Six Critical Tips for a Professional Book Cover

Have you fallen prey to the classic mistake of new self-publishers? Have you spent a lot of time and energy on your book’s content—and are now planning to whip off your own book cover?

Don’t do it. Although the technical aspects of designing a book cover are not that difficult once you have a command of the software, book design is a specialized field—for a reason. Book cover designers, whether they have obtained their professional training at an art institute or are self-taught, have years of experience in what makes covers look good—and bad. They spend hours of time in bookstores, perusing the current offerings. They know how to combine fonts and colors. And they know how to make your book cover your strongest sales piece.

Your book cover is one of the most important elements in whether or not your book will sell to—and in—bookstores. Here are six things to remember:

Black and White: Your cover needs to look good even when the colors are seen in black and white (like, when you fax the media a press release with a graphic of your cover.) So when you think you're done, run the cover design through a black and white printer and see how it looks.

Small: Your cover needs to look good when it’s shrunk down to an inch in size. Have you ever noticed how small the book graphics are on Amazon? And how often you can’t read the cover print?

Spine:  Don’t neglect the spine of your book. It’s the first thing bookstore and library browsers will see—and the only thing, if they don’t like the looks of it.

Color choices:  Be careful with yellow and white covers.  Yellow tends to fade, and white can show scuff marks easily.

But definitely use color.  Many new publishers think they’ll save costs by printing a black and white or one-color cover—but that is foolish economy. Your cover is going to sell your book—so make it the liveliest, snappiest cover you can.

Add your other books: If you have any related books, even if they’re not published yet, consider adding their (front) cover art to the back cover of your book. That way, you’ll get people interested in your forthcoming titles even before they’re published. (My Publishing Gamebook covers all featured the other two books in the series -- so that anyone purchasing one would realize that it was part of a series of three books on publishing.)

You’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover—but people often do. Make sure you’re putting your best foot forward when they judge yours.