It’s a hard pill for any author to swallow, but the truth is, most people do judge a book by its cover. Studies have shown that bookstore browsers take ten to twenty seconds on average to decide whether to purchase or reshelve a book. That’s not a lot of time to grab a reader’s attention with sparkling wit and singing prose.
Book publishers are no dummies. They know the primary job of a book’s cover: to sell it, first to the bookstore, then to the reader. That first sale is especially important. If a bookstore’s buyer doesn’t like a cover, it doesn’t see the shelf. Some publishers even go so far as to bounce cover designs off the biggest buyers in advance. If they don’t like it, it’s back to the drawing board.
Most authors have very little, if any, say in the cover designs for their books. When my first young-adult novel, The Debutante, came out, my only request was that the designer use pink sparingly and ironically. The book is aimed at twelve- to eighteen-year-old girls, but my main character, a self-described “preppy hippie” who plays field hockey, is not a girlie-girl. What I got was a hot-pink silhouette in a short dress and heels, on a background of pale-pink stripes. After some whining on my part and tweaking on my publisher’s, the compromise was this. It was not the spare, ironic cover I had imagined, and I worried that it came across as too young. Some people agreed with me; others loved it, saying it popped on the shelf. The book is doing okay for a debut author, but let’s just say I won’t be retiring early. The paperback got a new cover.
The science of what sells is no small field; a cover can make or break a book. Following are some things that have worked … and some that haven’t.
The Front Cover
First, there’s the imagery. Like anything else design-related, book covers are not impervious to trends. Recent ones include headless people (my new paperback included); shoes, especially high heels (see Lauren Weisberger and Candace Bushnell); and singular graphic statements—for example, the Twilight series and Curtis Sittenfeld’s 2005 novel, Prep—or, on the nonfiction side, Malcolm Gladwell’s books). The derriere seems to be big on romance covers now (as they move away from the classic “clinch”), while you can count on black-and-white photos or vintage illustrations to sell more literary titles. Also seen: birds, close crops on Old Master paintings, dolls, and water. Also no imagery at all, the book White Teeth being a lauded example.
Book covers (and titles) often vary from country to country. For example, British covers tend to be muted, with more negative space, while their American counterparts are colorful and busier (though some recent trends have bucked this convention). For Roomies: Sharing Your Home with Friends, Strangers and Total Freaks, my humor/advice book about living with roommates, my U.S. publisher went with a cartoonish illustration. But when a German publisher bought the rights, it changed the title to something that loosely translates as, “A Group House Is No Pony Farm,” made the book vertical, and changed the cover so it featured a turquoise background and an empty roll of toilet paper.
Fonts are another consideration; a well-designed book cover will use several. The title gets one (or more), the subtitle gets another, and the author’s name gets one. If the author is well known, his or her name may appear larger than the title. If she’s had a bestseller, you might even see “From the Author of ... ,” prompting you to pick up the other book as well. If the author or book received a prestigious award, the publisher might slap on a gold stamp. (That feature alone has sold at least a dozen books to me.) Did Hollywood make a movie of it? The designer will add “Now a Major Motion Picture,” or even change the cover completely to the movie poster.
The Back Cover
The front cover gets your attention, but the back cover sells a book. My editor and marketing team wrote the synopses for the back covers of both my novels. Because my editor likes me, I got to give my seal of approval, but not all authors have this luxury. Other things you might find on the back cover: the author’s bio, and blurbs from reviewers or other authors. Some publishers put a great deal of effort into getting those sales-boosting endorsements.
The Spine
Something many readers don’t realize is that bookstore real estate is purchased, just like in the supermarket. Books don’t randomly end up with the front cover facing out or on an endcap at the beginning of an aisle. Placement on a table at the front of the store during holidays can cost a publisher in the tens of thousands of dollars. If a publisher is not willing to eat into the marketing budget for placement, a book may languish spine by spine with the rest of the books on the shelves. This makes spine design almost as important as the rest of the cover’s.
The most important consideration for a book spine is legibility. A reader shouldn’t have to get up close and personal to read the title. That means many designers use all caps. (An interesting aside: In the United States, text runs from the top of the spine down, while in Europe it runs from the bottom up.) Wraparound imagery from the front cover or a graphic element might be used to grab the browser’s eye. For example, a magnolia appears on the spine of The Debutante.
The No-nos
While there aren’t any hard and fast rules in cover design, there are a few things to keep in mind:
* No one knows where the publishing industry’s aversion to green started, but the color has been called “poison” and “death” for magazine and book covers (titles on golf, gardening, and Ireland excluded).
* The designer has to read the book. A cover that doesn’t match the book inside is frustrating to readers (and authors).
* One publisher came under fire recently for covering a book featuring an African American protagonist with an image of a Caucasian girl. The reasoning, to which the publisher refused to admit, was that covers with African American people don’t sell as well. Neither does racial profiling. With all the ruckus, publishers (hopefully) won’t make this same mistake again.
As much as a designer can follow conventional wisdom, a reader’s reaction to a cover is subjective. What attracts one reader might turn off another. And rules are made to be broken. A great cover doesn’t guarantee sales, and a crappy cover doesn’t preclude them. Still, when a book is fighting tooth and nail for attention, it needs all the cosmetic help it can get.