Embedded Files
Here, you'll find every published book cover I've designed from over the last decade, as well as a few proposed designs, accompanied by a bit of commentary on my design choices and artistic process.
This page features both my own books and my clients' books. Everyone I have had the pleasure of working with has graciously allowed me to present their book cover for you here, along with a review of my services.
The Midnight Ruby
Second Edition
The Midnight Ruby was always meant to be a classic noir, and while the first edition occasionally got close to that goal, the second edition fully achieves it, and so does its cover.
I did extensive research on title cards from 1940s films (what fonts they used, how they led the eye across the screen, etc.), and then replicated that kind of style in a vertical format. Most of them followed the same rules of placement, with "director name" presents "movie title," followed by "studio name and copyright," going from top to bottom.
As for the background, I overlayed three copies of the same image to intentionally induce the feeling of double vision, which is, of course, thematic to both the book and the core struggle of one of the main characters.
I experimented with combining physical and digital art with this version of the cover. I began to draw out the ace of spades for a custom deck of playing cards (featured in the book), and left it unfinished on purpose. I wanted to give the sense of it being in-progress, espeically given how that ends up relating to the characters.
For the bottom half, I considered placing the prominent banner that read "second edition" to distinguish this book from its predecessor, but, for the final cover, that clarification has been made on the back.
For the full cover, I knew I wanted to do the same thing that I did on the first edition, with the front and back being a separate color from the spine. After I found just the right image to put on the back cover, I adjusted its values to the exact numbers as the image on the front cover, overlayed it, and threw on some texturing to make it feel much more akin to those 1940s film shots.
One of the last additions to the cover was the newly-minted ZDA Press colophon, which I initially put on the front cover for purely stylistic choices. However, I liked it so much that I put it on the spine and back cover as well, with the latter of the two juxtaposing where the barcode will be placed on the bottom right.
Also, for the divider in the middle of the back cover, I rebuilt the same emerald-cut ruby emblem that I used on the hard cover of the first edition. You can also find that design inside the book as well, serving as a stylized scene separator!
This was very nearly the final design for the second edition, so much so that I even announced it as such. Relating to the specifics of the story, this would have been one of the playing cards out of a custom deck, designed by one of my characters.
The bullet hole, of course, was meant to be the main point of intrigue, prompting the reader to examine the card more closely, where they would find many intentional, story-driven details, like Henry's cmpaign pin, and his hand holding a pen above the roulette wheel, signifying his power over the casinos through legislature.
Somebody to Hate
Year One Cover
For my second novel, I knew I wanted to improve from my first in every way, including the cover. This book is a murder mystery set in London in 1982; by nature of the genre, there are a lot more moving parts in terms of the story, and many of my earlier designs for the cover reflected that.
Similarly to the design process for The Midnight Ruby, I made several sketches on pen and paper to design the cover for Somebody to Hate over several years. My very first sketch included what eventually became the final design.
The antagonist in this book is a 1980s, stylized version of Jack the Ripper I designed, and wanted to include in the cover in some fashion to give the reader a clearer image of what he looks like. In the book, he wears a set of custom-built triangular goggles, ringed with LED lights. The cover depicts one of his goggles being broken to reveal whoever may be underneath, which is, of course, taken from a scene near the end of the book. The emotion in the eye of the figure is what matters most, and what I hope potential readers will connect with in conjunction with the title: Somebody to Hate. All of this is under a layer of grain, which I added intentionally to subconsciously make the reader think of the past.
This was a design I sketched out that I really liked, and nearly started to work on digitally. It depicts a very rough over-the-shoulder shot of the Ripper (the antagonist) squaring off against Michael Hightower (my detective) on a ride through the London Underground, a scene taken from the book. There were many musical influences on this book, and I considered adding every chapter title to the front cover, mimicking the design of some album covers that list every song.
The full, wraparound cover for Somebody to Hate is very simplistic, but I think very effective as well. The red highlighting of certain words and phrases are designed to lead the eye and tell you everything you need to know in short. If you were to read only what’s in red on the back cover, you would read: 1982 — unmask the Ripper. This gives you a precedence for the setting and creates intrigue in the character of the Ripper, which will hopefully lead you to read the rest of the blurb.
Also, factoring in everything I learned after publishing The Midnight Ruby, I knew I wanted this cover to be the same color on every side. That way, the spine-shifting problem would be of no concern.
The eye is drawn from a reference picture I took of myself. I took several reference pictures approximating the wardrobe of a couple of my characters to guarantee accurate proportions and proper lighting, depending on which design I wanted to go with.
Simply put, I love this design. It’s incomplete, and I swapped in and out various elements over the course of designing it, but the overall composition and color scheme I absolutely adore. There’s something about it which is inherently nostalgic, which is what I wanted. This also shows a full-body image of the Ripper, again, giving the reader a better idea at his specific appearance. His white glowing eyes are missing, as the design was ultimately left unfinished.
Somebody to Hate
Year Two Cover
Anyone with a similar music taste will immediately recognize the layout on this book cover. I wore my inspirations on my sleeve with this one, emulating the album cover of David Bowie's Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). I swapped out the Thin White Duke with my detective, Michael Hightower, and changed the shadow on the wall behind him to be a shadowy depiction of the Ripper, the novel's loose-canon serial killer.
On that album cover, Bowie is surrounded by flowers on either side, and so, I followed suit for Michael, surrounding him with foxgloves, specifically. Foxgloves in particular are very important to the story, given that the core group of main characters call themselves "the Foxglove Gang," a name that comes from their meeting place, a brick wall with flowers planted alongside that they have dubbed Foxglove Wall.
As seen elsewhere, this design of the cover still ticks all of my boxes, even in its rougher state. I would tweak a few things here and there, but overall, I still love this cover.
When I was initially playing around with the composition for this one, I experimented with several fonts, mainly looking to find a pair that felt undeniably 80s.
In other versions, I've taken off the roman numerals on the right side, as they were only there before I clarified the year on the back cover.
Styling this cover after an album cover turned out to be a blessing and a curse in terms of design, given that an album cover lacks a definitive spine, leaving me to have to create one. This was my first foray into designing a cover where the art wraps all the way around, and it was a learning experience, to say the least.
I drew the front cover first, using a digital watercolor brush. That created a problem, since the watercolor layers are all translucent, meaning that if two layers are overlapping, it will create a very obvious dark spot. So, I had to get creative with my layering, since I created the front, back, and spine separately, as opposed to a single design (a mistake I won't be making again). But, all in all, knowing where the spine sits and where the book will fold, the final print came out seamless!
An earlier version of the updated cover for Somebody to Hate. I wanted to lean into the era and the punk-rock vibes through the leather jacket and pins, but it would have been a monumental amount of work to get all the pins looking just like I envisioned.
I may go back and workshop this design some more, just for the sake of experimentation, as I do think the concept works well at communicating the general time and place.
The Midnight Ruby
First Edition
The Midnight Ruby was the first book I ever wrote, and its cover was the first I ever designed. Over the six years of planning, writing, and editing the manuscript, I continually worked on the cover, trying to find the exact blend of style and story elements to elicit the right feeling in the reader.
The story is set in Las Vegas in the early 1950s and is a noir-esque love letter to old black-and-white films. I wanted the cover to reflect the intrigue of the title (in showcasing the Midnight Ruby ring), as well as make the reader interested about the relation between the figure holding the cigar and the silhouette of another figure in the cigar smoke.
My earlier versions were ultimately too complex and had too much going on. This, the final design, was done a couple of months before the book was published, and I knew it was exactly what I wanted.
For the hardcover, I knew I wanted something much more sleek and minimalist. I designed the wire-frame ruby and knew I wanted it to go on a dark background, using the same shades of red and black as the paperback, to make the two books look like an excellent pairing. I also knew for this cover, I wanted to use this particular font, reminiscent of the art deco and mid-century lifestyle.
This is the full, wraparound cover for The Midnight Ruby. For the back cover, I designed the martini glasses to fill the space in between the blurb and the about the author sections, but they are emblematic of a large plot moment in the book as well. As you’ll see for the rest of my designs, the bottom right-hand side of the back cover is intentionally left blank; that is because this is where Kindle KDP will place a barcode.
For the hand holding the cigar, I took a reference picture of my own hand holding a pen, and then widened the fingers and altered the silhouette to match that of the intended character.
If I were to redesign this cover, I would fix the about the author text, as it is center-aligned when it should be justified. I might also change the black bar along the spine, mostly due to Amazon’s printing process, which occasionally shifts the cover to the left or right, making anything on the spine slip onto the front or back cover. However, when printed right, it looks quite sharp, if I do say so myself!
This was the first sketch I did when I was very early into writing the first handful of chapters in the book. Done with pen and paper, this visual brainstorm contains several known scenes or plot elements from the story, some of which changed and some of which stayed the same. The wafting cigar smoke is one of the design elements that survived all the way to the final cover.
Non-Convincing Language
by David L. Anderson
This was the first cover I did for a book not my own, as well as the first kind of cover outside of my usual genre of writing (which would be novels). Non-Convincing Language is about a philosophy to deepen our communication and heighten our awareness of how and why we communicate the way that we do, all with the goal of improving in mind.
The concept of the philosophy consists of four pillars, or tenants, which are reflected in the literal pillars on the cover. Atop the pillars, each statue has a speech bubble, which connotes what each pillar of Non-Convincing Language is trying to address.
Because this style of cover was a new venture for me, I did some observational research by looking at other books in the same genre. Some of the books I saw in the “self-help/self-improvement” genre had similar covers with variations being in color, text, and font—typically without a centerpiece that wasn’t the text itself. For this book, I wanted to create an attention-grabbing visual that related to the principles contained within, but still looked right at home on the shelf next to books of the same category.
The full, wraparound cover for Non-Convincing Language. The white border around the main blocks of color and design are intentional and adjusted for bleed. For the back cover, I mirrored the color gradient on the front and reversed it. I considered having another gradient block along the spine, but with this book being around 40,000 words, the spine is a little too narrow, and having anything else besides the text and the Non-Convincing Language logo would have made it appear too crowded or too busy. For quick reference and utility, I listed each of the four pillars on the back cover as well, using the same pillar asset from the front.
Root to Rise
by Florence Doisneau
Like with the above book, How to Feed an Ostrich, I did both editing and cover design for Root to Rise. This cover was pretty straightforward, from an artistic point of view. The client knew which elements and colors she wanted (down to the exact hex code), and gave them to me at the beginning of the project, which made my job very simple.
She knew she wanted the cover to have some kind of "tree of life" iconography, which consisted of showing both the roots and branches of a mighty tree. I experimented with several different variations of that initial idea, some more complex and others more simple, before we landed on the final design, which greatly pleased both of us.
Before this final design, I had created the tree using just the curved lines alone, meaning that there were no leaves on the branches. Naturally, the image felt like it was missing something, and after I added the leaves, I knew that they were the key element.
This was one of the middle-to-later designs. I liked this one for the use of a few more colors that still stayed within the same overall palette, and gave more depth to the tree's canopy of leaves.
I combined two different elements to create this version, one element of a tree, and a different element of the roots, both of which I cropped, color matched, and finally aligned into the final image.
The full, wraparound cover for Root to Rise is efficient and effective. Being one color all the way around negates the worry over the aforementioned spine-shifting problem, which can be an annoyance for covers with a different colored spine. And, speaking of, once the main tree "logo" was completed, it was a nice addition to add in between the title and author's name along the spine.
For the back cover text, the author wrote up an excellent blurb, which I only made one subtle yet important change to. I separated the first sentence, enlarged it to stand by itself, and added an ellipsis to draw the reader in. In terms of other work that would fall under the purview of editing, the author and I went through many different versions of the subtitle, trying to distill the most necessary and communicative points, before landing on the final iteration.
This was one of the first proposed designs, which came about after I had momentarily overlooked the resources the client had sent me, and started on a design based solely on conversation we had over an initial meeting.
That faux pas aside, this version of the tree did end up becoming the template for the final tree design, and you can even see the similarity in the shape and structure of the branches.
A review of my services from this client:
"Working with Zach Anderson on my debut book, Root to Rise, was nothing short of transformative. From our first conversation, he guided me through the publishing process with calm expertise, clear direction, and genuine kindness. Zach’s attention to detail turned my manuscript into a polished, professional book; he managed every technical aspect smoothly and efficiently so I could focus on what I wanted to create.
Zach also designed the cover—listening carefully to my vision, offering thoughtful options, and patiently refining until we landed on a design that exceeded what I had imagined. His creative sensibility, matched by his responsiveness, made the whole experience effortless and enjoyable.
If you have a book in your head but feel stalled by the technical hurdles of publishing, search no more. Zach combines professionalism, technical mastery, and warm collaboration to deliver exceptional results. I’m deeply thankful for his guidance and proud of the book we created together. Highly recommended."
~ Florence Doisneau
How to Feed an Ostrich
by Catherine Bauer Mabry
This book was a fun project, both in editing and cover design. How to Feed an Ostrich is a storybook of sorts, presenting the reader with several stories from the author’s career of teaching middle school. With that in mind, I knew I wanted to design a cover that was undeniably scholastic; something that other teachers would notice and gravitate toward. I had the idea for a chalk board early on, and after finding and arranging the right elements, it all came together as I had imagined it. The author loved it as well, which was an added bonus!
One of the tricky parts of this design was the subtitle: Lessons in Teaching Middle School, Gentle in Manner and Strong in Deed. As far as subtitles go, it’s a bit lengthy, and so the challenge was to incorporate all of that text into the cover in a visually pleasing way that guided the eye around the design from top to bottom. Having two other ostriches peeking in from either side allowed me to do just that, all while keeping everything topical and thematic.
This was the first of the two designs I showed the author, who decided upon the second. I wanted to have a variety between the designs, one scholastic and one more minimalistic, so that the author could get a feel for what she really wanted. With the running, gradient ostriches on this cover, it lends itself to breaking up the text of the title, subtitle, and author’s name in an aesthetically pleasing way.
This is the full wraparound cover, adjusted for bleed. Some of the assets I wanted to use had more pieces to them, but with some clever cropping and adjusting, I was left with just what I wanted. To keep the overall design thematic, I looked for fonts that either resembled the texture of chalk or resembled handwriting.
Also, this book was a shorter project, which is why there is no text on the spine. This book was somewhere in the neighborhood of 12,000 words, which equated to 71 pages. To necessitate spine text, books published through Kindle KDP require at least 79 pages. The more you know!
A review of my services from this client:
"Zachary Anderson stayed at my wing during my self-publishing process. He is knowledgeable, professional, and thorough. He walked me through the publishing process from start to finish. After editing my work with constructive and specific feedback, he took the initiative to create two designs for my book cover to allow me choice and voice. He provided useful advice and made me aware of potential issues to help me stay proactive during the process. Cover to cover, Zachary Anderson, is the best editor and designer I could imagine."
~ Catherine Mabry
With many more to come...
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