I never really thought too much about book covers until I started sitting on the other side of the desk. They seem to be one of those things you take for granted. We all like to think that we don’t “judge a book by its cover"; that somehow we are above such superficial things. But the fact of the matter is that the book cover is our first glimpse of the book, and it should convey to the potential reader the feel of what is inside. A book cover should serve the same purpose as a movie poster. It announces to the potential audience that the book exists, and gives a glimpse of what is inside.
Many independent authors and small presses sometimes get too enamored with their book covers, treating them like works of art. But the truth is that if you try to get too creative with the cover, or expect the reader to put a great deal of thought into the cover in order to share your appreciation, chances are you will end up with the opposite effect. Your book is competing with tens of thousands for attention, and asking the readers to figure out what your cover is suppose to mean is just going to chase them off to another book. The cover does not need to tell a story in and of itself. It merely needs to demonstrate to the reader the general tone and feel of your book. Its purpose is to convince someone to pick up the book and start flipping through pages.
There are a variety of elements that need to be considered when creating a book cover.
1. What type of background art will the cover employ?
This is generally where many independent authors get in trouble. They get a piece of art that they love so much that they think they have to use it in its entirety. This is especially dangerous with writers who happen to be talented enough to create their own illustrations. But as you'll see from our example, sometimes even the best artwork needs to be edited, cropped, and tweeked to be useable for a book cover.
2. What size, color, and style of font?
Often, because independent authors get so caught up in the art, they are terrified to "cover up" any part of it with text. They end up subjugating the title and author's name to the far corners of the cover to avoid text running over the art. But if reader's can't read the title at arm's length, that means they won't see it. And if they don't see it, they won't pick up the book. Also, the text needs to provide enough contrast to be readable, dark reds, blues, and blacks on a dark cover will go unnoticed at a distance. While light colors on a light background will all blur together. Fonts also need to be free of too much baggage. Swirly, complicated, "designer" fonts may look nice on your monitor in on a large display, but they are unreadable on small book covers.
3. Placement of the title and author's name
When placing the title and author's name on the cover, one has to consider "what will sell the book?" If the author happens to be Stephen King, then you place his name in huge letters at the top. His name is going to sell the book, or at least, catch the eye of a reader. Whereas if you are dealing with a newer author, the title is what will ultimately sell the book. There is no benefit in placing the name of a new or unknown author in huge letters on the top of the cover.
So I thought it might be interesting to show folks the evolution of a book cover. In November, we will be releasing Of Angelic Blood by Phillip D. Collins. Collins’ book focuses on a self-loathing angel in love with humanity. For the cover, we wanted something that would convey both the philosophical and supernatural themes of the book. We initially planned to commission some original art, but the preliminary samples we received from the artists were too pop culture for our liking. So we went in search of some classical art. The good news is that there are thousands of public domain works that feature angels. The bad news is most of them are the traditional white winged, haloed variety. The I came upon the Wilton Diptych. One of the most striking things about this piece is the addition of black tips on the angel wings. I also felt that the various shades of blue created a nice nuetral background to work with.
The entire piece, however, is way to busy. So instead of trying to incorporate the entire piece, I cropped the lower right corner. For the text, my initial instinct was to use a bright red, hoping to provide a bold, eye catching contrast against the cool blue.
The first problem we had was that the red text tended to glow. We tried to resolve that by placing a black border around the letters (as you see in this sample). But that prevented the contrast that we were hoping for. So the next thing to try was a pale highlighting to reign in the glow while still offering the contrast we were looking for.
The red just wasn’t working. We decided to go with a lighter color of yellow. The yellow had the same glowing problem, and was compounded by the fact that it blurred into the white of the wing. We solved that, though, by adding a black border around the letters, which provided the contrast we were looking for and disolved the glowing problem.
We still had three problems with this design. First, the yellow was now too bright, and felt gaudy against the more muted background. Second, the author’s name was competing for attention with the title. Finally, there was the issue of the “blob” that appears in the black area at the bottom where the name was placed. Because it became so obvious upon blowing up the corner for the book cover, it stole your attention. To resolve the issues, we tried to match the yellow more closely to the angel’s hair in the illustration. This allowed us to create a more natural look for the text. Next, we reduced the size of the author’s name, so that the title gets top billing. Finally, we blotted out the blob so that it did not provide a distraction to the rest of the cover.
Now this is probably not the final version, either. There are a couple of things I'm still not 100% happy with, and so I'll continue to tweek the cover until it's time for release. But you can see how while the primary elements remained constant throughout each version, the subtle changes dramatically changed the look of the cover.
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Comments: 22
Here's a reference: Nemonymous 3 cover art.
It was probably a stock photo that was purchased through a broker under a non-exclusive license, or the photographer simply didn't license that particular photo exclusively. It's a fairly common practice. Much like buying a stock or pre-used piece of art it typically saves the company money.
The guidelines you mentioned as being necessary for a book to be noticed reminded me of a book my father had years ago. It was titled "Golfing for Cats" on a solid red field with a swastika as the only design. Inside the cover the author explained that the book had nothing to do with golfing, animals or the second world war but that it was known that all these things and the colour red got potential buyers' attention. LOL
I just looked it up with Google and found one hit which confirms the above and another which mentions that it is out of print but has a cover showing a cat in plus-fours readying for a drive down the fairway. Perhaps the swastika put off as many people as it attracted.
John: as far as seeing multiple books with the same cover, many of the POD sites offer a collection of stock cover arts for the artistically challenged. So chances are if you are seeing the identical cover with an identical layout, but different titles and authors, then both books were produced by self-publishing authors.
Most serious self-publishers, however, will take the time to either design an original cover or hire someone to design a cover for them instead of using a stock cover.
Our general rule of thumb is that mass releases get original cover art. Some of our digital only PDF products for roleplaying games get generic art, but in the case of digital products the cover is more of a "placeholder" than a selling feature. So long as the cover is clean (i.e. doesn't look like something a four year old scribbled) most of the time it doesn't matter as much as it does in the print industry.
Did you see my comment?
*poke, poke*
Serious offer to help if you want.
Sample 1
I did up this cover style image and I felt it comes off kind of weak and unfocused. The character art was more rewarding than the cover layout element.
Sample 2
Where this is a mock-up cover I'm fairly happy with. The text elements became part of the composition rather than paste-ons.
This is how I've found alot of great books. But I know that you can't really judge a book bu the cover. There are some great ones that don't have an appealing cover so I look for titles to attract my attention and see if the first few sentences draw me in.