Errors to Avoid When Making Covers for Public Domain Books

Many people create public domain books and sell them through various eBook vendors. But some cover errors set your book apart as unprofessional.

And some public domain eBook covers are bonkers!

A Bonkers Cover for The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. (Source: Screen cap by the author.)

The people looking for good eBook copies of public domain classics are picky. They want something professionally formatted. They could get the same books for free at reputable sites like Project Gutenberg or ManyBooks.net. But they are willing to buy a copy from a vendor: for the sake of convenience; because they want better formatting; and so on.

Your cover is the first clue to your professionalism. They won’t trust something that looks plain, cheap, or worse, clueless.

Writing for the Literary Hub, Emily Temple collected 50 examples of bad covers for public domain books. You will not believe some of these! Especially the Hamlet cover!

For fun, look at the article The Eccentric World Of Sheba Blake Publishing for some truly bonkers examples.

1) Don’t Get Too Plain

In most cases, you’re competing with many other editions of the same book. A dull cover will fade into the background when people search for that book.