Remember: Most people in book publishing believe that a cover is a book\u2019s No. 1 marketing tool. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
1. The title should be big and easy to read.<\/strong> This is more important than ever. (Many people will first encounter your cover on a screen, not on a shelf.) This is such a well-worn cliche of cover design that I have a designer friend with a Facebook photo album called \u201cMake the Title Bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Don\u2019t forget to review a thumbnail image of the cover. <\/strong>Is the cover compelling at a small size? More people are buying books on a Kindle or mobile device, so you want the cover to read clearly no matter where it appears. You should also anticipate what the cover looks like in grayscale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. Do not use any of the following fonts (anywhere!)<\/strong>: Comic Sans or Papyrus. These fonts are only acceptable if you are writing a humor book, or intentionally attempting to create a design that publishing professionals will laugh at.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0No font explosions! (And avoid special styling.)<\/strong>\u00a0Usually, a cover should not use more than 2 fonts. Avoid the temptation to put words in caps, italics caps, outlined caps, etc. Do not \u201cshape\u201d the type either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. Do not use your own artwork, or your children\u2019s artwork, on the cover. <\/strong>There are a few rare exceptions to this, but let\u2019s assume you are NOT one of them. It\u2019s almost always a terrible idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 6.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Do not use cheap clip art on your cover.<\/strong>\u00a0I\u2019m talking about the stuff that comes free with Microsoft Word or other cheap layout programs. Quality stock photography is OK. (stock photo\u00a0is one reliable source for quality images.)\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n 7. Do not stick an image inside a box on the cover.<\/strong> I call this the \u201cT-shirt\u201d design. It looks extremely amateurish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 8. Avoid gradients.<\/strong> It\u2019s especially game-over if you have a cover with a rainbow gradient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 9. Avoid garish color combinations.<\/strong> Sometimes such covers are meant to catch people\u2019s attention. Usually, it just makes your book look freakish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 10. Finally: Don\u2019t design your own cover.<\/strong> The only people who should consider designing their own covers are professional graphic designers\u2014and even then, it\u2019s not advisable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Remember: Most people in book publishing believe that a cover is a book\u2019s No. 1 marketing tool. 1. The title should be big and easy to read. This is more important than ever. (Many people will first encounter your cover on a screen, not on a shelf.) This is such a well-worn cliche of cover design that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.ksdesigners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.ksdesigners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.ksdesigners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.ksdesigners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.ksdesigners.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.ksdesigners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21,"href":"http:\/\/blog.ksdesigners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/21"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.ksdesigners.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.ksdesigners.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.ksdesigners.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}