person? Cause I think a lot of authors that I talk to, you know, they they feel very strongly about what, you know, the art and what how they want their work to be represented, which I totally understand.

But at the same time, they’re people and they’re usually nice people and they don’t want to piss anybody off. So, you know, how do you how do you recommend like what kind of language can authors use? Can they take as like a tip if they find themselves in that situation?

Ricardo Fayet (36:23.039)

Think that the other party in this case is a creative person. So they’re like you in a lot of cases. So try to think like if someone wasn’t happy with my work, how would I want them to communicate with me about it? So obviously be respectful, understand that there can be creative differences.

So this is not about them just like not caring about your book or your work or whatever. Don’t take it personal and try to keep it both respectful and treat it as a business in the sense of like, look, offering exit routes, right? Look, I don’t like any of these concepts. And a lot of times I think when authors get to this point is that they want to stop the collaboration, right?

Ferol Vernon (37:20.025)

Right.

Ricardo Fayet (37:21.433)

So at that point, be really honest and say, look, I know you’ve done some work so far, put yourself in their shoes. You’ve done some work so far. I want to compensate you for that, but I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere if we continue. So let’s work out a kill fee. Some designers have a kill fee in their contract. say, at any, like up to this point, you can stop, you know, we can stop working together and you pay me 30 % or something like that. So those can be nice to have in the contract, but otherwise just be respectful, put yourself in their shoes.

as much as possible and understand that getting aggressive or demanding things is never going to get you anywhere positive, basically. We’ve never seen that happening. Whether it’s with them or with Rizzi as a mediating party, if you report the collaboration to us because you’re not happy with it and you start being aggressive with our support team, that doesn’t make us want to look into the collaboration any faster.

Ferol Vernon (38:01.348)

Right.

Ferol Vernon (38:06.841)

Right.

Ricardo Fayet (38:18.393)

or interact with you. We’re still going to do it, but yeah. Be respectful. I know it’s hard to say a lot of times because it’s a creative endeavor. It’s your book is your baby and all that, but just don’t get angry. Treat it as business. In all businesses, you’re going to make investments that are not going to yield any results. So treat it like that.

Ferol Vernon (38:37.506)

Hundred percent. Yeah. I think that’s really well said. You know, it’s you’re you’re always better kind of writing something off and just being respectful about moving on to something than sort of getting upset about it. And while you know, getting upset and being aggressive, it might feel good or like you might feel justified. It’s it’s rarely productive, right? It rarely gets you to the end result that you’re actually trying to achieve. So you mentioned something when we were talking about this around

Ricardo Fayet (38:57.368)

Exactly.

Ferol Vernon (39:01.744)

social assets. And so I think this is something that’s really changed over the years, you know, certainly since you and I have gotten into this business, that, you know, as you’re getting the book cover, you know, one of the chief, chief ways that you sort of leverage the assets you get from a coverage designer is in social media assets, either on socials or you put them in your emails or whatever. So, do you think as an author who’s engaging in one of those, like, should they be asking for assets above and beyond the book cover?

Is that a good time or is is it like a different skill set where you want to have your cover designer do your cover and you want to have like your marketing or social person do your social?

Ricardo Fayet (39:39.482)

I think if that’s something that the cover designer is open to doing, it doesn’t hurt to ask them for it. It’ll rarely be super expensive. So I think it’s fine asking them for it because if you’re going to run ads or do promotions, you’re still going to need a lot more creatives down the line. But you’ll have something to start with that is professional, that is professional looking. And then you can always work with a marketer to create more stuff based on the cover, et cetera.

And the other thing that I would actually ask for is, especially for covers that rely a lot on the image, like fantasy, sci-fi, etc., ask for the cover design without the text, for the image, just for the background image. Whether that’s the portrait or the landscape one, because that’s just great for ads. That’s great for creating graphics, you can then place different types of text, and a lot of…

Ferol Vernon (40:22.389)

Right.

Ricardo Fayet (40:35.437)

The best ad creatives I’ve created over the years working with authors were just the background of the cover, the cover in small on it, and then a little bit of text somewhere. And that always kind of works great. So as a marketer, know that every time work with an author, I’ve been like, hey, can you get the background image from your cover designer, please? So might as well ask for it since the get-go.

Ferol Vernon (41:01.801)

Yeah, amazing. I think that’s great. And and we see that all the time. You know, at Written Word Media,, we run reader reach ads where we’ll run your Facebook ads for you. And when authors do have those assets, you know, we actually we can create the the creative for you. But if authors send us that creative, we’re we’re happy to run it. And it always works really well when they have it, just because for exactly what you said, like, you know, the image zoomed in of that fantasy character or whatever it is, tends to work really, really well in ads.

Ricardo Fayet (41:28.707)

Yeah, if you’ve paid someone to create like an amazing, you know, handcrafted image, use it everywhere you can.

Ferol Vernon (41:35.75)

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. amazing. Well, Ricardo, thank you so much for like sharing all your expertise with us. if people want to learn more about Reedsy or Ricardo and what you’re doing, how can they follow along with your work?

Ricardo Fayet (41:50.563)

Yeah, go to Reedsy.com, R-E-E-D-S-Y.com. That’s where you’ll find our Marketplace and where you can find all our designers. You can also check out our blog, Reedsy.com/blog. Not very original, but it works. And that’s where you’ll find tips and advice around cover design, cover design briefs, hiring designers, all that stuff.

Ferol Vernon (42:15.796)

Amazing. All right. Well, thank you so much, authors. This has been a conversation with Ricardo. I hope that you learned something. and that’s that’s it. That’s the pod. go write something and we’ll see you next time.