Advice for Creating a Book Cover

Our brain is designed to accept, interpret and react to what we see. This is important to remember since the average reader will base their book-buying decision on their emotional judgment of your book's cover.

A Deeper Functionality

A book cover has a deeper functionality than a painting. It’s not only supposed to be attractive but also tell a brief story of what your book is about. Your book’s cover is a highly-effective marketing tool that validates the reader’s perception of who you are and your written work's value. It can promote an established author's brand/social media presence, and be the sales funnel a new writer-on-the-block needs to reach prospective readers.

Design a Book Cover by its Genre or Topic

A book cover can be whimsical, creepy, grisly, hopelessly romantic or futuristic, for example. At the very minimum, the cover should be designed to match the reader’s expectation of your book’s genre or topic. And this is where it gets tricky. Creating a book cover that’s too similar to others of the same genre may or may not get noticed. If it's too unique, it could cause genre confusion for the reader. You, the author, must find the sweet spot designing an original but ideal book cover.

What Makes A Book Cover Ideal?

Creating a book cover requires time to do properly. The ideal cover should:

⦁ Capture readers' attention with a memorable book title

⦁ Use evocative imagery (or accurately convey the subject or topic if it’s a non-fictional work.)

⦁ Stimulate curiosity

⦁ Initiate a call-to-action to buy your book

Your Book’s Cover Is Your Logo

Most companies use logos to distinguish themselves from their competitors. It’s not farfetched to view a book cover as an author’s logo since readers generally associate the book cover with the author’s name. Brainstorm design ideas browsing various genres of books on Google Play Books, Amazon or anywhere else that will provide insight on what makes a an eye-catching cover to stand out from the competition. Also, stay updated on book cover design trends. They do change, from year to year!

Design Yourself Or Hire A Professional?

The cost creating an impactful cover shouldn’t be skimped on. You’ve worked hard writing your manuscript’s final draft, and it’s not only practical but also profitable to make your efforts count.

Usually, it’s best to let a professional design your cover. The preliminary stage requires a brief description of your book’s genre, target readers you want to reach; book synopsis and sometimes snippets of a scene(s) from the manuscript. You can also submit images, colors, font styles, covers from other authors’ books, etc., to help your designer better visualize what you want. Several revisions will likely need to be made until you can pick a few favorite drafts.

Book Cover Designing Apps

Arranging elements on a book cover in just the right way takes skill. That’s because it has underlying complexities attached to its layout that you'll likely do incorrectly.

There are book cover designing sites that can deliver decent to very attractive-looking covers if you prefer to design the book cover yourself. You can always revamp your book cover later down the road, if you’re no longer happy with it.

From Thumbnail to Bookshelf

Roughly, thirty-three percent of books are published in the digital format. So it’s crucial that your presentation be as legible as a thumbnail as it would if it were being viewed from a literal bookshelf.

Use Creativity

Every author has to make a judgment call on what will convey their story the best. Any usage of graphics, color(s), fonts, illustrations and/or stock photos should deliver the greatest visual impact. For example, your book cover’s font doesn’t have to be of the same style. You can mix styles or customize them from scratch. Also, you can use illustrations as a platform to fuse text with images.

The following is an example of how a self-published author went about the process of designing a book cover without doing any homework. The book cover at the top of the article conveys the right mood but doesn't deliver it effectively in the following areas:

Wrong Dimensions

The dimensions look more like a VHS case than an e-book cover.

Grainy Images

The scene was clipped from a newspaper back in 2009. The resolution isn't sharp, and nothing from the scene pops.

Mediocre Title

Imagine you’ve just released your romance novel (or whatever your book’s genre is) on Amazon. Your book’s title is The Proposal. The odds of your book being selected from a heap of novels using the same title are slim. The author needs to strongly consider changing the book title to something more original and relevant to the novel’s overall message.

Boring Font

The font type is more middle-of-the-road than eye-catching and needs to be replaced with a font style synonymous with the romance genre.

Going Back To The Drawing Board

Going back to the drawing board, the author has to study the basic elements needed to create a more impactful book cover:

Does the title's wording say blah or wow?

Do the images pop?

Does the book cover look too generic, too unique?

Does the font type reflect the genre and meaning of the title?

Just glancing at the colors of the background and the presentation of the images, the cover reflects the mood of a serious romance. The e-book’s title, The Proposal, hints the man’s desire to ask the woman to marry him. That would be the logical assumption but does it best describe what the story is really about? The next article will show how the author can select a more appropriate title based on a novel’s overall theme.