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5 keys to a successful book cover design

5 keys to a successful book cover design

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As a self-published author, book cover designs can be daunting, and there are a lot of factors to consider before committing to your final concept and design. When starting to design a book cover, you need to think about:

    • Aesthetics
    • Functionality
    • Branding
    • Audience Appeal
    • Technical Requirements
    • Professionalism

But how can you ensure that your book cover has everything that it needs to succeed? What do you need to focus on for your book to attract readers and distributors in a world of traditionally published books? Firstly, we recommend hiring a book cover designer and following the 5 key points discussed below to make sure that you are getting the most from your book cover and your book designer.

Contents

1. Trust your book designer
2. Don’t try to tell the whole story with your book cover
3. Design for book’s audience, not yourself
4. Fit your book cover within a genre
5. Be a big picture thinker

1. Trust your book designer

If nothing else, the most important thing you can do to make your book cover a success is to listen to your designer. They will make your book cover look the best it can. Your designer wants the best for your book as much as you do, and will no doubt have amazing book cover ideas that you hadn’t considered before. They are also experience professionals who have worked on a number of books in the past, so they understand the book market and know what is more likely to sell and what is more likely to not.

It is important to communicate your preferences and vision for the book in a way that can be well understood when you have the design brief with the designer. Your book designer will take cues from your brief and design a book cover that is marketable to help your book shine on the shelves and meet your expectations.

2. Don’t try to tell the whole story with your book cover

It’s important to intrigue potential readers and leave them wanting more—not leave them confused and overwhelmed. The cover should be a teaser that makes the readers want to know more and entice them to pick up your book and take it home with them. It is not necessary to try to tell the whole story of a book on its cover as it is simply a visual representation of the book meant to grab attention. If you try to include every detail that’s in your book on your cover, it will be a cluttered mess of references that are lost on potential readers.

A good cover should be visually appealing, give a sense of what genre or style the book belongs to, and accurately represent the book. Pick one to three things that best convey what your story is about and your designer will use what they can to bring your cover to life.

3. Design for your book’s audience, not yourself

When thinking about book cover design, it is important to keep the target audience in mind, rather than designing solely on your own preferences. As discussed earlier, the cover should be visually appealing and reflective of the content and genre of the book, but also designed to appeal directly to the specific audience who are most likely to read it. This may involve considering factors such as age, gender, interests, and reading habits of the target audience.

Let the book designer create the cover from the eyes of a buyer. Often what an author believes they must have on their book cover doesn’t translate well to readers and they miss what the author wanted to achieve.

Though you may read a lot in the genre you wrote your book in, remember: you are the author, not your audience.

4. Fit your book cover design within a genre

When designing a book cover, it is important to consider the genre of the book and design a cover that fits within the conventions of that genre. The buyer—whether a distributor or a reader—should be able to immediately recognise the genre of the book by the cover design. For example, a mystery novel may feature a dark and dramatic cover with a silhouette or crime scene, while a romance novel may feature a romantic image of a couple. A science fiction book cover may feature images of futuristic technology, space, or aliens. A fantasy book cover may feature images of dragons, wizards, or other mythical creatures.

This doesn’t mean that your book should be a carbon copy of another, but if the genre is not clear then the buyer will have to work harder to decipher what your book is and will be more likely to disregard it in favour for another. Gather some inspiration from within your genre and similar and pick them apart. Try to figure out which elements on those covers would work for your book and tell your designer. This will give your book designer a good starting point for your cover and let them know what you like.

5. Be a big picture thinker

When considering your book cover design, be careful not to focus on particulars, such as the exact shade of a colour, the precise positioning of an image, and the perfect font size/weight to use. While attention to detail is important in many aspects of book cover design, it is also important to keep the big picture in mind. If you give your designer a list of overly detailed instructions of what the cover must include, you’ll restrict their creative license and may end up with an unattractive book cover that just does not work.

Think about what is necessary for your book cover and what will make it attractive and successful in retail, but more importantly what is not. The goal is to create a cover that is visually appealing and accurately represents the book, rather than focusing on small details that may not have a significant impact on the overall design.

Overall, a successfully designed book cover is one that looks professional and like it belongs in the market, effectively and concisely communicates the book’s content and style, appeals to the intended audience, is visually appealing and on-par with other books in its genre, and is harmonious.

To see some of our favourite covers, check out our Instagram.

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What is a metaphor for?

What is a metaphor for?

Stepehn wales Unbreakable self-published author

This book cover uses metaphor

What is a metaphor? Metaphors are undoubtedly a master communication tool and use in book publishing is no exception.

A metaphor can be described as:  a figure of speech that describes an object or action in a way that isn’t literally true, but helps explain an idea or make a comparison. https://www.grammarly.com/blog/metaphor/

‘Heart of stone’ and ‘heart of gold’ are two common ones. These present images that convey quite complex abstract concepts. Instead of saying ‘he is a very good person with good motives’ we say he has a ‘heart of gold’.  The first is long-winded, ‘heart of gold’ is interesting and colourful.

The fisherman book cover

A boring cover image for a boring book

Its not just about words – metaphors are a good cover design technique.

Some of the best book cover designs we have accomplished use metaphor. This avoids the book publisher’s curse – trying to convince authors not adopt a book cover with literal imagery. One author wanted this image on their book called The Fisherman – this was a literal title. Guess what the book was about? It was about a fisherman. The fisherman went to the river and fished for fish. The cover (according to the author ) needed to have a picture of a man fishing i.e. a fisherman. The result – boring, boring, boring!

When we conduct a creative brief where you the author and we, the book designer discuss how the cover design will play out –  it will pay for you to think about the designer using metaphor.

Here’s a little more from Grammarly:

  • A metaphor states that one thing is another thing
  • It equates those two things not because they actually are the same, but for the sake of comparison or symbolism
  • If you take a metaphor literally, it will probably sound very strange (are there actually any sheep, black or otherwise, in your family?)
  • Metaphors are used in poetry, literature, and anytime someone wants to add some colour to their language

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Interested in publishing your book but unsure where to start or what is even involved? Tell us about your project and we will post you a copy of our:

 

The Little Book of
Big Publishing Tips.

 

In just a quick 8,000 words, this little book will equip you with the knowledge you need to successfully publish your book.

The Little Book of Big Publishing tips goes into the essentials of self-publishing a book, outlining the business and financial side of publishing, legal issues, design, editing, sales and marketing. There's even a section on how to identify a vanity-publishing scam.

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Avoid self-publishing’s #1 pitfall: Quality

Avoid self-publishing’s #1 pitfall: Quality

Quality starts with you the author. How good is your writing and is what you are writing about wanting to be read? But there are two other key factors.

The cornerstone of the traditional publishing industry is good quality content. Publishers take good quality content and wrap it in good design. The title is then placed within their well-developed marketing system.

Let’s first define “traditional publishing”. Traditional publishing is where a publisher pays you for the right to publish your work. The author needs to present their manuscript to a publisher and then negotiate a fee that the publisher will pay for use of that content. If a contract is reached it’s invariably because the publisher has assessed the quality of the manuscript as high.

A high-quality manuscript increases the chance that the book will sell and the publisher will make a nice profit (and so will you).

Traditional publishing companies – at least the successful ones – can spot a quality book and pre-empt if it will appeal to readers and if it is likely to sell well.

A literary agent works for you to find a publisher to bring your book to market. Things are so competitive that you first need to convince the literary agent to take you on. Then they need to represent your work to publishers (oft times after editing). This is a lengthy process.

Sometimes authors can go directly to publishers with samples of their writing. This is quicker than going through a literary agent. A key is selecting a publisher where your work and the genre they are most successful in publishing have good fit. But know this – many publishing houses will refuse “un-agented” manuscripts. Manuscripts that have already gone through an agent are of a higher quality (if the agent is doing their job well). Often agents will require you to have the book edited before they are prepared to present your work to a publisher.

When a manuscript arrives within a traditional publishing house, a process of quality assessment begins. This starts with the decision of the publishing company to read the manuscript. Many manuscripts don’t get read because the genre of the book is not one the publisher is familiar with or has been successful with. Or it can depend on the reputation of the literary agent placing the manuscript.

If all goes well a senior editor in the publishing company may refer the manuscript to a junior editor or editorial assistant. The assistant will make an early recommendation about how well the book will suit publishing.

The process of using an agent and having a publishing company take you on, brings with it its own process of quality control.

As a self-publisher, you can get into print without any quality control whatsoever. And that’s a problem. If you ’re expecting your title to go viral you better have a damn good book!

There are two simple things you can do to improve quality:

  1. Green Hill can refer you to an expert editor to help your work become a better book. Editors can’t work miracles but they are often worth every cent invested.
  2. Green Hill’s standard publishing package comes with high-end book cover design. So many self-published authors unnecessarily design their own book cover and many of these designs simply kill any potential the book had of succeeding. You often need to put your cover design ideas to the side and get a skilled graphic designer with fresh eyes to design for you.

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The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

Interested in publishing your book but unsure where to start or what is even involved? Tell us about your project and we will post you a copy of our:

 

The Little Book of
Big Publishing Tips.

 

In just a quick 8,000 words, this little book will equip you with the knowledge you need to successfully publish your book.

The Little Book of Big Publishing tips goes into the essentials of self-publishing a book, outlining the business and financial side of publishing, legal issues, design, editing, sales and marketing. There's even a section on how to identify a vanity-publishing scam.

submit your project details