I’ll start this article with a caveat. One of the best things about being an independent publisher or author-publisher is that you are in charge, and you get to make all the final decisions. If you want to break design rules with your project, you can, but it’s advisable that you at least respect the process if you want your book to be competitive. This is particularly true with nonfiction books where the cover is expected to be more precise.
As the project manager, the author-publisher is also the art director. If the book ends up with a bad cover, you’re ultimately to blame. If that happens, don’t worry; it’s never too late to fix things. Even major publishing companies make missteps. It was a cover remake for Joel Greenblatt’s The Little Blue Book that Beats the Market (Wiley, 2005) that is credited with helping it become a bestseller. In the late 1990s, Penguin redesigned the covers for its Modern Classics series, causing sales to soar in the under-25 demographic.
One issue that can impact the design quality is the time frame in which independent publishers often expect to have projects completed. They often want the cover design done in weeks or even days. Indeed, it can be done, but larger publishing houses can take months and even years to produce a book.
A Case Study
Despite the availability of great images, skilled illustrators, and professional designers, most of us have seen independent authors post an image of their book cover and thought to ourselves, “What were they thinking?” This happened recently on an online forum. The cover looked professionally designed. The font treatment was well done, and the layout was great, but the image was reminiscent of 1990s 3D artwork used on websites for children. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a good look for an adult nonfiction book. For the sake of this example and to protect identities, I’ll say the title is How to Magically Morph into a Financial Wizard. Let’s assume the 3D image is a wizard hat. I wondered how and why this cover happened. I purchased the book to ensure the image didn’t have some deeper hidden meaning. It didn’t. I discovered the cover resulted from one of those design “contests,” which makes it such an excellent study of what to avoid.
Finding the Right Concept: Avoid Idea Bias
Remember, you’re the boss. You’re the one managing the project and leading the team. With the Financial Wizard project, the author-publisher posted a very specific design brief: to create a cover featuring a wizard hat. By the end of the contest, the author had almost 200 covers to choose from. About six of those were great, and many more had potential. The author had a choice of many covers that would have been strong marketing tools. But she had an idea that she thought was brilliant. And she was the decision-maker.
This narrow cover design concept was the first mistake. It was simply illustrating a word in the title. Unless the word can be represented by an icon that will be used in marketing, a logo, or for keywords, it’s probably best to avoid doing this.
But don’t take my word for it. Watch this TED Talk by renowned book cover designer Chip Kidd discussing this issue. It will be 17 minutes of your life well spent, but if you’re in a hurry, the 3:02 mark is where he mentions this issue: tinyurl.com/Chip-Kidd-Video.
Being too literal on a cover can work against it as a marketing tool. As Robin Schiff, executive art director of Random House Publishing Group, said in the Random House video, The Art of Cover Design (youtube.com/watch?v=l2Z86L25v30), “Our job isn’t to illustrate the book. Our job is to intrigue the consumer—to set the tone, set the stage, create an atmosphere.”
Remember your target audience. Ask yourself who this book is for. Who are the retailers? Who is the competition?
Essential Collaboration
Another issue was due to the way design contests are set up. Aside from a brief provided by the publisher, there’s no real collaboration between the designers and the publisher early on. The entire process was only flowing in one direction. In the case of the wizard hat, the designers were never given a copy of the manuscript to read, and that content is valuable information for a designer. There was no table of contents or detailed synopsis to refer to. The focus was totally on a wizard hat.
It is possible to ask the author questions, and the author can rate covers on a star system as they are presented, giving the cover designers an idea of the direction the client likes. But, quite often, clients don’t log in again after posting the initial brief until the contest closes, so messages go unread, and there’s no feedback for designers to work from.
As any experienced publisher knows, design projects often evolve. You might start with a wizard hat and end up with an entirely different image or a text-only cover. It’s always best to keep an open mind and to be willing to shift and redirect as the process continues. The first idea isn’t always the best idea.
When hiring a designer, they will probably ask you for input and to share your vision for the cover. Or you can leave the creative process entirely in their hands, and for that to work, they need to read the manuscript or at least a detailed synopsis. It doesn’t have to be edited. Inspiration can happen when the designer is reviewing the content. In my experience, it’s often a combination of the author’s ideas and my interpretation of the content.
Research
The wizard hat might also have been avoided if the author had done any market research. The most essential tool in the concept process is research.
The first thing a publisher should do after deciding on a title is choose the BISAC category. The category will help in choosing keywords to find similar books in the same genre.
When researching your competition, don’t just look at Amazon; look at the big publishing houses for trends. Penguin Random House has many covers posted for upcoming books and an extensive catalog of published books. There are also Simon and Schuster, Wiley, Harper Collins, Macmillan, Hatchet, and countless successful small publishers. Don’t limit your search to North America or even English-speaking countries. The UK, Italy, France, Spain, Brazil, and Germany all have great publishing companies, and sometimes the same book will be published with a different cover elsewhere. Keep your target market in mind, however. The New York Times Bestseller List is another great place to look because those books have proven the marketing worked.
What are you looking for?
- Color trends
- Image style: photos, illustrations, icons, no image
- General style of the covers, such as grunge, retro, minimalistic, busy
- Font and lettering trends that can include fat retro-style letters, hand lettering, chalk-style lettering, embossed text
Keep track of covers you like and don’t like. This will help your designer when creating your book cover.
Avoid choosing a cover by setting up a poll for others to help you choose. All that will tell you is what they say they like. What you want to know is what they buy. So, ask them about the last nonfiction titles they purchased in your genre.
Accessibility
Remember when all anyone worried about was reading the title at thumbnail size? Well, accessibility is becoming an important topic for publishers as countries including the United States, Canada, and England develop accessibility standards for documents and print materials. A short list of details to consider includes:
- An easily read font with good letter spacing, even strokes that are neither too thin nor too thick. Bolder does not always equal clearer.
- Good leading that’s neither too deep nor too tight. Sometimes overlapping words are part of the design, but be cautious if going in that direction.
- Color. Contrast is key. I recommend a free program called Color Contrast Analyser by TPGi (tpgi.com/color-contrast-checker). It will allow you to use the eyedropper tool in whatever program you’re using, and there’s a color blindness simulator.
If you’re interested in learning more about being a project manager/art director and getting the best cover for your book, please check out some of the resources below.
Other Resources
- Here’s another TED talk by Chip Kidd that I recommend watching to learn more about cover design: tinyurl.com/Art-of-First-Impressions
- Illustrator, designer, and book creator Laurie Rosenwald wrote this article. Her book, How to Make Mistakes on Purpose: Bring Chaos to Your Order (Hatchette Go, 2021), is fascinating. If you’re pressed for time, scroll down to the halfway mark in this article and read the section about the development of the canary image used in her children’s book: tinyurl.com/Make-Mistakes-on-Purpose
- Penguin UK has an entire page of resources for anyone who wants to learn more about book cover design: tinyurl.com/Penguin-Design-Resources
Cathi Stevenson is the owner of Book Cover Express (bookcoverexpress.com). She has created more than 2,500 book covers for publishing houses of all sizes and for indie publishers.