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Despite what the saying would have us believe, we all judge books by their cover. We can't help it. So, having a great cover is critical- your sales, and thus your success as an author, may very well depend on it. Your potential readers are making split seconds decisions every day about which books to take a chance on. Having a great cover gives your book a fighting chance to stand out. How do you make a book cover stand out? That's exactly what I'll be covering in this post.
What is the purpose of a book cover?
A book cover has an important job. It communicates with the reader and tells them what story it has inside so the reader can decide if they want to read that book or not. For this reason, it's important that the cover match the book so that the ideal readers of your work can correctly identify and buy it. A cover also has to be good to look at, but this is a secondary function.
Elements of a Great Cover
Composition
What is composition?
This refers to the placement of all the elements within an image. These elements include lines, balance, symmetry, depth, colors, scale, and lighting, to name a few. Where things are placed will affect how the eye perceives the overall image. In the case of a cover graphic, this is how the title, subtitle, author name, and cover image(s) will be placed to create the overall cover graphic.
Consider the rule of thirds which says that the best position to place the main points of interest in your image is along the imaginary grid intersections of two vertical and two horizontal lines overlayed on the image. This is because when viewing an image, a person's eyes naturally go to these intersections points rather than the center. Furthermore, in the case of a portrait, it's best to place the subject's eye line along the top horizontal line.
Let's look at an example.
If you're like most people, the image on the right looks better- even though the image on the left is perfectly centered. Play around with this concept, and take a look at your own pictures and you might find that the ones you like the most intuitively obey the rule of thirds.
Color
This is straightforward. The colors you use on the cover will be one of the first things a potential buyer sees. Your use of color can have drastic or subtle effects. Color can make a cover feel loud and commanding- like it's screaming at you to pick it up. It can also feel gentle and soft- like it's whispering that there's something special for you inside. Color choice can also make your book disappear into the background- which should be avoided. Whatever the desired effect, it's important to have colors that play well together and that create an overall sense of harmony within the cover.
Complementary colors- as the name suggests, these colors work well together. When they are next to each other, they each look good and make the other colors look good too. They complement each other.
Let's look at an example that highlights the effect of color choice:
The graphic on the right is more eye-catching. The contrast of the subtle background color makes the red and green of the wording in the title and the author's name stand out. Also, red and green are complementary colors, and purple harmonizes with red. By comparison, the graphic on the left is altogether more harmonious, with less contrast- so nothing clashes and the graphic is pleasant to look at, but it's also rather forgettable. Given the choice, I'd first be pulled toward the graphic on the right.
Industry Comps
This should answer the question: What are your peers doing? By knowing this, you ensure that you align yourself with the latest trends within your genre.
Why? Because consumers (in this case readers) tend to develop a pattern of behavior when making purchasing decisions. Marketing firms rely on this, which is why they spend vast sums of money studying these patterns and using their findings to help companies decide what color to make their toothbrush tubes, what size and color to make the font, etc. Let's imagine you don't have the money (or the inclination) to pay for such a service at the moment, so how do you get access to this valuable information? By studying your industry comps.
Make sure to study the big names from the big publishers as they have internal marketing teams that do exactly what we just discussed. Don't copy anybody's cover, but look to see if you can spot any elements or themes that seem to be recurring. Are certain colors everywhere? Does every cover feature flowers? Or a mermaid? Is the font huge across the middle or at the top and bottom (leaving the middle free)? Take notes.
If all the big titles have similar elements, there is a reason. Readers also start to associate those certain elements with a particular kind of, and even standard of book. This can work for or against you so be mindful of the elements you choose to emulate.
Let's look at a personal example:
For my debut novel, The Pots (that mothers leave for their daughters), I was incredibly excited to design a book cover. I had spent a ridiculously long amount of time writing and rewriting the manuscript, to speak nothing of the time spent on editing. Once I was finally satisfied with the final draft, I was dying to work on something visually creative and the book cover was just that. I felt confident that nobody could quite capture the essence of my story like I could, so nobody could design a better cover than me. Never mind that I had never designed a book cover before- I was an engaged reader, so I was sure I would be able to create something that would both fit in with and stand out amongst similar books.
I was wrong. I had no idea what I was doing, and I didn't even know how to do proper research. But I was very proud of the book that I wrote and equally so of the cover that I made to accompany it. The result was the cover you can see here.
I love it. I think it's beautiful, but I also know that it wasn't the most effective cover I could have designed. Just at the top of my head, at first glance, there are a few things that could have been better.
The fonts are much too small. It's difficult to read the title from any distance, or my name for that matter. The placement of the graphic takes up too much space, which results in the limited space for the wording. I think the background colors, while pleasant, are not ideal. In summary, the cover is quite shabby.
Then I spent time doing some research. I studied my comps and looked to see what design elements were prevalent in my genre. The result was the second and current cover of my book.
The second cover is better, I would argue, in every way. It is sharper and it looks more polished. It could sit comfortably next to any recent title in my genre. A few key things are different from the first cover to this one:
The font is much larger. Large block letters in a contrasting color for the title and my name make both stand out. I can spot and read the title from across the room.
Similarly, the bright, solid background color makes the cover art stand out. And that art is expanded over the entire cover (instead of being boxed into a frame). The wording being placed above the art makes the whole picture work together as one unit, as a pose to separate parts put together. It is more cohesive.
It looks professional.
Conclusion
It took doing some research and then experimenting to learn what would work best for my cover, but the effort was well worth it. The new cover does the job of communicating what kind of book is in store for the reader. It says: 'inside this book is a story about an African woman, and it is very well written'. It probably says more than that, but at the very least it does what it's meant to.
I hope this post has helped you to look more critically at the elements behind a good book cover, or better yet- has helped you create your own cover design.
Happy designing,
Nonjabulo
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