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Matte or gloss?
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Ahmed
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Oct 09, 2016 02:32PM
Not sure what to do for my hardcover rerelease of my novel. Anyone willing to help me figure this out?
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Sure, my two cents, I would say go with matte. It will appear consistent under varied lighting.
They say gloss for kid's books and matte for adult.
I'd learn toward matte too, but I think it would depend on the cover graphics. Is it people or objects/abstracts on the cover?
I usually run proofs of each. Most recently I picked glossy.
Are you doing a dust jacket with a cloth cover? If so, matte might look better for fiction. Most hardcover books I've seen with glossy covers have been nonfiction.
Matte is okay if it's art. Glossy is fine if it's photography.
Carole wrote: "They say gloss for kid's books and matte for adult."That's the first time I hear that. Does that mean all the fantasy I have read were kid books? :p (From mass paper books to wrapped around hard cover, they were all glossy) I think it depends on pictures and what you want to achieve, not the age of the readers.
Okay, more details. Young adult to adult range, hardcover with no dust jacket. If you want to see image, look at Lunen Triblood here on Goodreads.
Ooh! That's tough. I think with that cover art and the (futuristic?) storyline I'd lean more toward glossy. But that's just my opinion.
I think I'd go glossy with that too; might help add depth to the 'space'?
G.G. wrote: "Carole wrote: "They say gloss for kid's books and matte for adult."That's the first time I hear that. Does that mean all the fantasy I have read were kid books? :p (From mass paper books to wrapp..."
I remember when they added the two types, I contacted Createspace to ask the difference. I preferred the look of glossy, but that is what they told me. I changed all my son's books to matte and kept mine glossy. Personally, I don't think it matters. I hate the feel of the matte. I am a big paperback reader and every paperback book I purchase from Amazon in adult popular fiction is that matte style. I usually read most everything that's trending in popular fiction.
Matte photographs well with no reflection. I used it for a stock photography cover on a YA literary novella and it was beautiful. I just received a proof back for a novel in a ya fantasy series, which I ordered a matte cover. It has custom artwork in keeping with earlier books in the series. They were all gloss. I will re-order this fantasy book with gloss as well. The matte looks fine, but it doesn't look fantastical.
I have been only or at least mostly reading and buying indies. I checked for kicks. I have 30 glossy covers (that includes two of mine though), and 17 matte. I know that one of those matte covers have been redone in glossy since I got it.A popular series for YA, The Fifth Wave, is...well hard to tell. I have one in paperback and 2 in hard covers. While they seemed more matte, the title is in bright glossy letters and the last book of the trilogy is more glossy than matte. Does that help decide what to choose? I doubt it but I thought I'd mention it just in case.
Personally, I don't check if a book cover is glossy or matte before I buy it. Whether it is indies or trad pub. I don't see why it should matter. Most are bought on Amazon anyways. So go with what your heart tells you to choose. You can't go wrong. It's your book after all. :)
I've found that my paperback covers look better glossy. My hardcovers are the traditional blue cloth with glossy dust jackets. I think they look perfectly fine. To me the matte looks a little drab, at least for my covers.
I always go with glossy but that's because one, I believe glossy to be the standard and two I feel I'd go with matte if what was on the cover fit with matte if that makes sense. Like the image to which I'm showing would be better seen on that such finish.
I'm not a fan of the feel of the matte and I notice that fingerprints show up on my advance proof copies really easily. That being said, I am going with matte. From what I've managed to gather, reviewers and librarians and look down on glossy books - there seems to be some kind of inherent snobbery that glossy = low quality (just to be clear, I don't agree or disagree with this, it's just what I've picked up in a lot of researching the subject).
I'm a glossy fan and my book covers look better in glossy. I think it depends on the picture. I first started with Matte and didn't like it. Glossy looked so much better.
Mod
It might sound funny but I choose glossy because I don't like the way the matte covers feel against my fingertips lol. Glossy has more of a pleasant feel to me.
Went with gloss. Finally putting out a hardcover through Ingram. Once I see the proof, barring some catastrophic issue that makes all of this a waste of time, I'll finally be able to do things at major book chains.
On top of some of the other good tips mentioned here to consider, also is seeing how your cover images/text appear on glossy versus matte paper.I say that because I recently ordered a proof of a book I wrote/illustrated and had the cover printed glossy and it. look. BAD! Now, please note, I'm not against glossy at all - in fact, I prefer it. But, for me in this specific situation, the reason it looked bad was because I had applied a textured filter to some of the illustrations and on glossy paper it looked like a pixelated mess (think scrambled tv signal). But, on matte, it printed nicely - true to the actual illustration.
So, it's a pretty specific situation; however, depending on the style and graphics on your cover, the type of paper can affect the appearance of your cover. So, it's just something to consider.
(And, that if you don't like the way your cover looks, don't have a mini-meltdown and feel like you have to redo it from scratch like I almost did. It might just be the paper :-) )
Good luck!!
