I’ve personally been involved on the design of about 25 book covers now, both ebook and printed books. Here are my 10 top tips for a great book cover.

The design of your book cover is extremely important, no matter how you plan to distribute it. Marketing rumour (I won’t say research, because I can find no quotable sources on this) tells us that from the moment a person picks up your book, you have about 6 seconds to convince them to buy it. This includes the time they take to look at the back cover and the spine.

You may think that an ebook is somehow less worthy of time taken on a quality cover design, but I strongly disagree: if anything, it is more important that your ebook have a quality cover design, as the ebook market is currently in a growth stage. It’s important to put your ebook into the next category up from some of the (let’s be frank here) garbage that has been distributed this way in the past.

These are in not in order of importance, and perhaps some of these don’t apply to your project.

1. The cover and typesetting should really be done by the same person, at the same time.

This wholistic approach unifies the design and gives it greater impact. A good recent example is the design of Jeri-Lyn McCrea’s Words in Action, which continued the floating words on the cover into the end papers, where the user can write a goal for the year inside the cover. All of this gives your content greater credibility.

2. Keep the design clean.

Avoid a cluttered look, make use of white space, and follow the fashionable rule: two main colours, plus an accent. (Think black skirt, red sweater, and the shoes and the belt should match either the skirt or the sweater – not a third colour.) Don’t give them too much to look at: strip it down to the basics. Too much stuff can threaten, confuse, and frustrate readers. Keep fonts clean and easy to read, and keep text from looking squished together. Use the back to flesh things out if you must, but keep the front of the cover cool and simple.

3. Use a focal point to orient the user.

The idea is to give them something that instantly tells the reader what your book will give them. This focal point must be meaningful to just about anybody, so test it out on a few people before you fly with it. This focal point could be a photo (my favourite) or something else that communicates clearly what your book is about, such as a single word in bold letters, etc. Your book cover is a promise of what’s inside. Grab their attention with a symbol or single word that will focus their attention.

4. Be sure they can read it without glasses.

Even as I typed that, it sounded stupid, but it’s true. Many people need reading glasses, but they don’t wear them while walking around a store or while using a computer. If they can’t read the cover because the print’s too tiny, you’ve lost your opportunity.

5. Use the spine properly.

The trend of creating spiral-bound self-published books makes me shudder. Not only does it look terrible, but you can’t use the spine to attract attention for your book on a shelf. Libraries won’t buy them, either. If you need people to be able to lay the book flat for some reason, there are much better alternatives than something that looks like it was done in your basement. The spine is very valuable real estate, and anything you can do to make the text there really *POP* is great. Keep the content restricted to the title and author’s name, as if you’ve titled your book properly, you can leave the sub-title for display on the front only.

6. Include a photo of the author.

A photo tells the reader who is doing the talking, and establishes instant trust. The photo does not have to be huge, but it should be included. If you are super-shy about having your photo taken, get a nice headshot done by a good photographer, and have it re-touched until you’re happy with it. Dress appropriately to your subject matter, and make it a cropped closeup of your face. (See a future article on what makes a good author headshot.)

7. Leave appropriate space for the technical gunk.

Check out the image here of the back of a book cover I recently designed. This book is rather small, only 4 inches wide x 6 inches high. Even taking that into account, we’ve left the scan codes at full size. This ensures that they will scan appropriately no matter what sort of equipment is being used. The ISBN number is clearly displayed, and one of the author’s websites is visible somewhere. The appropriate category is in the top left corner, which helps bookstores and libraries place the book to best selling advantage. The price is also given in both Canadian and US dollars. The ISBN-13 scan code includes a separate price bar code, and a separate UPC code allows the book to be sold in virtually any retail venue – not just bookstores.

8. Use appropriate information hierarchy.

Again, refering to the photo, pay special attention to the font sizes. The largest font size is used on the information that is most important – the book’s description. The smaller the font gets, the less important the information. Even subtle changes of a point or less can be detected. This leads the reader down a logical path of what order we want them to read in.

9. Make the design match the content.

I don’t understand why we continue to see child-like colourful designs with hand-drawn illustrations for business books. If you wouldn’t attend a business meeting wearing that cover, why should you ask your book to wear it? If the content is business, make the cover business-like. If the content is self-help, make the cover uplifting and beautiful. Good style is good business.

10. Don’t waste real estate.

A book cover is actually 7 locations: the front, the spine, the back, and don’t forget the inside of the front, and the inside of the back, plus the first right-side paper in the front and the last left-side paper in the back, which can be special sheets called endpapers. If you are publishing a hardcover, you can print the endpapers in one solid piece, and if you’ve gone softcover, you can print directly on the inside cover and the first “page” of the content. I’d love to see every author to ever publish put an order form there to order more books off their website. The cost is pennies per book, and the rewards can be great.

Remember: good design is good business.

I recently had a question posed to me by a self-publishing author about how to choose and negotiate with a graphic designer.

She asks, “…Pay per job, per hour or a combo of paying for the job plus a percentage of the first set # of books sold. Any opinions?”

Most graphic designers, if they are experienced enough to be worthy of doing your project, will know enough about the tasks ahead of them to quote by the job. Some designers do enough print work that they can speed up the process by templating certain technical, unseen parts of the process, much like an editor or writer has a specific methodology that they follow based on successful experience. Templating is not meant to imply that anything they create for you will look like anything else they’ve ever created – I’m talking about codes and document settings, etc.

Most experienced print designers will not accept a royalty, unless it is part of a payment package. If your project is very graphic, such as a profile of a painter or other artist, and the product of the designers work will be considered a work of art in itself, or if perhaps you’re sharing major credit with the graphic designer, a base payment plus royalty may be considered. But as most graphic designers are freelancers, I’ve found that many of them just prefer to keep things simple, and get paid right away.

Paying by the hour may be requested if a designer is working with you for the first time, if they are looking to do some “test” work to see if they like working with you, if they’re new to freelancing (which doesn’t necessarily mean new to design) or if you are hiring them on a number-of-hours-per-week situation to work on a variety of projects that you have on the go.

If a designer pushes you to pay by the hour for a single pre-determined project, first check to see if you’ve been clear about the job specs. With proper direction from you, designers usually know how long a job will take them, and this provides you with better cost predictability.

That being said, most designers will include an hourly rate that they will charge for anything outside the original spec. If you find yourself in a position where you need to make changes, approach the designer and ask them if what you’re asking is minor or major work. If it’s major, either pass or learn for next time.

The most important thing to consider when working with any contractor*, especially in the case of a graphic designer, is a clearly-written spec doc. I usually type up a couple of pages that are as clear a set of instructions for the job as I can make it. Include anything you think might be helpful, such as pencil sketches, colour swatches, charts, diagrams, examples of work you like from other designers, etc. The document should definitely include things like the time frame for completion, exactly how many images you need created and what size / resolution, and a technical description of how the final product will be used. Output specs from the printer are essential for designers, so that they know they will be able to accept certain file types, etc.

As with many things in a large project, communication is the key. If a designer feels that you’re ready to give them all they need to free their creativity, they will do the same for you.

[* Don't forget to have them sign a non-disclosure agreement! Other tips for dealing with designers and contractors will be offered here in a future post.]

I eagerly invite comments and constructive criticism from any graphic designers who read this post. What can we do to make doing business with you easier?

Even if not all of us are writers, we are all listeners. Communication that works is usually simple and plain. If it’s obvious, it’s often right.

Check out this elegant video about graphic designer Paula Scher, the creator of the CitiBank umbrella logo, and various famous signage and design work in New York City and other locations.

Paula points out that clients (let’s call them readers here) usually like to think there’s a lot of process behind what they’re reading, and that the work required to create the product should be plentiful. If it’s too easy for the writer or creator to create, it can’t be that worthy. Paula points out that people think if it’s too easy to create, they are not getting their money’s worth. “But it IS done in a second!” She exclaims, knowing that what we see as obvious is usually right.

At 6:30 into this video, Paula makes a beautiful closing statement about the moment when one “gets it”, and never losing that feeling. It is what makes all of us better writers, because we’re constantly looking for that feeling again and again and again.