Basic elements of book cover design.
Briefly, a book cover will have the following elements:-
~ a publisher name. As an indie publisher, you may want to have your own publishing name, one which reflects the genre and content of your book. If you are thinking of publishing more than one book, or a series of books, you should definitely invent for yourself a publishing name that is meaningful to you.
~ A publisher logo. If you look on the back of books, you will see many publishers have logos. Be inventive, or thoughtful, about initials, images, ideas. Get out your felt-tips or design tools and find an image or logo that works with your publishing name.
~ A price stated in a given currency.
~ Space for an ISBN number, assuming you will be getting some ISBNs of your own and allocating these to your books, which I recommend. If you are investing in your own ISBNs, and wish to have your book available in paperback and also as an e-book, you will need two ISBNs, one for the paperback (usually but not always sourced as a print-on-demand or POD paperback) and another for the e-book. That is the theory. More often, virtual platforms allocate a unique ID number to e-books published on their platforms. They can also allocate free ISBNs to POD books, but if they do so, then they become your publisher, so beware of that.
~ Blurb for the back cover. Read up about blurbs, and recon on having about three hundred words, with a headline grabber of about twenty-five words, and a catchy race through the plot which will sell the book to your readers. (Not a synopsis: a sales pitch.)
~ Metadata and BISAC codes – which can be researched on-line. These are categories that you think most closely correlate to the subject matter of your book, so that it can be catalogued and found easily anywhere. It helps indexers if you use metadata and if you are careful with your chosen categories. I use a process of elimination: Take the whole list – which is finite – and delete all that definitely don’t apply, then refine the list further. Be careful to use categories that have a broad appeal.
~ The size of your book and the width of its spine will depend on your personal preference, the type of book you have written, and the number of pages in the finished book.
Please share:
July 13, 2018 @ 3:30 pm
Such helpful insights, It’s a must read for all new indie author who are just about to start their journey. Most authors that I come in contact wouldn’t know half of these, many would even write a blurb for the back cover after they have assigned the cover design project. Thank you so much Fran for such a fantastic and useful essay.
September 10, 2018 @ 10:24 am
Dear Paramita
Thank you so much for visiting my blog and for your lovely comments. Though we each learn what we need to in our own way, I’m so pleased if what I have learned is helpful to you. It’s very much a case of one step at a time, taking care with details and trying to be patient. I wish you the best of luck.