YA Book Covers: Fun Fakery

I saw this new meme over on YA author Anna Jarzab‘s site, which she found over on 100 Scope Notes (both great sites). You make a YA book cover for yourself with a fake book and fake title. You see, it’s fake. Just want to be clear on that.

Here are the instructions if you want to make one:

CREATE YOUR DEBUT YA BOOK COVER

1 – Go to Fake Name Generator. The name that appears is your author name.

2 – Go to Random Word Generator. The word listed under “Random Verb” is your title.

3 – Go to FlickrCC. Type your title into the search box. The first photo that contains a person is your cover.

4 – Use Photoshop, Picnik, or similar to put it all together. Be sure to crop and/or zoom in.

5 – Post it to your site along with this text.

This was so fun that I got carried away! Here’s my first one:

I totally dig it that my fake author name is Jean Slack and that I wrote a YA book named Grumble.

So then I got to thinking about my YA book title (my real one), which most of you know I’m not totally in love with. And, working at a graphic design/web design firm has shown me how copy can lead design. So, I thought I’d put all three of my title possibilities to the test. How would each title affect the choice of graphics a designer might look for? Authors don’t get much (if any) say in their cover, so this is all just for fun. But it did lead me to love one of the titles above the others.

Here are the choices:

I’m kind of loving seeing my name on faux book covers! If you want to vote on the one you like best in the comments, please do. I’d love feedback.

Published by jody sparks

Jody Sparks Mugele spent her first career in marketing writing and leading teams of writers and editors. After her son came out as transgender in 2015, she dedicated herself to advocating for the rights of the LGBTQ+ community. For two years, she led the Indianapolis regional chapter of PFLAG, a nationally renowned LGBTQ+ advocacy group. She has given many conference talks about parenting trans kids, healthcare in the trans community, and suicidality among LGBTQ+ youth. And with GenderNexus, an Indianapolis-based advocacy organization, she created programming and led support groups to work with parents to help their children through all aspects of gender transition. She recently moved to Northeast Georgia where she is excited to develop opportunities to continue to strongly and proudly advocate for LGBTQ+ members of our society. She also LOVES kitschy Christmas crafting! View more posts

8 thoughts on “YA Book Covers: Fun Fakery”

Fun covers! I vote Podunk, which is probably not surprising. Team Podunk!

I LUFF “Hard Lines and Maybes” – It just sounds like a book I’d pick up to look at the description based on the title. And, I’m digging the cover. She looks so good and right but really she’s got gnarly black converse with those socks and a tattoo of a snake across her back with the words “boyfriends, ambulance chasers, and me. liars.”

Nice work on the covers. Please don’t take my job. 🙂

jody sparks says:

September 3, 2009 at 1:27 pm

Kristin, you’re totally right about the Converse All Stars no one can see! Haha, I’m now thinking maybe I’ll just title the book, “boyfriends, ambulance chasers, and me. liars.” That would rule! P.S. Take your job? Are you kidding? I can barely open the Photoshop App without your help!

Reply