Chapter 4

Tips for Book Cover Design

Before you decide on the right book cover design, you should have a complete and polished manuscript in front of you. There are several elements of your book cover design that depend on both your storyline and your book’s length. The cover is one of the most critical elements of your book. It’s the advertisement for your story, the sizzle that sells. When properly executed, it attracts the eye and tempts readers to look inside. But hitting the right note takes thought, discussion, revision…and time.

With over one million books being published every year, readers will have difficulty discovering your masterpiece unless you find a way to break through the clutter, get people’s attention, and convince them to crack open your book and start reading. Following these book design basics is a good place to start, so let’s take a look at the anatomy of a book cover to create a cohesive look that appeals to your readers.

Front Cover

Think of your front cover as the preview of your book. Just like a movie preview is there to help viewers decide if they want to spend $20 to see a film, your front cover is what your reader is going to use to judge whether they want to invest their time and money into reading your story. This is your chance to hook them.

There are two main parts of your front cover: imagery and typography.

Book Cover Imagery
Your imagery could encompass a number of things: you could use a photograph, an illustration, geometric shapes, or just an interesting play on color. Whatever imagery you decide to use, you should showcase it in a way that feels true to the spirit of your book. So, for example, if you wrote a memoir about camping in Yosemite, you might have an image of a tent with Half Dome looming in the background.

You also want to make sure you use your imagery in a design-friendly way. Make sure that your image doesn’t overwhelm your typography, and make sure it’s laid out in a way that feels balanced; you don’t want to have a ton of imagery in the top right corner of the cover and then nothing on the other three corners.

Book Cover Typography
The typography on your cover should include three things: your book’s title, the subtitle (if you have one), and the author name. Make sure to use text hierarchy to bring attention to the more important text (for example, you’ll want your title text to be larger than your subtitle text). In terms of where your text should go, you can put your title on the top of your cover or toward the bottom; just make sure you put it somewhere above your name so it’s the first thing people read. For bestselling authors, their name may be larger than the book title, but until you’ve achieved bestseller status, we recommend making your book’s title the focal point of your cover instead of your author name.

You want to be sure all type is clear and easily readable. Creativity is great—as long as it doesn’t get in the way of clarity. Avoid fancy type fonts that hide the title and other information in a cloud of swirls and other flourishes.

If you’re publishing an ebook, pay extra attention to how your cover looks at a small size, as most people will be viewing it as a tiny thumbnail. Make sure you have one clear visual element that tells your story and makes your cover stand out on the screen.

But what does a well-designed cover look like? Here are eight book cover design tips to keep in mind:

1. Understand Your Genre
   Genre is essential to the cover design. While plenty of people like a little variety in their bookshelves, most people prefer one or two genres over others. The genre determines certain design standards that readers of that particular book expect to find when searching for their next read in their preferred genre. If your Gothic mystery, romance, fantasy, or literary fiction title doesn’t look similar to the books a reader is used to reading in those genres, he or she is not likely to pick it up in the first place.
   
   Through the years, publishers have developed distinct looks for various types of books: for example, silver, red, or yellow covers with the author’s name in large black type typically denote suspense novels; navy blue and green have been known to signal business books. The person who wants to read humorous essays is going to overlook your book if it’s designed like a dystopian YA novel, because a jarring dark cityscape with glowing neon text isn’t really their thing. And so on. To attract your target readers, you must follow this unwritten code. Head to the bookstore to study the books in your genre, and then design a cover similar in style to those successful titles.
2. Give Readers a Sneak-Peek of What’s to Come
   The content of your story is essential to the cover design because including subtleties of your plot, themes, characters, or tone are a good way to intrigue readers from the beginning and foreshadow what’s to come within your book’s pages.
   
   The cover of the universally acclaimed Life of Pi by Yann Martel does an excellent job of framing the story and building an emotional connection to the protagonist, a young man trapped on a lifeboat with a ferocious tiger.
   

   
   When it comes to how much your cover should give away, think of it in terms of the “The Three Bears Principle”: not too much, not too little…but just enough. When a potential reader picks up your book, they should at least get a general framework of what they can expect between the front and back cover.

   Your cover design should hint at the overall theme and plot of the story without giving away any major plot details or spoilers. By giving potential readers a sneak preview, you’re pointing them to the information they need to make an informed decision on whether your story is one in which they want to invest.

3. Introduce Your Protagonist
   Whether they’re irritatingly perfect or tragically flawed, a model citizen or the definition of an anti-hero, readers have to feel connected to your protagonist in order to feel compelled to read their story. If you can establish a connection with your protagonist before they ever even crack open your book, you’re ahead of the game.

   
   Use your book cover design to start building that connection. Whether it’s overt (like adding a photo or illustration of your main character) or subtle (like visually alluding to a significant part of their character, like the bowler hat they’re never without or their cherished ‘63 Bug), using your cover as a way to start building the relationship between your main character and your reader will help you attract the kind of audience that’s going to want to hear your protagonist’s story.

   The cover of The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime by Mark Haddon incorporates multiple elements of a well-designed cover. The designer alludes to the plot with the graphic of the dog and pitchfork, and the whimsical font is a great representation of the child protagonist.

4. Set the Right Tone
   All books have a dominant tone. Maybe your book is humorous, or a huge tear-jerker, or a “who-done-it” thriller that keeps your readers on the edge of their seats, biting their nails in anxiety. And while your book surely has other experiences within its pages (sad books can have humorous moments; thrillers often have a token humorous character to cut the tension), you want to make sure your dominant tone comes through on your cover.

   
   Your book cover design should match the tone of your book in order to attract the right readers. So, if your book is humorous, the cover shouldn’t include darkly contrasting imagery with a blood red title. And if your book is likely to rip your readers’ hearts out of their chest, cartoonish illustrations with bubble fonts have no business on the front of your book.

5. Follow the Rules of Design
   Good book cover design isn’t a guessing game. There are very specific rules and guidelines to follow if you want to create a well-designed book cover, and the "rules" for book covers pertain to font, text hierarchy, contrast, and the like.

   
   Use fonts that are genre-appropriate and easy to read. Use text hierarchy to emphasize the important text on your cover, like your title. Create contrast between the background colors and the text to make it pop off the page and grab your readers’ attention. Leverage color psychology to elicit the right emotional responses from your readers.

   Design rules are rules for a reason: they work. And when you integrate them into your book cover design, you can trust they’ll work for you.

6. Include Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Details
   Subtle design elements include hints about your book's plot, characters, and tone. The not-so-subtle details are what create that "WOW!" factor and make people want to buy and read your book, and they are really where you have the opportunity to elevate your design. Things like lighting, shading, image treatment, image arrangement, text hierarchy, and layering are what takes a book cover design from “ok” to “epic.”

   
   Your book cover design isn’t a place to cut corners. You want to make sure every detail of your cover positions you as the capable and professional author you are.

7. Consider Book Cover Design as an Extension of Your Author Brand
   If you’ve written more than one book (whether as a series or completely unrelated), it can help to have similar coloring and design to tie your works together. Not only does this grab your readers’ attention, but it can also help build your author brand; if you integrate your distinct visual style into all of your book covers, it will make it easier for your readers and the world at large to recognize your work.
8. Don’t Be Afraid to Test It
   Design more than one front cover and set up a reader poll to help you select the final design. You don't have to use the cover that wins your poll. However, if you do conduct a poll, you'll receive valuable feedback about what you're trying to sell, who's most likely to buy it, how to reach your intended audience, and ultimately increase sales.

   
   Social media is a great place to run A/B testing (or split testing), where you produce two versions of the same thing but with one minor difference to see the impact of that change. The smaller the change, the more useful your learning will be.

   Here are a few things you could split test for your book cover:

   • Title font: serif vs. sans-serif
   • Title size: A large title vs. a smaller one
   • Color scheme: a cold, bluish cover vs. a warm, yellow one.
   • Image: photography vs. illustration

   There is no right answer to any of these: the point of the test is to see how your target audience responds. If you just want to choose between two cover concepts you’ve already created, you can simply pit them against each other.

   You can poll other authors in an indie Facebook group about what genre they think your book is, based on your cover design alone, or you can run an experiment to determine the actual marketing value of book covers by creating two Facebook ads with identical copy targeting the same audience (gender, age, location, interests), with the only difference being the cover image displayed in the ad.

   Be sure to run the ads over the same timeframe (say, a week, perhaps) and expose both ads to the same amount of users (shoot for 1,000). By tracking how many users engage with the ad, you can determine which cover is more effective as a marketing asset.

To some, book cover design is a subjective art—what works for one reader might not work for another. And to a certain extent, that is true. However, tests like these can give you insight into what works for most people—and offer you a data-driven method to help your book live up to its potential. Plus, involving your potential readers in certain behind-the-scenes book decisions along the way, like cover design, can help you build a community around your book before it’s actually published.

Back Cover

Once you’ve hooked people with your front cover, they’ll flip your book over to find out more information. The back cover is your chance to build on the intrigue you sparked on the front cover and convince them that your book can’t be missed. In this way, the back cover is just as important as the front.

On the back cover, you can include:

• Book description
• Book reviews
• An author bio
• ISBN number and barcode

Your back cover tells readers what the book is about, and if the author is qualified to write the story—and in that order. Make your book description or reviews the focus of your back cover (since those are the elements most likely to push people over the edge and inspire a purchase). Readers are trained by traditionally published books to expect the description first, the author bio second. Don’t frustrate them by deviating. Put your author bio, ISBN number, and barcode on the bottom quarter of the page.

Equally important, keep the story description snappy and the author bio short. Resist the temptation to tell readers that you own four cats, love to scuba dive, won a 4-H award in high school, and other irrelevant information.

If you’re publishing a hardcover book, some of this information can be put onto the interior flaps of the dust jacket. Similarly, if you’re publishing digitally, this info will be text on the ebook’s description page.

Spine

The last part of the book cover design that you’ll need to put some thought into is your spine. Since most bookstores shelve their books vertically, your spine is the only real way for your potential readers to easily spot your masterpiece on a shelf.

When it comes to spines, you’ll want to keep it simple. On the top of the spine, write the title (this should also be in the largest font). Then, include your author name toward the bottom, followed by your publisher imprint.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make on your book spine is to automatically use the same font that appears on the cover. Sometimes, it’s better to tweak the spine font so that it’s easy to read spine-out. Use as much of the spine width as possible for the book title—make the type large and easy to read from a distance. Avoid putting any busy imagery under the title that would make it hard to read.

When you’re designing your cover, make sure your spine design will work with your book length; if your book is less than 150 pages, you might run into some formatting issues.

Attracting more readers in an oversaturated market isn’t easy, but the physical quality of your book, including your cover, is key to getting your independently published book off the shelf and into your reader’s hands. And now that you know the anatomy of a winning book cover, you can start designing or at least better know how to judge the cover you receive from a professional designer.

This chapter was compiled from the following posts on the IngramSpark blog:

4 Ways to Make Your Book Cover Design Shine by Patti Thorn, managing partner at BlueInk Review

Book Cover Design Basics by Chris Payne, corporate controller at 99designs

How To Use Facebook Ads to Test Your Book Cover Design by Martin Cavannagh, content marketer for Reedsy

Book Design: 4 Details That Help Your Book Look Professional by Jane Friedman, editor of The Hot Sheet

What Your Book Cover Says About Your Book by L.M. Merrington, Australian author

5 Tips for Front Book Cover Design by IngramSpark Staff