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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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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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The cost of self-publishing a book in Australia in a turbulent world.

The cost of self-publishing a book in Australia in a turbulent world.

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CONTENTS

Cost of self-publishing a book – how are self-published authors affected?
How is the Australian self-publishing industry faring?
Paper and book printing costs – what does this mean for Australian self-publishing?
Book printing in Asia – does this affect self-publishers in Australia?

Cost of self-publishing a book – how are self-published authors affected?

The COVID pandemic has started to ease. But now it’s war in the Ukraine and tensions in the Middle East and Asia. You might think that as a self-published author in Australia you’ll be unaffected. But that’s not the case. Our present world has impacted on the cost of self-publishing a book.

For example some of our authors that we quoted on book printing 18 months ago, have been surprised that we can’t meet those prices any longer.

Here’s a quick update on where things are at.

How is the Australian self-publishing industry faring?

Self-publishing companies have been hit hard financially. We’ve seen quite a few Australian suppliers leave the industry. A  host of international publishers have disappeared as well.

This might seem tragic, but it has weeded out international book publishing scams and local small operators. Many of these operators – often one-, two- or three-person operations, simply couldn’t provide a full service or quality anyway.

Unfortunately, we’ve been contacted by a few Australian authors who have had their suppliers disappear. This was after they had made some payments. One author had their book design completed but because the publisher had ‘shut up shop’ was left stranded with no print and distribution. Ouch! The lesson is: stick with companies that are here for the long term.

Paper and book printing costs – what does this mean for Australian self-publishing?

Costs of self-publishing a book have been impacted by:

  • Paper – It’s what books are made of. Unfortunately, the price of pulp (and paper) has increased by 20% per annum over the last two years. Whether it is using digital or offset printing  Australian printers have had issues getting Australian made paper.  Papermills in Asia, Europe and the US also reduced their production at the start of the pandemic. Most of Australia’s imported paper comes from Europe. Russia and Ukraine are big exporters of paper products, and the war has upset supplies.
  • Energy prices in Europe have gone up due to the higher cost renewable energy and the disruption of Russian gas supplies to European mills. They’ve started placing a energy surcharge on orders.

Book printing in Asia – does this affect self-publishers in Australia??

Green Hill has a great Asia based book printing solution. This gives authors opportunity to get quality books at a great price. But authors printing a book in Asia, while cheaper, have been impacted by the cost of getting the book to Australia. Freight has added to costs of self-publishing a book.

  • International freight costs increased 350% in the past 12 months. This meant a book order for one of our authors cost Green Hill $2,000 more than our quoted price! That author got a real bargain. In future, we will not be quoting fixed prices on freight, rather the market price at dispatch from the Asian port. As freight prices stabilise and normalise (even reduce) this should not be an issue for our authors who print off-shore.
  • Another factor has been on-time delivery from Asia. Generally this has fallen to just 35% on-time. We’ve worked very hard on this, and our on-time delivery is approximately 90%. We think this is a real win for our authors considering the international situation.
  • The good news is we’ve recently completed negotiations with new Australian and Asian printers and expect to be able to offer some outstanding book printing deals before Christmas. Stay tuned!
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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

Frankfurt Book Fair – numbers are way down, but still mind-blowing!

Frankfurt Book Fair – numbers are way down, but still mind-blowing!

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Spain's elite book designers in conversationIt’s by far the world’s largest book fair and it’s back after the easing of the Covid pandemic. The event is still huge but only 50% of its normal size. Still there are 93,000 trade delegates and its suffice to say it’s a melting pot of nationalities, ideologies, creative talent and business acumen.

The first thing anyone coming to “Frankfurter Buchmesse” is the sheer size of this industry in terms of both cultural and intellectual importance and financial clout.

Spain's pavilion book industryGreen Hill Director David and Production Manager Gina are here getting a select cohort of our authors in front of foreign publishing companies. The fair is the world’s premium rights market where the right to publish books in defined territories/languages are bought and sold. We are representing just 5 of our authors.

The world’s top-tier publishing professionals have energetically reconvened with force. There are experts in every area imaginable from metadata/findability, production automation, marketing, rights, writing, design and technology (including new audio book technologies).

One thing is for sure – there are very few self-publishing companies interacting in this space. We have not seen another Australian self-publishing company here. We wonder where they are.

We have been complimented on Green Hill’s book design prowess and the quality of content. This bodes well for Green Hill’s future (and our faithful and valued authors).

David and Gina from Frankfurt I Germany

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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