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Understand the Basic Functions of a Book Cover

It is an old saying - Don't judge a book by its cover - but unless we're speaking in metaphors ... the truth is that a book is judged by its cover.

Your book cover must perform several basic functions - and quickly - or you risk the words inside never being read in the first place. Here's what a good book cover does:

1. A good book cover design will convey - visually - the book's message. Feelings of excitement and anticipation should be generated just by glancing at the cover, making the potential reader eager to dig in and discover further ... stuff. In other words, a truly good book cover will "SELL" the book on its own.
2. Check out the people in a book aisle and watch how they browse. 99.9% of the time, they will let their eyes wander over the books on display, sometimes for several minutes before picking a book up. When they do pick one up, they look at the front cover, flip over to the back, and if they're still interested might sneak a peek at the first page or two inside. All this happens in seconds - that's how long you have to attract a reader, retailer, or reviewer. The book cover design will have the biggest impact on whether it's your book picked up or not.
3. Consumers buy with their eyes, and will instinctively look for something that appears to be quality. Book covers that aren't as well-designed as others lose value.

Appeal to Your Audience

I know, this seems like torture. When editing your book, you spent long hours focusing on your audience. Having to do it again seems much less appealing than it did when you first began.

You have to appeal to your audience, though. There's no in-between. If your cover doesn't appeal to your audience and offer some real incentive, your audience doesn't exist.

Look at the big names in the business, and study how their covers are laid out. Take notes about what you think works best, and what you think is just horrible.

Include the Important Information

Since people spend at least twice the time when looking at a book to read the back cover than the front cover, it's important that your front cover grab attention but that your back cover persuade them to BUY.

Every genre has different specifics about how the back cover should "look", but there are a few basics that always need to be on the back cover or the back inside of a dust jacket:

• Author's picture and biography. This is often on the inside back of a dust jacket, and includes the author's qualifications to write the book - giving the reader reason to trust their writing.
• Features and benefits of reading the book if it's a how-to, and include illustrations from within the book if this is the case.
• Basic summary - a selling plot-line - of the story if the book is fiction. Don't give the story away, but introduce the main character and pose their problem. Make it exciting.
• ISBN
• Testimonial and/or review. These little blurbs can really make a big difference in book sales

Carefully Select Two Fonts

This step is so important - and done right, it's so subtle that people looking at your book cover won't even notice it.

Use two fonts - no more, no less - on your book cover.

One font needs to be a sans-serif font, meaning that it has no "extras" on it. Verdana, the font used on this page, is a sans-serif font.

The other font needs to be a serif font. Times New Roman is an example of a serif font.

The sans-serif font will be used for headings and sections, while the serif font will be used for body text to facilitate readability.

Communicate with Color

With all the other pieces in line, the only thing left is to remember the importance of color in your design.

For several reasons - one of which being the typical 4-color printing process - it's best to stick to four main colors at most. Pictures and graphics should follow the same color scheme.

Below you'll find a series of 4-color palettes that can be used to get you going.