How to Get An Effective Book Cover

This chapter helps you obtain an attractive and effective cover for your book. People look at faces and make instant judgments about likeability, trustworthiness, and credibility. Think of your book’s cover as its face. People make the same decisions based on it.

 
Traditional publishers usually create a handful of designs and then ram them down the throat of authors. There’s good news and bad news for self-publishers. The good news is that you have total control over your cover; the bad news is you have total responsibility for your cover.



Covers 101
 
Your cover must stand out in a sea of postage-stamp-size covers on websites. A cover that looks great in a six-by-nine-inch printed format won’t necessarily work on the Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo website.
 
Here are guidelines for a cover that will make people want to click on it:
 
• Simple, big, and bright. Standing out on a web page full of covers requires using big type (60 points or more), simple graphics, and bright, high-contrast colors.
 
• Arresting. People are flipping through web pages, scrolling through lists, and making split-second decisions. Your cover has to stop them and make them click on it.
 
• Logical. Your cover should match your book’s genre. For example, a young-adult fantasy book’s cover should not look like a management tome. Look at the covers of other books in your genre for ideas.
 
• Focused. A good cover provides a focal point for people’s attention. A dominant graphic or clip of text should leave no doubt about what the most important design element is.
 
• Informative. A good cover answers two basic questions: What is the name of the book? Who wrote the book? The graphic design should attract attention, and your text should satisfy the need for this basic information.
 
You could produce two versions of your cover: one for your ebook that is simplified to work in the postage-size context and one for your print version that is more complex. (Hat-tip to Paul Richard for this idea.)
 
Paths to Coverdom
 
Now you know the goals for your cover, and the question is how to achieve them. There are three paths:
 
• Design it yourself. The odds of being a good writer, copyeditor, and cover designer are zero. However, if you are a good designer, you can do it yourself. If you’re not, you’ll be OK as long as you can identify what is a good cover.
 
• Use crowdsourcing. I used a site called Crowdspring to design the cover of Enchantment, and I was overjoyed with the result. In the end, I used the idea from the winning entry and another designer executed the design.
 
However, the design community will give you crap because some members consider crowdsourcing as a form of exploitation. Their objection is that many designers will create designs and only one will get paid. My response is, “Then don’t submit a design.”
 
Think about this: Have you gotten paid for every word you’ve written? I haven’t. And I give many speeches for free in order to develop business. Some designers believe they should never do anything for free. More power to ’em.
 
• Find a designer. The third path is to find a designer. Ask for referrals to designers on Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Ask the authors of books with covers that you like for referrals too. Most authors are happy to provide referrals because the designer will work harder on the next project for the author. In my case, Ana Frazao designed the What the Plus! cover, and Holly Thomson designed the APE cover, so tell them that I sent you.
 

Guy Kawasaki has written 12 books, 10 of which were traditionally published. His newest book is APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur - How to Publish a Book, which helps people understand how and why to self-publish.






 APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur - How to Publish a Book, by Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch, is available as an eBook ($9.99) and in paperback ($24.99). Visit http://apethebook.com/