Designing Your Book Cover: Tips and Go-To Programs
Written by August Hawley
Judging a book by its cover is largely discouraged, but we all do it anyway. Sometimes, we might even buy a book just because we like the way it looks on our shelves. With this in mind, it’s important that we design a good and professional-looking cover, but this can be hard to do on a budget since most professional designers charge upwards of $400. It’s widely discouraged to design a book cover yourself unless you’re a professional or, at the very least, fairly skills in the labours of art and design, and if not, that you’re willing to learn how to be.
Even if you do plan on hiring a professional designer, it might be good to know your way around design programs, so you can make your designer a mock-up of what you have in mind and get the most out of your money.
Elements of a Good Cover
This section could go on forever. We could talk about the golden ratio, colour theory, typesetting, and genre elements, but luckily there’s more than one guide online, and they’re often specific to the type of cover you want. If you struggle with something specific, look into some tutorials and lessons! For now, here’s what we've got:
Composition. This is where the golden ratio and rule of thirds come in. For the most part, you want your book cover to have its elements placed purposefully and in a way where it’s easy to tell what’s going on. Think symmetry, multiple different elements (but not too many), and not crowding or underusing the space you have. Using a pre-existing ratio is a good way to create a solid composition without many issues, but it can also make your cover less eye-catching.
Colour. Most book covers you see, with a few exceptions, try to stick to five colours or fewer. Sometimes, only using three or two is an even better idea. But where do you get a colour scheme from? In poetry, we often reference colours or come back to certain things over and over. If you talk a lot about the ocean in your book, focus on incorporating blues and aquamarines and maybe some yellow. If you talk a lot about love, think about reds, pinks, and purples. If going for the obvious isn’t your thing, try using a website like Coolors.co, which generates lovely colour palettes and can even generate one based off a photo.
Text. Typesetting in itself is an art and pretty hard to master, but it’s not impossible for a newbie to make the title and author’s name look good. Some general rules to follow include: making sure the title is readable in thumbnail form, using a font that matches the rest of your cover design, and that you don’t use super “fancy” fonts (AKA flowery thin cursive that’s virtually unreadable).
A centre of attention. Make sure there’s an element of the design, be it the title or something else, for the readers to focus on. You want to send a clear message, which means you need a main idea.
Simplicity. While complex covers are appreciated in genres like fantasy and historical fiction, you might want to stick to something a bit more simple for poetry. However, that’s not an all-out rule, and more so just follows the general consensus.
Interesting. Overall, your cover should be nice to look at and make the reader want to click the link, grab the book off the shelf, or even read the description.
Design Software
Now that you have some idea of the elements of a book cover, let’s talk about five of the programs you might want to check out, their pricing options, and whether or not they’ll work for a professional book cover.
Canva
This is the obvious option if you’re looking for something free, and you might have even worked with Canva before if you have a job/education that involves simple graphic design. While it’s the most simplistic and bare bones of all the options on this list, it’s still possible to make a decent cover in Canva.
Adobe
Both Photoshop, Illustrator, and SparkPost are run by Adobe and both are excellent platforms with free trials, with SparkPost being the cheaper and easier to use of the two. Adobe has lots of privileges for its users, and it probably has the best programs to make a professional book cover, but if you’re not well-versed in the world of graphic design, it can be really hard to use.
Gravit Designer
This is one you might not have heard of before. Its free version has limitations, but Gravit has been praised for its clean site and, much like Canva, being available for nearly every device with a browser version. It’s definitely possible to make a professional cover with this software, but you might want to have a look around for tutorials.
GIMP
This program might be the hardest to use of all the software mentioned, but it’s 100% free. It’s best for authors who are also serious about or have already done major graphic design. If you’re looking for something that has all the same things as Adobe Photoshop, this might be the program for you, but if you’re looking for something as easy to use as Canva, you might want to look elsewhere.
Pixlr
This program is also available on almost any device, but unlike a lot of programs, the browser version is often the preferred method, and the mobile app is the least preferred. It’s a free photoshop alternative that has paid versions, but you can still create eye-catching and professional designs with the free version. If you’re looking for something like Photoshop that has an easier learning curve than GIMP, Pixlr is wonderful, easy to use, and still has loads of tutorials online.
There are still dozens, if not hundreds, of graphic design programs out there, and this is nowhere near an exhaustive list, but trying some of these out will give you an idea of what you’re looking for in design software and if you don’t like any of these, it gives you something to jump off of.
When designing, remember to look for feedback while also taking advice with a grain of salt. General rules are just that: general. There’s nothing wrong with going outside the industry standard, but keep in mind that it might change sales and readership.
Still, it’s your book, and one of the bonuses and fallbacks of self-publishing is that everything is entirely your decision.
AUGUST HAWLEY is a trans man who has been writing poetry and fiction for most of his life. Author of poetry collection Writing My Obituary and winner of the West Michigan Showcase, he’s pursuing writing and editing, but spends most of his time with his friends and gossiping with his mom. He lives in Michigan with his large family and his cat, Nemo.