Getting Started with Book Cover Design

When I teach people about book cover design, I start with the basics: A great cover won’t save a bad book; and a great book can usually survive a crappy cover. But most authors are seriously confused about book cover design. It’s not an art. It’s not a place to unleash your creative expression in a way that makes you happy. Book covers are packaging; they are sales material. And yes, book covers DO sell books; that’s what they are made for.

The best cover sells the most books

It doesn’t matter which one you like or which you feel represents your story. The people you’re trying to attract haven’t read your story yet. They have no idea if the cover matches the story; and they aren’t really going to care if it doesn’t – as long as you got them to take action (buy the book and start reading) they aren’t going to go back and look at the cover ever again. It’s ONLY PURPOSE is to get them to start reading your book description and reviews. If it fails in that task, your cover sucks (even if it’s beautiful). If it attracts the wrong kind of readers, and they don’t buy (or worse, buy and hate it) your cover sucks. You’ve probably heard a lot of nonsense about creative book cover design and not being a “book cover cliche” – but that cultured crap only works if you’re rebranding Kafka’s covers (books so famous, people will read them no matter what’s on the outside). You don’t have the same luxury. You can’t afford to be ambiguous or artsy or nuanced or subtle. People don’t have time for subtle. Unless people already really care about you and your book (they probably don’t, yet) then all they are every going to see is your cover (hopefully they’ll see it) and they’ll only see it for a second or two. Then they’ll click away, and you’ve lost them. Your cover has to communicate “WOW this is EXACTLY the kind of book you LOVE to read” and it’s got to do it quickly. Here are the 7 unbreakable rules of professional book cover design I follow, with a step-by-step walkthrough. If you want to skip the blank page, the AI book cover maker makes a first draft from your title and genre, and the free online cover editor lets you change the fonts and pictures yourself. When you think it’s done, make a free 3D book mockup and look at it next to the bestsellers in your genre; that’s the blink test, and it’s brutal. I post a lot about book cover design on my main sites; I even wrote a book about it, which you can get for free here.