Blogger: Janet Kobobel Grant
Here’s the good news for authors: Nowadays every book cover is face out…online.
Now the bad news: Every book cover is face out.
Most of us readers used to discover books in bookstores. I can recall skimming the spines on the shelves to locate clients’ books. I would rearrange that shelf to put every client’s book face out. I figured well-known authors’ books would be sought out even if their covers weren’t staring at you, but newer authors needed all the help they could get. (I also assumed the store’s staff would undo my rearranging at some point.)
That was an easy way to make sure my clients’ books stood out in at least every store I visited.
But today, it’s much tougher to get your book noticed, as every book’s cover, rather than spine, greets you when you buy online. The problem, of course, is that you have to be searching in just the right way for you to even see a cover that beckons you to look more closely at the book.
So what does it take to make your book cover stand out?
A cover needs to appeal to potential buyers both on a bookstore shelf and in an online shop. 
That means the cover has to look great as a physical book and as a postage stamp–what I call “Amazon size.” When your book’s cover design is first unveiled to you (they are sent via email), play around with the sizing. Look at it in a size that allows you to take in the whole cover, as if it were face out in a bookstore.
- Can you readily make out what the image is?
- How readable is the title, subtitle, and author byline?
- If an endorsement or review quote is on the cover, how easy is that to read?
Obviously not every word on the cover can be gigantic, but sometimes font choices, how bold the letters are, and the colors used can affect how readily a potential buyer can grasp the cover’s details.
Preview what the cover will look like by reducing it to Amazon size. Ask yourself the same questions as you did for the larger version.
If your answers raise concerns, bring them up to your agent (or to the individual who sent you the email if you’re sans agent). If you have an agent, don’t rush to proclaim how gobsmacked you are with your cover. Discuss the design with your agent first; he or she has an experienced eye and should weigh in on the design as well. If you tell the publisher you love the cover without waiting for your agent’s input, it’s hard for the publisher to pay attention to the agent, who might well have some valid points about ways to improve the cover.
Sometimes the cover works beautifully in print but that design doesn’t translate well into the digital version. For example, if the design has a textured background, it might not work digitally but appears like smears rather than texture. In those cases. publishers might decide to have two slightly altered versions–one for print and one for online.
A book’s endorsements must be conveyed differently online.
Quotes from a significant endorser or a phrase from a fabulous review will appear on the cover of the print version, but they wouldn’t be visible digitally. Quotes or a “burst” that announces the book has won has award, must be handled differently online. Ask the marketing staff at your publishing house to have that cover quote start out the book’s online description. Having that quote in bold or a larger font and separated from the rest of the description will help to convey its importance.
A book’s cover should have a simple image.
Having an illustration with lots of details on the cover used to be a great way to get someone to pick up a book to take a closer look. But when a cover has to work Amazon size, it’s much better to have a simple image on the cover.
I’ve picked some covers from a recent Amazon best-seller list for you to consider how successfully they work, and I’ve strung them along the side of this post. I think you’ll immediately see what I mean about why one cover works and another doesn’t.
Randomly pull two books off your shelf and critique the covers. How well do they do in the “face out” test?
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Ha! When I worked in publishing I, too, used to turn our authors’ books face out in bookstores. And here I thought I was so clever and sneaky…
Cover design is an art unto itself, and I have great respect for designers who do it well. So much goes into making the cover not only attractive but clear, informative and eye-catching in the right ways. The cover has to tell the reader that the book is, say, a romance or a thriller, without looking like every other romance and thriller on the shelf. It’s the same dilemma we authors face: be original and “fresh,” but not TOO original and “fresh.” And the different elements need to be weighted: the title versus the author’s name versus the image versus the cover blurb or endorsement. It’s way more work than just slapping on a pretty picture and a pleasing typeface.
Jenny, I guess we’re both members of the “Face Out Club.” You’re so right about the varied elements that go into a great cover. I’d also add that the cover needs to be evocative, stimulating an emotional response in the potential buyer.
That’s a lot of freight for the small “train” of the front cover to carry.
The Secret Life of Bees draws me in with its vivid colors and the simplicity of the image. The endorsement at the bottom is very hard to read from the ‘postage stamp’ view.
Colleen Coble’s Butterfly Palace immediately grabs my attention. The drab colors evoke mystery, and the beautiful house…sigh. Just bought it this weekend, and cannot wait to read it. Her name and the title are bold, making them easy to view on the screen.
We haven’t even started talking about colors on a cover, have we? That’s a big factor, and it apparently played its part on the two covers you pulled off your shelf.
“The Light between The Oceans” – pretty good!
“Leaving Time” – eyestrain time at digital size, as the last words of the title fade.
“The Pecan Man” – uh, is that really the title? I couldn’t quite make it out.
Some thoughts…
One thing about using figures in cover design that I have noticed – very often, the heads are too small. This is pretty common among portraitists (I used to paint), and even the greats like van Dyck had this problem. The “small head” problem is actually magnified at the small scale of digital images, since the human eye immediately looks for facial recognition, and after that other thing about the head. When the image is small, facial features are less distinct, and the shape – and size – of the head become the preeminent visual hook.
Another thing that a lot of covers seem to get wrong is how to handle action. The eye can only resolve a small part of a dynamic scene, leaving the rest a blur. Leroy Neiman, the sports artist, made use of this effectively by focusing in on his central figures and letting the rest of the action swirl around them, drawing the eye in, usually in a counterclockwise spiral. Covers that freeze-frame the whole thing are often pretty uncomfortable to look at, and one doesn’t know quite why.
Finally, moonlight can be a really attractive idea but it’s very hard to portray in original artwork. Personally, I think Frederic Remington got the closest by giving the light a jade-green cast, but he spent years trying to get it right. (One of JMW Turner’s early Royal Academy entries was a moonlight scene…that had clouds passing behind the moon. Yeah, he drank a lot, but not THAT much. It was an error of technique, easy to do in oils.)
As a PS, along with heads often being too small, hands are often too big.
Put your hand to your face. With the heel of your hand on the point of your chin, the tip of your middle finger should fall between the top of the eyebrow and 1-2 finger-widths above the eyebrows.
Very astute, Andrew, thank you for your comment(s).
I always thought the large hand factor was due to the camera’s perspective and that anything closer to the camera lens would appear larger than that behind it. As an example, I give the current selfie craze where common noses seem to be on steroids only because they are closest to the lens.
The noses observation made me laugh.
Andrew, thanks for an artist’s view of covers. Good insights.
Curious. I thought Leaving Time was by far the easiest to read. I agree that The Pecan Man was unreadable. I’d skip right past that, whether in a bookstore or online.
You raise interesting comments on face size. Is that perhaps why a lot of covers, especially for historical romance, show only partial faces?
Iola, showing partial faces is a current fad. I think publishers like not depicting an entire face because it makes the character a bit more mysterious and also enables the designer to focus on, for example, the eyes, thus making them more compelling.
Thanks for sharing this insight, Janet! We don’t hear a lot about what makes a good cover, just that we need one. LOL.
Michelle, good point. If you don’t know what comprises a good cover, it’s hard to know if you have one.
I like the pictures on The Pecan Man and The Light Between Oceans. Leaving Time is blah, and I probably wouldn’t pick it up in a store.
Terri, the photo on The Pecan Man is nice, but the title is lost in the leaves.
Wow, what a timely post for me. Right now I have a questionnaire from my publisher asking for my suggestions concerning cover art. I have several, but hadn’t considered the postage-stamp size for digital sales. Definitely worth consideration. Thanks, Janet!
Rick, you’re very welcome. I hope the post proves helpful as you fill out your form.
For me, rich colours and well crafted illustrations always catch my eye. Too much in the way of “hip” in the cover design detracts me from buying a book. what is cool and artsy now is passe in a year. I always veer toward classically done covers over trendy.
I had to laugh as I studied Lisa Jackson’s new cover. At a glance it reads “Lisa Jackson Deserves to Die”
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51C3QKH%2BRGL.jpg
“Ask the marketing staff at your publishing house to have that cover quote start out the book’s online description.”
You mean a publisher’s professional and experienced marketing staff won’t know enough to do this on their own?
Not a lot of publishers like that. I know a couple I work with that won’t even put quotes or tagline on the front cover. Every PH has their own style and preferences.
Besides, they have a lot more going on to get a single book out that to worry about marketing details. Most marketing is up to the author, these days to cut expenses.
Aidan is correct, David, in that the publisher’s marketing department is working on providing marketing for so many titles at one time that taking an endorsement or mention of an award from the cover and highlighting it in the book’s online description isn’t a thought that is likely to occur to them. Authors will probably have to offer the marketer a prompt.
One reason why heads are cropped in a lot of photo-manipulated designs is to avoid recognition of the model, so the same model can be used more often for varying characters and books. Another is to avoid paying for the right to use a model’s image.
Of course, the ‘public’ answer is to ‘create mystery’ and to ‘allow the reader to implant themselves into the character’s place, easier’, lol. Sounds more artsy. ;P
As a book cover artist and designer, I am forever trying to educate authors as to why EVERY character should not be on the cover. The best covers rely of creating an emotional connection to the target audience, and less is more.
Aidana WillowRaven
http://WillowRaven.weebly.com
Aidana, thanks so much for offering your perspective on covers. I didn’t know the REAL reasons behind the use of partial images of models. And, yes, authors often want to tell the whole story on their covers rather than employ one, evocative image.
I just figured they can’t help it. Their brain takes a single concept and builds on it to create a 50,000 word story.
My job is to take that 50,000 word story and translate it back to a single moment and feeling. We just think differently.
Really good post. I’m enjoying the intelligent comments you are getting, too.
Thank you, Janet. I think I’ll go peruse hubby’s stamp collection and see what stands out and why.
Looking at stamps as one thinks about covers sounds like a great exercise.
Great post. I find a lot of authors aren’t sure what makes a good cover, and worse–many of those authors are then designing their own covers. I’ve been a graphic designer for years but I have also been doing magazine covers, and then nonfiction covers, and now I’m doing fiction covers as well. I have been writing a long series on cover design on Author Allies trying to help authors to understand the difference between a good cover and a bad cover.
I’m especially trying to help authors doing their own design work or hiring a designer for cover designs and marketing collateral to get better results.
For me, doing nonfiction covers is far easier than the fiction covers, at least, with the budgets I’m working with. Getting inexpensive stock photos of people in the right poses is a little maddening.
I thought I’d send along a few links in case you were interested. This is one of the articles in my cover design series on Author Allies, and another link where you can find the rest of the series (scroll down to Graphic Design):
http://www.author-allies.org/graphic-design-authors-4-visual-branding/
http://www.author-allies.org/author-platform-building-tutorials-articles/
I still writing more articles for the graphic design series, and I’m thinking I might link back to this post in a future article. Some of the comments have also given me ideas for things to bring up that are advanced concerns in cover design that many folks probably aren’t even thinking about.
Thanks for getting my brain juices going!
Thanks for the chance to check out some of your work and for the time you spent to write detailed blogs about brands and covers.
I’m trying to complete the design for my book on WW2. Great insight for me to consider. We live life in the constant tension of decision making. Choosing a cover, whether purchasing or designing one for sale involves the same tension. What is too much and is, therefore, either confusing or a turnoff versus what is too little and non specific defines that tension. I think that limiting a cover to just a simple graphic and few words is…well, too simplistic. The Amazon postage stamp concept is, however, a strong test. Thanks for the opportunity to weigh in!
Currently working on a book cover for a book on success. This comes handy and at the nick of time. Thanks so much