7 steps to creating a book cover that sells

My friend Ricardo from Reedsy just sent this awesome infographic. It covers the basics of work with a designer, but misses some of the important stuff (what is a cover that sells? What actually goes on the cover?). They address some of that in the actual article on cover design – and the main advice is “hire a professional and let them do their job.”

But not all designers know what kind of cover will sell books to your audience.

So you also need to LEARN cover design basics. Here are some tips.

1.  Be clear, not clever (communicate genre/mood immediately with colors and fonts)
2. Don’t use a big complex scene
3. Don’t worry about specific body positions, facial expressions
4. Don’t try and include a ton of specific items
5. Make sure the title font matches genre and author name/subtext are simple serif or sans serif
6. Make sure colors and lighting makes it all look like one piece of art, not a collage
7. Don’t use tacky text styles like dropshadow or bevel.

You can read the original article here:

https://blog.reedsy.com/book-cover-design

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Derek Murphy

I’m a philosophy dropout with a PhD in Literature. I covet a cabin full of cats, where I can write fantasy novels to pay for my cake addiction. Sometimes I live in castles.