How to Make a Book Cover: 9 Options for Self-Publishing

how to design a book cover

The book deals with the vast inequalities and challenges facing immigrants escaping conflict in the Middle East. To offset the challenging subject matter, Knowles and Ali ensured that the cover remained accessible, rather than too abstract or metaphorical. However, some covers are more abstract and give an idea of their concept, rather than plot or specific locations and characters.

Choose a Salable Format and Size

We wanted the cover to convey the fact that this book is feisty, fun, and far from the hard sci-fi books that many casual romance readers would normally avoid. With all this in mind, we shared some comp titles from the world of contemporary romance and women’s fiction. In line with the classic B-Movie tone of the story, we also sent him some examples of Jet Age imagery that we thought would be suitable for Rocket Bride’s cover. When looking at books in your genre, you’ll want to note any common uses of color, imagery, and general approach to design. Request quotes from 200+ of the most talented cover designers in the industry.

Creative & Inspiring Earth Day Poster Ideas

Set all the text to Align Center and make sure the frames are perfectly centered along the center guide. We’ll work on the front cover design on Page 1—it’s always much easier to work on the front cover design alone at first. Then, a bit later, we’ll expand Page 2 of the document into the full cover, complete with spine and reverse, with the help of the Page Tool. A good brief aims to communicate all the key information about the needs you have for your cover. If you are working with a designer, getting this information right from the start can avoid misunderstandings which in turn saves time, money, and energy on both sides. When it comes to book design, as the author, your opinion matters but it’s not the most important one.

2 How to Size Your Book Cover Design

If you’re not sure where to start, Facebook groups for writers can be a great resource. When you pick up a book, have you ever noticed how the cover catches your eye? It hints at what’s inside and makes readers interested in the story.

Other potential book publishing costs

People make up their minds within 90 seconds of their initial interactions with either people or products. This is an updated version of a story that was previously published. We update our posts as often as possible to ensure they’re useful for our readers. While many tools allow you to create and edit within your web browser, you’ll have to download this software before you get started. GIMP can be used with GNU/Linux and UNIX, as well as Windows, Mac and other systems.

Balance the title and author name

Bringing the Making of “Blackouts” to Light - PRINT Magazine

Bringing the Making of “Blackouts” to Light.

Posted: Tue, 09 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Ask participants which cover they would most likely buy rather than which cover they like. The latter encourages subjective preferences and suggestions for design changes. However, balance your feedback with your own or your designer's views; your friends and followers may not always choose the best cover for sales.

In this example, designer Coralie Bickford-Smith uses a consistent monochrome palette that graduates through related color groups for her cover designs for Penguin’s Clothbound Classics. The result is a beautiful spectrum of color that evolves across the spines of books, creating an aesthetically pleasing display on the bookstore shelf. As with many of the cover designs featured in this article, sometimes it takes suggestion and absence to realize truly iconic and memorable covers. In Pearson’s redesign for 1984 by George Orwell, the blanked-out title and author name is instantly evocative of the authoritarian theme of the novel.

Romance Book Cover Ideas

how to design a book cover

There are 374 different themed templates to choose from, including everything from travel and sports to weddings and recipes. You can still customize the look to your liking, from fun backgrounds to stickers to text using the Editor tool. Plus, there are plenty of paper varieties, from semigloss to ultra-thick matte. Regardless, these photo books still make a superb present that can cost under $10 without compromising on sentimentality. These are the best photo book maker websites of 2024, according to our pros.

Type-led designs

Sometimes a “great cover” is not a great cover for a particular book. The more sets of eyes you get on the design, the more you’ll be able to evaluate whether a cover is sending the right message to broad swath of people. If the cover features a child, they might ask, “Is the narrator of this novel a child?

In this post, we’ve teamed up with Reedsy’s designer, Raúl Gil, to show you how publishing professionals create their world-class cover designs. You may be attempting to design your own cover or create a rough concept for a designer to follow. Or you may even have invested money in a designer, and now you’re wondering how to quality-check their work or provide meaningful input to guide their revisions. Hands down, the ultimate goal in the book development process is to produce a quality book that represents your book’s story or message.

Next, it’s important to consider what your design direction will be and how it will fit the author’s vision of her book. There are lots of beautiful books out there—but not all designs will work for every book. Make a Pinterest board of comparable titles with successful covers and book packages. Go to your local bookstore and handle books to get a feeling for the different paper thicknesses and materials. Make notes about what you like and don’t like—that information could prove useful way later in the design process if you hit a wall.

Read our comprehensive posts for a detailed breakdown of the costs of ghostwriting. On average, translating a book of 80,000 words costs $4,980, though the price varies depending on the genre. Picture books, due to their brevity, average around $150 for translation.

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