Yes, You Need a Professional to Design Your Book Cover

A lot of authors self-publish their own books today, as it's very easy to upload a manuscript to sellers like Amazon.com and have them handle the sales and order processing for you. When you do self-publish a book, it can be tempting to also design its cover yourself, as you can easily purchase graphics and bold fonts to use. However, the appearance of your book cover can affect its sales, as it gives readers an idea of what's inside as well as the quality of your writing. Note a few common mistakes self-published authors make when designing their own cover so you can see why this job should then be left to a professional graphic designer.

 Typestyle and fonts 

When designing a cover, you may select a font that isn't often used in everyday word processing, thinking that it will then stand out. You might also select a very bold and "fun" font, with lots of scrolling details for that romance novel or what looks like blood dripping down the bottom of the letters for your murder mystery. 

Using an unusual font can be a good idea, but you also don't want to overdo it with the typestyle for a book cover. That fancy, scrolling font can be so fancy and that "bleeding" font can be so bold that the words of the title cannot be read. This is especially true when readers are looking at a thumbnail of your book's cover online. If they can't read the title or the tagline, readers are likely to just skip over your book altogether. 

Graphic

The graphic or picture you use on your book needs to be chosen carefully; using a picture with a white background can cause your book to virtually disappear against a white backdrop online. A small picture won't stand out and catch the eyes of potential buyers, and the picture also needs to somehow relate to the information inside. Using a photo of yourself when you're writing a mystery novel may make readers think it's an autobiography, and if they don't want to read your life story, they may not buy your book simply because your cover photo sent them the wrong message.

Colors

The colors you choose for your lettering, background, and other features of your book are important, as these too might tell readers something about what's inside. Colors like purple, pink and yellow may be associated with a child's book, whereas red is very bold and may not be the right choice for an autobiography about child abuse, where you are looking for sympathy from the reader. All black lettering might also be too plain, as the title should stand out from the tagline and author's name and not simply blend in.