Do book covers need to be meaningful?

Book covers are a very important part of book design and book marketing. So I understand why book cover design can be a element of focus (and sometimes angst) for independent authors. Often authors overthink their covers, putting too much emphasis on the interpretive meaning. They want their covers to do the impossible – convey everything about their book, extending even to subplots and the book’s nuances. The problem is that readers (or book buyers) simply won’t understand the cover.  These covers can end up looking really poor.

Contents

1. The common issue with “meaningful covers”
2. Aesthetics are critical
3. The formula for book cover mediocrity
4. Is your book too complex for the cover to convey meaning

The common issue with “meaningful covers”

We often have authors who provide a sometimes detailed cover brief asking for the cover to convey meaning. Also common is the request to make the cover suitable for readers, the author’s reader target audience.

Authors ask:

1. Can you visually demonstrate what the book is about? I want the cover to explain the book at a single glance – what the book means, and
2. Can you make the cover appeal to the target audience?

Often this sort of brief is because the author is overthinking everything. Or the author doesn’t understand that cover design is largely about ‘art’ and not ‘science’. Authors may want the cover to do the impossible.

1.1 On point one

This is often overly ambitious. Authors can give several parameters that the cover design needs to achieve and often this is an impossible task for a book cover design. A book of 70,000 words is so long because the author needs to build a complex argument – to convey their thesis or ideas to the reader. It’s words, words and more words. There might be one big idea and a dozen supporting ideas. With this approach to design briefing the result is a book cover design that might look a little like a pizza, a smashing together of images that try to convey meaning (or reflect the book’s many elements). Aesthetically the cover design might be poor or unpleasant to view. Readers usually have great difficulty de-coding or understanding what the cover is about. In a marketing sense this is the worst possible outcome. The cover looks bad and the reader finds it confusing.

1.2 On point two

This is a big ask. Having read a ‘marketing 101’ business book that outlined the concept of ‘targeting’, one author said I want the book to appeal to women aged 35-45 years, medical professionals, who are thought leaders. But also make it desirable for men and the general public of all readers. This might be possible (the first parameter) with some market research and psychographic profiling. But its near impossible. Even if research was done the book designer would have to apply those findings in a graphic sense. For example 35% of one target group may ‘have high concern about global warming’, ‘32% may ‘not fear global warming’. The data is inconclusive. One author briefed can you make it just a little bit ‘environmental’. It’s the sort of thing that isn’t actionable by a book designer.

One author told our book designer that the cover couldn’t be green because that colour does not appeal to women aged 65+. Another said the cover font can’t be in all capitals rather in upper and lower case,  because it appears ‘too blocky’ or ‘regimented’ and the young men under 25 years he is targeting are freethinkers. These examples are bizarre but true!

When point 1 and point 2 combine there’s trouble brewing. And it can get even worse, much worse (see Section 3 below).

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2. Aesthetics are critical

Often the best book cover designs are too ambitious purely because of the author’s desire to convey complexity of meaning. An ugly cover can be the result, and the vast majority of readers simply won’t purchase or even pick up an ugly book.

The book designer has aesthetics top of mind, and these can often be in conflict with the author’s personal preferences. The best book cover designs are when the book designer is granted creative license.

Book cover artwork can be purely decorative. This can mean using a pattern or texture or simply colour. Decoration as an aesthetic art form was pioneered by master artists like Henri Matisse and Piet Mondrian and of course is an enduring feature of Islamic art. And patterns are so pleasing to the human eye – its why wallpaper is so popular!

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3. The formula for book cover mediocrity

(Point 1 + Point 2) x (author’s aesthetic preferences) = a very bad book cover.

There’s a third part of the ‘formula’. That is the author’s aesthetic preference or preconceptions.

A really fine author with a non-fiction self-help guide stumbled at the last hurdle of book cover design. The book cover was orange. He remarked ‘we can’t have that because of Donald Trump… the book won’t sell with an orange cover”. Why? ‘Because Donald Trump is called “Orange Man” ‘. To demonstrate the folly of this thinking I said ‘the orange growing industry in California must be in real trouble’… he got my point.

Another author didn’t want ‘white space’ on the cover because it ‘says to the reader I don’t have much to say’. Another said ‘I don’t like the colour blue’, another said ‘no primary colours, I don’t like bright colours’. The trouble with this sort of instruction to a book designer is that the author is designing the book cover for themselves, not for the market. And it ‘cramps’ the book designer’s greatest power – the ability to craft a great book design with nuanced creative decision making.

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4. Is your book too complex for the cover to convey meaning?

If the answer is ‘yes’, what then? You don’t need to have a cover tell the whole story. You don’t need a book cover to have meaning. A powerful alternative is to have the cover artwork set the ‘mood’ or ‘tone’.

Often with non-fiction books, a good design approach is to use text/typography, colour, shape and pattern.

Nothing beats a great title… Ken Blanchard’s ‘One Minute Manager’ is an awesome title that injects meaning. But then the title combined with shape and colour makes for a very effective book cover design. It’s simple and has a great aesthetic. The title assumes the dominant role of conveying meaning.

Using type and patterns is a very effective way to produce a ‘meaningless’ cover that can have a great aesthetic. Remember a great aesthetic can be more than half of the battle in producing a marketable book. If the book is aesthetically pleasing it means most people will find it ‘likeable’ and a likeable book is a desirable book.

Patterns are great at setting tone or mood. A pattern can be sophisticated or rough. A pattern can be subtle or bold. A pattern can be exciting or sober. And, yes at risk of appearing contradictory, a pattern can convey meaning (just to insert a little more complexity into this blog post!)

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