Notable: The Evolution of a Book Cover
I just released the cover for my new book! It is not the book's first cover.
This is a special edition of Notable, inspired by the release of the cover artwork for my forthcoming book, which is inspiring a lot of creativity for me right now. I hope it gives you food for thought as well.
A book cover is an unusual animal. Cover art must function on multiple levels. Take the books above, for instance. Even if you know none of the titles, you can guess the type of book from the cover. And you’d be disappointed if you were wrong. Not by the cover, but by the book.
Authors must know this fact—you cannot put out your fantasy novel with a historical fiction-looking cover, or you will get bad reviews no matter how great your book is. Covers set reader expectations. My goal is always to write in an entertaining way about heavy topics, so that we all come away with a fresh perspective. That’s a lot of work for a book cover.
Besides conveying tone and genre, a book cover must strike a balance between overall attractiveness and legibility. In other words, it has to stand out in a sea of thumbnails.
Large publishers work with book designers to create book covers. Beyond some initial input—a form asking for information about the book (the designers can’t read every book of course) and examples of book design they like—authors have very little say in the final design (including the title).
Smaller presses often work more closely with the author, but most contracts give the final say over design to the publisher, who may or may not work with a bona fide designer of book covers.
Whether with a large or small press, I don’t know any author who hasn’t worried over this aspect of their book, and me most of all. Since creating catalogs and ensuring the accuracy of art reproductions was one of my duties as head of marketing at the Carnegie Museum of Art and Warhol Museum, I developed some strong ideas about design. But what’s pretty and what scans well in a sea of book thumbnails on Amazon aren’t the same thing.
That said, I am thrilled with my new book cover. To announce the design, I created a cover reveal in iMovie.
I was able to do this because I had a good, 1.5-year head start. Let me explain (I’m paywalling for a reason)…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Ill-Behaved Women to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.