When posting a story, there are four things you need before you can post. Right now, we're going to focus on the most attention-grabbing aspect: the cover.

Yes, yes. We have all heard the age-old saying that one should not judge a book by its cover. And this is true. You shouldn't. A crappy book can have an amazing cover, and an amazing book can have a crap cover. However, the goal of the cover is not to make or break a book: it is to draw attention to the book. Your book is out in a sea of hundreds of thousands of other books, and people need a reason to pause and be like 'wait, what's this?'

A great book cover is a very important way to do just this. We are attracted to pretty things. It cannot be helped. And honestly, most of the time, when people see a subpar cover, they'll expect an amateur-level book, especially on Wattpad. Not because this is the for-sure case, but because people expect those taking their craft seriously to have explored ways to get or create a solid cover.

Is it a for-sure indicator? No, but it's more akin to a rule of thumb that people use. Myself actually included...

"But Cross," you say with a frown, "I have no cover skills."

Well, me neither, so I'm glad you're part of the club of talentless designers! Thankfully for you, there are many amazing designers across Wattpad! Dreamland itself has a plethora of talented designers you can request from over on Dreamland Graphics. Most communities will have a graphic shop you can check out, and you can also search for graphic designers across Wattpad :smile: Most have pretty reasonable "payment" (not money payment, but Wattpad tasks like reads or follows).

Do keep in mind, though, that 95% of the covers you find here are not for commercial use. If you try to use the covers you have designed for you out in the publishing world, well... You may just get sued.

Okay, now that we have all that preamble out of the way, we need to address the most important question you'll have to ask yourself when approaching a cover: what do you want?

Before you can even answer that question, it is important to know a couple different of things: common cover styles and common cover types!

●○●○●○ Cover Styles ●○●○●○

-----Simple Covers: Simple covers are the most, well, simple (hah) of the cover styles.  Most of the time, you find a picture online and make some small tweaks or add some pretty text, and bam, there's the cover!  Maybe a glow is added, sparkles, changes to give a person cat eyes.  These covers, if they have any, will have just really basic edits like that.  These ones can be very effective, but depending on the designer, it can veer toward text-slap territory, which is just throwing text on an image.  Not saying covers like this can't look fantastic, but it can also be *very* easy for text-slap covers to... really obviously be text slap.

Keep in mind, these covers usually just mean finding a nice image off the internet to use. This is not meaning someone draws the image and puts text on it. That is another type of cover entirely. Might as well address that one next, though it is very uncommon on Wattpad.

-----Illustrative Covers: These are the aforementioned very uncommon Wattpad covers. You see these more on places like Tapas and Webtoon, places with a high amount of artist users. These are technically images with text thrown on it, but they are custom drawn images for your cover. These aren't just random images you found online. 85% of the time, it's art commissioned for your book. Or, well, the person drew it for themselves.

Cover credit to Ace_Guard 

-----Manipulation Covers: Now this is the hardest type of cover. Why? Because you're actually manipulating the image. Lots of editing, many layers, probably multiple pictures being used. These are the covers you will typically see created for fantasy, paranormal, sci-fi—the magical, out-of-this-world type stories.

A note to please keep in mind you are requesting these covers from people who take and manipulate free images they find online. It is probably for the best to not let your manipulation cover imagination not run crazy wild, or at least not expect anything too exact to what you may imagine, not because people aren't extremely talented on here, but because... Well, they're not paying for exact resources or drawing up images from scratch.

Cover credit to MiyaHikari 

-----Vector: This is gonna be the closest you get to an original art cover from someone who isn't an artist.  This style of covers puts together shapes and silhouettes to form objects and scenarios.  Think o of them like you have shape stickers and you rearrange and re-shape them, then put them on a piece of paper. 

Yeah, it's like that.  But way more complicated ^.^ 

This can work for pretty much any genre, because so many objects and images can be created with shapes and shadows.  When you find an expert vector creator, they can absolutely blow your mind with the versatility of vectors.

Cover credit to Dayisdemigod 

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Okay, so we've gone over these styles.  You now have an idea of the style of covers that graphic designers on Wattpad can make.  That's a good place to start figuring out your ideas, because as I've mentioned, there is a limitation because these people are making free covers, usually with free programs.

Can people do absolutely mind-blowing things with free resources and free programs?  Yes.  Yes, they most certainly can.  I've seen it happen.  But, again, that creates limits.

What is the next step?  Well, that's where you need to really put on your thinking cap!  Now, you need to figure out what it is you want on the cover.  This is where we come to cover types or, if it helps, cover ideas.  What do you want featured on you cover?  To try to get your brain rolling, let's go over some types of covers you may see.

●○●○●○ Cover Types ●○●○●○

-----Typography: This is the more "basic" type of cover.  With these covers, the main element on the cover is awesome font.  There may be other features thrown in to hint at story elements and give off a tone for the story (thorny vines, cracking wall background, undersea effects, wilted roses, etc).  You may also see a bit of vector aspects thrown in there.  

-----Object: These covers feature an important object from the story in the front and center of the cover.  Minor elements are sometimes also integrated.  The objects can range from weapons to symbols to treasured items to anything that is just vital to the plot.

An off-shoot of this would be a symbol.  Sometimes the "object" you want isn't quite a physical object you'd see in the world, but an object or symbol that would be prevalent in the universe you're writing (think of the Mockingjay pin from Hunger Games).  So yeah, if you're going for this, be sure you go to a designer who knows how to actually craft the fictional object/symbol xD

-----Book Scene: These covers feature a scene from the book, or a situation that could be in the book.  These are typically done with vectors on Wattpad purely because of the fact that so often it requires creating the scene, and that either means the designer has to be an artist or talented with vectors.  It can be complex and feature multiple details, it can be simple with a couple of elements, or it could even be vague and abstract, where it's not quite something that happened physically (like someone trying to hold their heart together).

-----Scenery: Different from a book scene, you can quite simply just have the scenery be a book cover.  If the environment and place play a large role in the book can be all you need.  You can have the city if the story is focused there, a mountain the protagonist has to climb, a house on an eerie street, a hellish landscape, just stuff like that.  Yes, this can also intersect with book scene if, say, you show the protagonist journeying through the featured scenery. 

-----Character: Some covers just have the character front and center.  There may be some background features, like a vague room or entangling vines or something, but the central piece of the cover is the character.  Often you'll see this with the character standing at the very front with some scenery from the plot behind them, so yes, this again often interacts with the others that focus on plot occurrences/parts.

-----Silhouette: These covers have an overall silhouette with story elements put into it.  Typically, this type of cover intersects with the other cover types that have been listed, because it varies what you have as the silhouette as well as what you have in said silhouette.

-----Important Side Notes: 

1: I would just like to emphasize that yes, you can just be symbolic with your cover. It doesn't have to be something concrete to the plot. You can have a girl broken into parts, someone slowly fading away, a person sinking into darkness, whatever. You don't have to do something concrete that occurs within the story. Just keep this in mind when coming up with the cover concept you're going with.

2: This has nothing to do with style or type, but I strongly advice you have a pen-name to put on your cover.  It just looks nicer.  And please please please never include the @ on the cover.  It just... It really doesn't look good.

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There ya have it.  Many different ways in which covers are crafted and the many different ideas you can work with as you try to piece together ideas for your cover.  It is a good idea to have multiple ideas for the graphic desigenr to work with, and it is important to look for a graphic designer who can work with the ideas you have. 

Also, keep in mind: I'm not a designer.  I'm a non-graphically-talented writer (who is still very cover picky) trying to put into layman terms the different concepts that are helpful to be familiar with when deciding what you want.  You may not see other designers say things exactly the same way I did, but as long as you have a general understanding, you should be able to work with it.

Now go out.  Try to hone your skills toward one of these cover styles or find a graphic designer who can make what you want.  They're out there, and it's worth finding them, because your cover is going to be one of the most attention-grabbing things you can have.