Before people read what’s inside a book, they look at its cover design and texture. It is one of the key factors in attracting customers who are still skeptical of what they wish to read. Readers generally shop with their eyes and often search for familiarity or surprises. Irrespective of the content inside, readers often look for a book they can proudly hold on the subway and catch the eyes of another avid reader. A good book cover design will determine the reader’s interest in the book. However, before you begin to design your book cover, you need to consider the following:
The author and their brand
The cover design must do justice to the author and the book’s tone. If the book is for youngsters, it should have a cover design and theme that will catch their interest.
The genre or the style of the book
Commercial fiction books fall under romance, fantasy, thriller, science-fiction, and fantasy. The cover design styles for these genres were decided decades ago. However, you can always customize it, sticking to certain design standards. For instance, mystical characters and planets represent science fiction, a couple on the cover page implies romance, and so on.
The location of the selling
The place where a book is sold is an underrated concept and greatly impacts the design strategy. For instance, if you are selling books on Amazon or other online platforms, you need to have a slightly better design process with bigger fonts, and so on.
Information to collect
In addition to the points mentioned above, it is also important for you to collect information on the following:
- The format refers to the text’s size, color, and font. Formats can also include the book cover format like paperback, casebound, and hardback.
- The copy of the book, which includes blurbs, endorsements, front and back copies
- Graphics play an important role in deciding the tone of the book. Graphics of company and publisher logos, barcodes, and others which are essential for selling in stores
- Budgeting of the design adds up to all the design processes in the front and back cover. It will also include stock images, ISBN identifiers, font licenses, and barcodes.
Step involved in designing a perfect book cover
Once all the information is gathered, it is important to follow a systematic pattern that involves the following steps:
- Understanding all the elections of the cover, even the ones connected to the spine
- Researching the market for trends and setting prices for what kind of designs are selling
- Choosing a design direction to fit into the author’s vision and style
- Working and reworking to figure out which design works the best
- Choosing the best fonts and graphics
- Knowing what the printer will need
- Collection valuable feedback
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