WHAT MAKES A GREAT BOOK COVER DESIGN?

It’s a sad fact that many good books are let down by poor cover design and end up languishing in the dim and dusty corners of the Amazon website never to be purchased or read. Regardless of your witty dialogue, your perfectly executed narrative or your stunning interior page layout or custom illustrations, the truth is that a beautifully designed, eye-catching cover can make all the difference to the success of your book.

YOUR BOOK COVER SHOULD BE EYE-CATCHING

If your book doesn’t jump off the shelf and attract the attention of potential readers, there’s something missing in your cover design. Maybe it’s overly fussy, maybe it blends in too easily with the other books in the category or maybe it’s badly executed, design-wise. Some things to bear in mind are:

• Colours – Depending on your book and genre, you might choose strong, bold, contrasting colours, a monochrome or duotone theme or focus on complementary colours. Do your research in terms of colour theory and if necessary, the meaning of colours in relation to society and culture.
• Typography – Your choice of typescript, font size, colour and positioning on the page and in relation to other elements is crucial to your book cover success. In fact, many front cover designs consist entirely of typographical wizardry and sell very well. Make sure that your typography fits with the style and period of the book, and that the leading, kerning and so on are tweaked so that the letters are aesthetically correct.
• Images – Before you select the type of image you want for your book cover design (if you want images at all), ensure that you look at a range of possibilities, from hand-drawn paintings, paper cuts and collage to computer illustration, stock images and customised photography.

YOUR BOOK COVER SHOULD BE PROFESSIONAL

If your book cover looks home-spun, contains aesthetic inconsistencies or looks less than professional, it won’t sell. Okay, there are occasions where home-made is exactly the look you’re going for, but beneath the quirky look of these covers is very likely a professional book designer who knows exactly what they’re doing.

Unless you are a graphic designer yourself, hiring an expert to create your book cover is usually a worthwhile investment, and one that many authors are happy to make. Book designers charge anything between £100 and £1000, depending on the type of cover design you require and on their skills and experience. As with any freelancer you’re working with, make sure that you’ve seen examples of their work and know exactly what you’re getting for your money. Particularly important is establishing who owns the rights to the cover and how the cover can be used for marketing and publicity purposes. Most authors have full rights over their book covers and can use them in any way that they please, but are more than happy to acknowledge the cover designer on the copyright page and allow them to showcase the cover on their own website or in their portfolio – after all, as well as being the kind and right thing to do, it’s increased publicity for the book!

YOUR BOOK COVER SHOULD CONVEY THE MESSAGE OF THE BOOK

Although you can’t expect your cover designer to read the whole manuscript, it’s important that they understand what it’s about, the content, the main themes or messages it gives, and the purpose and target readership. So open communication is key. By ‘getting inside’ the book in this way, you can ensure cohesion between the outside and the inside of your book. This might extend to interior page layout design too, where you might choose to use the same typeface or a similar look and feel in terms of positioning images and text.

YOUR BOOK COVER COULD/SHOULD BE UNUSUAL

Your book cover doesn’t have to break the mould in terms of innovative design or brilliance of concept, but if it is unusual in some way, it will certainly create a talking point and might intrigue people enough to want to find out more. So if it fits in with the book itself and with your marketing strategy as a whole, go for it and come up with something wacky and wonderful! The more outlandish it is (as long as it is truly creative and original, rather than just a gimmick), the more people will want to put it on Pinterest and share it!

YOUR BOOK COVER SHOULD WORK AS A THUMBNAIL

Since so many book sales are now made online through Amazon, the iBook Store and so on, it is essential that your book cover design works well as a small thumbnail image. This means clear typography that is large enough to read easily at a distance, images that are unambiguous and a design that stands out from the others on the virtual bookshelf. Try taking screenshots of your competitors’ books from Amazon and placing your thumbnail next to them at the same size. Does it work? If not, why not?

YOUR BOOK COVER SHOULD FIT IN THE MARKETPLACE

Your book needs to look as though it fits its niche genre (so that potential readers understand that your book is crime fiction, or chick lit, or a cookery book), whilst still looking different and interesting enough to gain the attention it deserves. This is where research comes in. Make sure that you or your designer (or ideally both together) have checked out the competition (Amazon is great for this) and come up with something that keeps potential readers confident and comfortable, yet also brings something unique to the shelf. It’s no small order, I know, but time spent on this can really pay off.

To sum up, here’s a checklist of the main points to remember. Your book cover should:

• Be eye-catching
• Be professional
• Convey the message of the book
• Be unusual
• Was a thumbnail
• Fit in the marketplace

If you manage to come up with a design that hits the mark in all these respects, you’re onto a winner. Do people really judge a book by its cover? You bet.

If you want to see some of our favourite book cover designs, we have recently started a Pinterest board dedicated to this. Send us your favourites and if we like them too, we’ll include them on our board for everyone to see!

And, as always, if you’d like to find out more about what we do, including our illustration and cover design services, do browse around the rest of our website or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn.