You should never judge a book by its cover, but that won’t prevent potential readers from passing over your book if they don’t like its cover artwork and design. So how can you commission a book cover that both attracts readers’ attention and accurately communicates what your book is about? Read on for your road map to success.
Researching your target audience
First, you should make a list of target readers. Ideally, these are readers who you know personally, either from an email list or as close friends and colleagues who like books in your genre. Alternatively, you can query top reviewers on Amazon or Goodreads, or recruit readers on Facebook pages or subreddits. You may also consider engaging with the reading communities on Instagram or Twitter. Once you have produced a list of contacts, you should send them feedback questions regarding what it is about a cover that encourages them to pick up a book. These sample questions include:
- What catches your eye when you first look at a book?
- What do you dislike about certain book cover designs?
- What do you like about your favorite book covers?
When you have compiled a good sample of answers, you can analyze them for commonalities among the individual responses.
Brainstorming cover designs within your genre
There are many ways to brainstorm a cover design for your book, but here is one possible path.
- Search Amazon and other online bookstores for successful self-published authors within your genre and see if you find any covers that inspire you.
- Hone in on specific book cover designers’ styles and narrow down your list to 2–5 cover examples that you particularly like.
- Contact a few people from your reader list and ask them to vote on their favorite cover.
- Alternatively, you can reach out to fellow independent authors, either those you personally know, those you find in author groups on Facebook or through individual author’s websites, or those you meet at author conferences or local networking events. Ask for cover designer recommendations based on what you want your cover to look like, as well as any other questions you might have. Make sure to obtain their contact information so you can ask them any other publishing questions that might arise in the future.
Finding a cover designer for your book
Several websites offer cover design and book production services, and you should be able to find one to your liking by performing a quick search and comparing their benefits.
Here’s a tip: Smaller editorial services companies usually offer affordable, comprehensive publishing packages that include cover design. As a bonus, you would be supporting a local business.
When you finally decide upon a cover designer, you want to keep in mind that the designer is the expert, not you, and you want the highest expertise at the best value. You also want to base your decision on logic rather than emotion, so your personal biases don’t conflict with the cover’s impact upon your readers. More importantly, you want a designer whom you’re comfortable communicating with, who shares your vision for the cover, who accommodates your publishing timeframe, and whose designs appeal to your ideal reader. Once you have narrowed down your list of designers to two or three, you should contact your five most reliable ideal readers and ask them to select their favorite design.
A well-designed cover should meet the following criteria:
- It tells readers the book’s genre
- It suggests the book’s plot
- It emotionally connects the reader to the book’s protagonist
- It sets the book’s tone
- It possesses a distinct visual style
Make sure to provide your designers with clear and descriptive visual ideas for your cover, so they have something concrete to work with. You’ll also want to share your book’s title, genre, target audience, tone, synopsis, and whether the cover is for ebook, print, or both. Alternatively, you can provide them with example covers from books in your genre. Ask them to create several cover mockups with similar elements, so you have several to choose from and possibly have covers you can use for future books. You can also consider asking them for social media graphics and website banners so that you can promote your book online, and you’ll need to ask for the book cover’s source files so you can use them with your self-publishing platform (and so you can commission changes from other designers if you lose touch with the original designer). Also make sure to obtain the designer’s contact information, so you can reach out to them in the future for further work.
Happy hunting!
By: Matt Wade
Matt is an Editorial Assistant at Technica Editorial
