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Importance of Book Cover Design

Why is it important?

A book cover creates an impression to potential readers about the content inside. For this reason, when launching any book, the design is on of the most important marketing tools. If the cover design of any book is done poorly & does not connect with people, then that can result in a loss of sale.

This is why if you want to publish a book of any sort, it would be best to hire a professional designer that will help get the book into the hands of readers creating feelings & emotions.

Cover Design Catches Attention of Buyers

There are a lot of books hitting the market right now. An eye-catching book cover can make a huge difference and act as the difference between a sales success and a sales flop. An attention=grabbing book cover is for your book cover to have the right amount of information that will help persuade people to want to pick it up and purchase it.

Boasts about reviews

A correctly created book cover may bring out a positive book review from a well-respected book critic and can vastly improve the success off a book.

When giving a review for a book, it should contain the complexities that are set forth by the work itself. The review should cover what has been done, how it has been implemented, and whether or not it has been delivered in a particular way.

Gives a glimpse of the book

The main thing with book covers is to attract potential readers to the book by giving just a glimpse of it, while not overdoing it at the same time. However, you want to be careful on how to tread this carefully. You want the cover to portray a purpose or theme that is important in the book in a manner that is distinctive. With that being said, you never want your cover to tell the entire story of the book.

Book cover elements to guarantee success:

Book covers are everywhere. For instance, it is featured on social media, sales websites, brochures, and the actual book itself. To ensure the marketing and sales go well, it is important to include the basic elements of design into your books. Those elements are:

Line

Color

Shape

Texture

Space

Type

Image

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Basic Elements Within Design

Seven Basic Elements of Design

Line

Shape

Color

Texture

Type

Space

Image

LINE

Lines can help organize information, define shapes, imply movement, and convey emotions.

Horizontal, Vertical & Diagonal

Straight, Curved or Freeform

Zigzag or create other patterns

Solid, Broken or Implied

SHAPE

Best understood as areas, forms, or figures contained by a boundary or closed outline.

Geometric Shapes: Include either two-dimensional or three-dimensional forms. They connect by either straight or curved lines and usually tend to be simplistic.

Organic Shapes: Are less uniform, proportional and well defined. They can be symmetrical or asymmetrical.

COLOR:

Color can be useful for communicating a mood or provoking an emotional response from your viewer.

TEXTURE

The feel or a surface, furry, smooth, rough, soft, gooey, or glossy. Graphic Designers visually convey texture by using illusions, so suggest how their work may feel if you could touch it. You may work with organic textures or can create abstract pattern by uniformly repeating two-dimensional elements.

TYPE

You want to make sure your type is legible and appropriate to your subject. Type affects the overall mood of a design, so consider whether you should use print or script fonts. The weight of your lettering is also an important part of your design.

Jason Alejandro designed the cover of this book. Alejandro is known for the great use of typography in his work. He has a unique typographic style that helps you take those first steps when becoming a designer.

SPACE

Spacing is a vital part of any designer's toolkit. You can design breathing room, increase its visual impact, balance out heavier visual elements and emphasize images or messages. Without the use of space, a design can risk becoming too visually cluttered for your audience to understand.

IMAGE

It provides context for a designer's communication, adds necessary drama or action, and creates an overall mood.

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Book Cover Design

What is book design?

Book design is the art of incorporating the content, style, format, design, and sequence of the various components and elements of a book in a coherent unit.

How to become a Book Designer?

Learn How to Design Covers

Practice your skills

Create a portfolio

Attend Events

Market you abilities

Contact Authors & Publishers

Who is the author?

Within the design process, you should start with the author. You want to think about if they are a younger or older designer. Figuring that out will depend on whether they are upcoming or established & trusted.

Does the genre of your book have a style?

There are a lot of genres such as romance, thrillers, fantasy, horror, & science-fiction that have a style that is already created and was designed decades ago. When you're designing, you want to create something surprising and new.

Where will the book be sold?

Depending on where a book is sold, could impact how you're going to design a book cover. With eBooks being a big thing now, text must be larger and more eye catching as consumers scroll through so many titles on a screen. Printed books, consumers can flip through it and get a more tactile experience.

Information you are going to need

Format - (paperback, hardback, or casebound)

Copy

Graphics

Budget - (Both author and designer should be aware)

May include stock images, barcodes, font licenses, etc.

Understand the elements of a cover

There are three parts to a cover you must think about.

Font Cover

Back Cover

Spine

Typically, paperback books are glued together with paper cover & cut to size. Hardbacks are sewn or glued incase a cardboard case, then covered in cloth or paper. There are also flaps on each side which are the endpapers. Designers can use endpapers to tie a book together.

Research The Market

Some genre's sell better in paperback and some genre's sell better in hardcover. Libraries prefer hardcover books. Books you might travel with might be best to be paperback. Keep price point in mind as well.

Choose a Design Direction

Consider your design direction and how it will fit with the author's vision of their book. Make sure to consider input from the author or publisher themselves. Think about different material you may use. You should get inspiration from other books. Figure out what you like and what you don't like. (That could help you later in the design process if you get stuck.)

What do you need to emphasize?

What makes a book unique?

Is it a character?

The style of writing?

The setting where the book takes place?

Think about if the author decides to make it a series. (How will future titles be linked in design to the first?)

Choose Graphics & Fonts

Writers have big imaginations. Designers should create something that represents the wondrous world's their pages create. Narrowing down a style can be difficult. Covers can feature anything from cartoon doodles to modern typography.

Collect Feedback

The more people that can find the book eye-catching or not, the more you'll be able to know whether your cover is sending the right message. It is best to start with your judgement and then move to the author. From there, you should ask some outsiders what they think, and what's their opinion.

You should know the Printing Process

Typically, the printer will want one flat file that has all the graphics, text information for the font, back covers, spine, and the endpapers. It should be on one wide file that you print and cut or fold to fit the final book. Most printers request high-quality pdf's. Your colors must be CMYK for printing.

DESIGNER INSPIRATION

JOAN WONG

Wong is a designer that stunned me looking at her designs. If you turn your interest more into wanting to become a cover design, I would check out her website. She has created a lot of unique cover designs that I believe show a lot of inspiration.

Coralie Bickford-Smith

She is known for her clothbound classics.

The Fox & the Star (Named book of the year)

The Song of the Tree

The Worm and the Bird