Maybe you don’t judge a book by its cover…

by Jonathan Gullery ~ November 11th, 2004. Filed under: Design & Layout, Publishing Basics.

But everyone else does! I dare you to take the book cover challenge. Spend at least 20 minutes in to your local bookstore. Browse around different titles, picking up things that look interesting.

Which ones did you pick up first? I’ll bet they were the ones with more interesting covers. Did you look at any that had one-color covers? Were there any that had pictures that looked all grainy – as if they had been copied right off the internet? How about anything that looked like a snapshot?

Two Seconds

That’s all the average American takes to decide whether to open a piece of junk mail or not. Its about how long you take glancing at different titles on the new release table at the bookstore. Its how long you spend deciding whether to pick up a title you liked the look of – and its about how long you’ll look at it before you put it down again.

What do you like about book covers you picked up? If you really want some bad news, then print out your cover, go back to the bookstore and wrap it around a book on the table and look at it hard and long. Is it going to hold its own with all the other professionally-designed stuff? This may not be a good idea, and the sales-staff may think you’re up to something. You are – figuring out whether your home-grown cover is any good!

Home Depot

I like to spend time at my local Home Depot. I like to ask the salespeople questions, entertaining thoughts of being able to do all kinds of things. The kinds of things my dad knows exactly how to do without asking anyone; how that pipe fits into that other pipe, how that stuff stays put for 25 years instead of working loose in 15 minutes, how to build it in a day instead of a month.

I’m constantly told “Oh, you can do that yourself easily!” I think, no, I can’t do that easily. I can design a book cover easily. Here – I’ll give you a book cover to design – that’s easy! My point here is that you have to match the right tool to the right job, and the right tradesperson to the right profession. Yeah – maybe I could do that bathroom repair myself, but would I put it on display at Home Depot for every tradesperson in the county to critique? Likewise, yep – you can do that book cover yourself, but does that mean you should?

Everyone’s Got a Budget

You’ve probably allocated a certain amount of money for your book project, and you’re trying to get everything done within that. Maybe you’re like a lot of folk, who stumbled into writing this book, and there wasn’t a clear plan at the outset, and it just seems to be costing a whole lot more than you’d ever imagined.

After years in this business, I can tell you that there’s always money you can save on printing – but your front cover is not the place to scrimp! You don’t need to go out and spend a thousand plus dollars on your cover, but you do need to have a professional do it, or at the very least, critique it for you.

Is Your Cover A Winner?

We have worked with some major international publishers. Here in NY there’s a last-minute corporate game. There’s usually at least one title in the next season’s catalog that the big boss is having a problem with. They just don’t like the cover. There are meetings, conference calls, more meetings, threats of firing hopelessly inept designers, threats of hiring free-lancers, more meetings etc. Every step along the way produces more and more cover proposals. Finally a winner is produced about one-minute before the absolute drop-dead no-returns deadline. Phew!

Can we guarantee that your book will be a best-seller because of the cover? Does that cover become an award winner? Does all that blood sweat and tears guarantee that that title will be a best-seller? Will the art director guarantee that? The big executive who demanded all the changes? You better believe that they won’t! The only reason this dance happens every year is because it can.

What’s the point here? Can a designer guarantee that people will pick up your book? Can a designer make everyone fall in love with your book? No. But if you insist on doing it yourself, we’ll tell you exactly what you should MAKE SURE you have (and have not) done.

Free Advice from 25 Years Experience

Here’s what you must have on your cover:

Legible type. Green on blue won’t cut it
A graphic that matches your subject and engages browsers
A good subtitle that clearly explains what the book is about, or in a novel is a real teaser
A price
A barcode
A category so the bookstore knows where to put your book
2-3 short paragraphs of type on the back
4-5 bullet points for non-fiction
2-3 sentence bio of the author
Your publishing house and/or logo

Here’s what you must not have on your cover:

Times New Roman or Courier font anywhere – it screams self-publisher real quick
Vertical type on the spine. The only words you can read this way are HOTEL and LIQUOR
Tons and tons of tiny type on the back cover
Lo-res photos from your cell-phone camera. If you don’t have a good author photo then don’t use one at all.
Clipart you copied and pasted from the internet

That’s it – follow these simple guidelines and you’ll have a great looking cover!

Need a cover designed or complete book layout? Try www.BudgetBookDesign.com . – Only $250 for original cover design. Complete text layout from $250.

If you have a question pertaining to the publishing production process, please feel free to contact me at ron@rjcom.com.