Cover Craft: Examining Four Online Top Sellers' Covers & My Own Attempts

A first attempt at a cover design for my upcoming long short story.

Shelley here once again and wondering how two weeks could have passed so quickly since my last bi-monthly post! 

As I've been hard at work on my Strawberry Moon Mystery story--which will be a long short story or short novella depending on my ability to edit, pare, and trim--I've pondering what I might do with it once it's complete. 

I've been giving some thought to publishing it as a One Hour Short Read on Kindle. These are stories from between 33-43 pages, which is about where I expect Strawberry Moon to end up (15-20K words). As I have a bit of interest in design and art, though untrained, I wondered if I could create a passable book cover on my own, using Canva, that would align with the covers of my two Olivia Lively Mystery books published by Encircle Publications. 

I'd worked with the cover designer of those two books, giving her drawings with my ideas, so the concept was already clear in my mind. I had designated comp books with a similar vibe: The Finlay Donovan series by Elle Cosimano and Where'd You Go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple. I wanted a female character in bright colors, flat design, and a kind of "chick lit" energy. 

The designer, Deirdre Wait, executed these wonderfully. 

If I'm going to self-publish, I wondered, could I do the cover myself? And is my design style choice still working in today's competitive market? I moseyed over to Amazon this afternoon to look at the Best Selling Kindle Mystery Private Detective books to see what the covers looked like. 

Okay, the #1 book in that category today is Homemaker: A Prairie Nightingale Mystery that is due out next month. Written by Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare, it is published by Thomas & Mercer which just so happens to be an imprint of Amazon Publishing. 

Does the book's #1 status  have anything to do with the fact that Amazon is publishing it? And not until next month? Ummm...

Self-serving retail tactics aside, I am very heartened to see the cover design. I like the handwriting fonts and the big eye in the magnifying glass, the flat art, the vibrant colors, the female sleuth image. Not only does the story sound like a good comp for my titles (Prairie is an amateur sleuth, at least she starts out that way, so I'm not sure why it's in the Private Detective category), but also the character is tangled up with an FBI guy--just like my Olivia Lively character. 

Actually this is GREAT news. It just means that there are readers out there who want these kinds of books, and I've written a couple of them. 

The book in the #2 spot is Murdle, Volume 1 by G.T. Karber, published by McMillon/Griffin. Again, we have the flat art and color. Interestingly, the SAME colors. Again, I'm baffled by Amazon rankings because guess what? This isn't really a Private Detective story, either. It's a collection of mystery logic puzzles. 

Moving on. 

In the #3 spot is The Beast of Littleton Woods by T.E.Kinsey. This is book 12 in the series and it's published by . . . you guessed it. Thomas & Mercer. This looks much more like a cozy mystery with the dog image and the yellow eyes peering out from the roots of the tree. The curly script is also more cozy than my preferred Women Sleuths and Private Detective categories. 

(Even though it pops up as #3 on the Private Detective click, when you look at the book's bestseller rankings, Private Detective isn't even listed. It shows up as #1 in Amateur Sleuth and #2 in Cozy and #3 in Traditional Detective.) 

But okay, Amazon. 

Last one from Amazon. This is Closer Than You Know by Debra Web, published by, yup. Thomas & Mercer. 

The cover is more realistic with the author's name and book title getting equal play. The simple sans-serif font looks clean and simple. To me this looks more like a police detective or even a thriller cover that would appeal to both men and women readers. Sure enough, two of the rankings are for Police Procedural and Serial Killer Thrillers. The protagonist is actual a crime analyst. Is that a private investigator/detective? I really don't think so. 

NONE OF THESE FOUR BOOKS RANKING IN PRIVATE DETECTIVE MYSTERY IS REALLY A P.I. MYSTERY.

Whaaaat???

Yes, I could slightly tweak my search and end up with different books on the list. This baffles me all the time on Amazon best-seller rank listings. It's almost comical. In this case I searched by choosing: Best Seller/Kindle/Mystery & Thrillers/Mystery/Private Detective. 

Isn't it interesting that 3 of the top 4 ranking on Amazon in this category are published by an imprint of Amazon? 

On to my cover. 

This is the potential cover for my Strawberry Moon Mystery that I created using Canva Pro. Originally, the colors were slightly more muted and gray, but after feedback from readers on the blog, I found a way to change the colors of the images to better reflect their suggestions. Of COURSE the moon had to be pink. Or pink-ish! Does it make any sense that Olivia's wearing sunglasses at night? Nope but it continues the trend from the two full-length books. Also, the moon woudn't be reflecting in her glasses because the moon is behind her. But it makes for a more compelling image, right?

It doesn't have the panache of that handwriting font. It seems a little stiff in comparison, not as "messy" which is what they are trying to get across, I think. I might need to add a nose and some shading. Maybe I should play with some handwriting fonts. I might need to hire a cover designer to make it really work. 

And it's NOT red and black. 

But in a pinch? Maybe I could get away with it. I think this plays in the same sandbox with my comp titles, which will now include the Prairie Nightingale book as well as Finlay Donovan. Olivia, unlike these two, is actually a licensed P.I. running her own Lively Investigations business, but I think she fits in.

Cozy? Me? I thought I was Hard-Boiled!

 By Thomas Kies

The ARC for WHISPER ROOM (release date, August 2) is available now for review and a few people have already commented on Goodreads.  I’m more than pleased that universally, so far, their reviews have been exceptionally positive.  I’m a bit taken aback, however, that two of them describe my book as a Cozy Mystery. 

I’m far from insulted, but I’ve never considered my books to be cozy by any stretch of the imagination. They’ve always been described as dark, twisty, and scary.  My neighbor read my third book, GRAVEYARD BAY, and when I asked him how he liked it, he told me, “The ending gave me nightmares.”

No cozy there.

The cozy mystery is a subgenre that has been described many ways, but I’ll try to distill it down as best I can.  The protagonist is usually female, an amateur sleuth, and the violence and sexual activity takes place off scene.  The setting is generally a small community where most people know each other

Interestingly, that kind of describes WHISPER ROOM. If you close your eyes and squint at it from a distance. 

Merriam-Webster defines genre as “…characterized by a particular style, form, or content.”

Primary fiction genres are: Romance, mystery, science fiction/fantasy, action/adventure, thriller/suspense, horror, historical fiction, and young adult.

Then there are subgenres. Amazon numbers them as 16,000 and calls them categories. 

Subgenres for fiction are: psychological thriller, cozy mysteries, historical mysteries, romantic suspense, spy thrillers, police procedural, private detective, legal thrillers, heist, locked room, noir, and supernatural thrillers.

Now, many of the subgenres for mysteries are obviously hybrids from the broad definition of genres listed above. 

My first book, RANDOM ROAD, was labelled a mystery but in reality, it was a romance novel with a mystery as the engine that drove the story forward. Girl gets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy, girl solves mystery, boy dies.  So, let’s add the genre of Tragedy to our list. 

How did Amazon label RANDOM ROAD? Hard-boiled mystery, amateur sleuth, women sleuths.  Nothing about romance at all.  I guess I hid it well.

I’ve taken a hiatus from teaching my Creative Writing courses at the college until this coming fall, but I think one of the exercises I’ll try is asking the students to take a book they’ve recently read, as well as a classic they may have read when they were in school and give it three classifications like Amazon might.

Like TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.  Would it be a Legal Thriller, a Coming-of-Age novel, or maybe Horror (Boo Radley was pretty scary…until he wasn’t)? 

Amazon actually classifies the novel as Teen & Young Adult Classic Literature, TV/Movie & Game Tie-In Fiction, and Classic American Literature.

I’ve never even heard of TV/Movie & Game Tie-In Fiction.

So, back to WHISPER ROOM.  The blurb reads: Sex, Blackmail, and Murder…Welcome to the Whisper Room.

Doesn’t sound cozy at all to me.