WHY A BOOK COVER DESIGN MATTERS
Having a book cover designed for you or creating one yourself can lead to one of the greatest challenges in ensuring you stay objective, it can be hard at times to step back and view the book’s cover for what it is designed to do, and that’s to sell your book and not simply become just a personal statement (regardless of how attractive that is).
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The cover does indeed have a major role to play in the selling and promotion of your book, it becomes the brand, logo, advertising and visualization of the title and also what the book will offer (at a glance) to the prospective reader. Being fully aware of its role and also allowing yourself to become a little emotionally detached (as hard as this may be) will enable you to stay objective, and staying objective will ultimately help in the success of your work.
Along with the advertising of your work, the cover performs a subtler function too, the book cover design should portray to the viewer more detail than just its title, it should reflect the genre for which it is written and it’s position within that genre too. The cover needs to establish it’s time frame and location, it should make a statement which holds the attention and ultimately draws the reader further in, and it should do all of this whilst being aware of the marketplace which it will be sold within.
Book covers can often go wrong and fail at their task when the designs forget a few of the most important aspects, they can be hard to read with poorly chosen fonts or the size or color is wrong.
The layout and font selection (although readable) is poorly constructed with images which are badly aligned and ill judged, they also fail where the actual genre is forgotten and the design ends up straying into that of another, this leads to confusion from any reader or hopeful buyer. You may also find that there is no statement to draw in the viewer, or that there’s a badly thought out reference which doesn’t make sense. The countless online book stores unfortunately are littered with examples of these, it’s worth paying a visit to the bottom of the lists on those pages to see how not to do it and then to the best sellers to see how you should.
But how do you get a good cover for your book? Research is always going to be your starting point, knowing where your book fits in to its genre and market place will enable you to study further and should give a clear understanding of trends and competition. If you decide to design your own book cover you should be confident of your own abilities to do so, again, here you need to be both honest and objective with yourself. There are certain skills we all hold, some which are unique to ourselves and other skills which require us using an expert, as you’ve spent many months writing your book you owe it to yourself to ensure it gets the cover it truly deserves (whether it’s you that makes it or a designer).
Along with the advertising of your work, the cover performs a subtler function too, the book cover design should portray to the viewer more detail than just its title, it should reflect the genre for which it is written and it’s position within that genre too. The cover needs to establish it’s time frame and location, it should make a statement which holds the attention and ultimately draws the reader further in, and it should do all of this whilst being aware of the marketplace which it will be sold within.
Book covers can often go wrong and fail at their task when the designs forget a few of the most important aspects, they can be hard to read with poorly chosen fonts or the size or color is wrong.
The layout and font selection (although readable) is poorly constructed with images which are badly aligned and ill judged, they also fail where the actual genre is forgotten and the design ends up straying into that of another, this leads to confusion from any reader or hopeful buyer. You may also find that there is no statement to draw in the viewer, or that there’s a badly thought out reference which doesn’t make sense. The countless online book stores unfortunately are littered with examples of these, it’s worth paying a visit to the bottom of the lists on those pages to see how not to do it and then to the best sellers to see how you should.
But how do you get a good cover for your book? Research is always going to be your starting point, knowing where your book fits in to its genre and market place will enable you to study further and should give a clear understanding of trends and competition. If you decide to design your own book cover you should be confident of your own abilities to do so, again, here you need to be both honest and objective with yourself. There are certain skills we all hold, some which are unique to ourselves and other skills which require us using an expert, as you’ve spent many months writing your book you owe it to yourself to ensure it gets the cover it truly deserves (whether it’s you that makes it or a designer).
