How to Design a Book Cover

They say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” but this may be one of the falsest things every uttered. How many times have you not cracked open a book because the cover was terrible? The book cover matters a lot—it’s the first thing readers will see. If you’re able to have input into how your book is designed, here are some pointers.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Book
• Design software

1. 

   Look at covers of books that you love. You don’t want to emulate these covers directly, but determine just what works about the cover. If you’re working with a designer, give copies of these books as examples.

2. 

   Get to the essence of what a book is about. This is the hardest part of book design—how to whittle down hundreds of pages into one image. If it’s a novel or non-fiction, find a core image—either photograph or artwork—that best represents the book.

3. 

   Choose a good font for the title and author name. Slight variations in lettering can convey a much different meaning. Elegant script lettering for a science fiction novel might be entirely inappropriate, or else this skewing of expectations could be very effective.

4. 

   Use at least four colors for the cover. A six color process is recommended.

5. 

   Experiment with different color schemes—for the lettering, borders, or any other design elements. Color is as important as the main image and fonts.

6. 

   If you can afford it, design the cover with raised lettering. However, keep in mind that a book cover should look sharp in a relatively small jpg, as a growing number of people buy books online.

7. 

   Don’t forget the spine. Spine design is often overlooked—but this is often what a browser first sees on the shelf.

Tips & Warnings

• If you are inexperienced with Photoshop or other design program, it may be worth the expense to hire a design firm. Be sure to check out the designer’s past designs.
• Ask a designer to make several different versions of the same cover, if possible—maybe just making a small change to the font for the title.
• If you’re a designer—read the book before setting out to design a cover. It will help you come up with ideas. At the very least, get a synopsis.
• Look out for book cover designers who overcharge for their services.

[catherine1963]

on 5/15/2009 Why would a six-color process be recommended? You need special presses, color separation that's tricky and it's going to be expensive.The four-color process (CMYK)is by far more practical, because it can be used on both offset and digital presses.Also, the way it's written seems to indicate that's the number of colors you would have on the cover. That has nothing to do with it, unless you are using spot color (even then, you can have far more than four or six hues).The four-color process just means that there are four colors of ink or toner used in the mix. These are: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. You can mix these in limitless combinations (I suggest staying under 240% saturation, of course). You can have thousands and thousands of colors using the four-color process. Adding orange and green to these for the six-color process is not really going to do anything to enhance the aver...