What Makes a Good Book Cover?
It's subjective, but there's a couple of principles to follow
I’m asking this as an artist, a bookworm, and a marketer: what would classify a book cover as “good”?
To me, from all three angles, here are three words to sum up the formula for good book covers:
Relevancy
Clarity
Intention
The questions to determine if a cover checks off any of these three principles:
Relevancy
Is the cover depicting a character or a scene? Is it a symbolic representation of the story, linking to the characters, plot, lore, and/or theme/s?
Does the look of the font types and illustration style fit the genre? Do they fit the story?
On a more pressing matter, is the cover helping to indicate the book’s relevancy now in the present time? This may matter more for certain topics (I’m sure since 2020 there has been an uptick in books on remote working, side-hustling, freelancing and related subjects) or when a commercial fiction follows a current trend (think of the vampire craze years ago or *shudder* the fae obsession in the last 8 years or so).
Clarity
What are the focal point/s of the book cover? What is the audience supposed to pay attention to?
How are the texts balanced by the visuals (if any)?
Can the target audience identify the title? The author? Will they know what genre this book falls under? Does the visual style support the genre?
Intention
Why did the designer/illustrator choose that font? That colour? Arranged the visual elements in this manner?
What does the AD/illustrator/designer want readers to feel looking at it?
Will the target audience be intrigued by this cover? Is it something that could pertain to their interests? Get them to pick it up and buy it?
This is where art and marketing can work together to create covers that work on their own as art and as advertising. Any excuse of something being unmarketable tends to mean people don’t have familiarity with and/or aren’t willing to expend effort into researching an unfamiliar market and trying to push something out there that has a niche audience or angle.
Good covers are not specific in cover formats (hardback, paperback, paperback with flaps, softback etc), genres, illustration styles, font types etc. As long as they rise to the stories they represent and the audiences they are for, good covers can look like anything. The key to good (or great) book covers is the balance of marketing and art.
Unfortunately, book covers do not always balance art with business equally in a world that hinges more value on turning profits and seeing tangible, concrete data that affirms with numbers whether something was a good choice or not. Sometimes, that means slapping something on a cover that achieves clarity and relevancy but with poor intention. Such covers are passable, but not good. That can be a hindrance to the book’s sales and a potential roadblock for readers that discourages them from reading the story within.
Trust me, as a browsing shopper in the bookstore, that happened to me before.
The same has happened the other way around—a lovely cover with an okay or bad story within—but the marketer in me can at least appreciate that the marketers and artists did their jobs.
It’s fair to say that in the publishing business, a book cover’s ability to attract attention and sell the book outweighs its aesthetic function. That comes first. However, that’s not the say publishers haven’t maximised the aestheticness of its covers by commissioning or creating new covers as limited editions or for collaborative book boxes. We’re in the age of Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube hauls and colour-coordinated feeds and viral WOM after all.
Here’s a great article by Thomas Umstattd Jr. where he interviewed veteran book cover designer Kirk DouPonce over on Author Media about book cover designing.
Anyways what do you think?
Until next time!