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Publish It Right: Legal, Rights, Production & Promotion Tips

This Month - Crucial Cover Design: Go ahead and judge books by their covers - everyone does it!

By Laura Jolly

You know the old saw, "You can't judge a book by its cover?" Forget it. The time, thought and money invested in creating a book could be wasted if a dull or inappropriate cover design causes it to get lost among the thousands of other titles in the bookstore.

"Going to the bookstore is a lot like going to the grocery store with shelves of product screaming, 'Pick me up! Pick me up!'" says Vann Baker, president of Design Etc., a graphic design company in Winston, Ga. "If something catches your eye, you have a tendency to look at it more closely. If you have to spend a lot of time discerning what the book is about, then I feel the cover design has failed."

When judging the 'book cover design' category for Magazine Design and Production's Ozzie Awards, University of Oregon design instructor Roy Paul Nelson says it's not the book he's judging by its cover; it's the publisher.

"An appropriate, well-done cover gives reviewers, distributors, booksellers, consumers and others in the chain of the book business confidence that the publisher is serious about trying to sell a title and has a dependable business sense," he says.

Independent press publishers use both in-house and freelance designers, depending upon both the number and range of titles published in any given year. Obviously, hiring a professional is an absolute necessity. A professional cover designer will have the experience and creative ability necessary to make a book speak, loudly and clearly.

"Few authors think in graphic terms - and fewer still are well acquainted with the techniques of visual expression," says Lee Marshall in his classic Bookmaking (Bowker, 1965). "The book designer operates as a graphic engineer, utilizing the science and art of visual presentation to achieve optimum communication."

Selecting a Designer

One good place to start your search for a designer is at a bookstore or library. (Publishers Weekly has begun listing cover designers in their review section along with notable dust jackets.) Look for book covers you like, and then track down the designers through the authors or publishers. Contact the designers and ask them to send additional samples of their work. Once you've narrowed down the candidates, start fielding proposals. But be sure you can explain what you want.

"Most people approach it from a perspective of dollars: 'How much is it going to cost me?'" says Robert Goldstein, a graphic designer in Van Nuys, Calif., who has more than 35 years of design experience. "I try to offset that by asking them who their audience is, what they want to accomplish. Once I have determined what it is they want to do, we can talk about money, because I can design it to fit their budget."

You will find in the course of your screening process that some designers specialize in cover design, while others, such as Baker, prefer to work on the total book. "I don't see the cover as being separate from the inside," he says. "It's like when you buy a car - you're purchasing the whole package. Often the client is looking to me to solve not only the creative process, but also the production process."

The designer you finally select should be someone you can get along with, says John Webster, of Abacus Graphics in Oceanside, Calif. "We spend a lot of time with our clients," he says, "and if we're comfortable together and trust each other, the time it takes to develop a good design goes smoothly."

The Creative Process

It is a designer's job to mobilize color, form, line, typography and other visual elements of the book cover "so that their sum, and each one of them, will contribute to a successful solution of the creative problem," says Marshall in Bookmaking. "The designer's creative problem is somewhat like that of the abstract painter -to communicate in terms that will reach the subconscious levels of the viewer's mind, where response will be automatic reaction rather than conscious thought."

BEFORE: Jenkins Group was hired to redesign this cover.

AFTER: Here is the result.

Robert Aulincino, an independent book designer in New York City with more than 6,000 covers to his credit, begins the creative process by discussing with the author and publisher what the book is about and how they would like to see it presented. "I usually give more than one solution to a customer," he says. "Recently, I gave eight versions to a client. We both agreed the last design was the best; it was a good collaborative effort."

Julia Ryan of Dunn & Associates, a design firm in Hayward, Wis., follows a similar process. "Initially, I ask a lot of questions: what the function of the book is, who is the target audience, where the book will be distributed, if they've done any pre-sales on it. We ask for one or two representative chapters, and a table of contents. If they are first-time publishers, we will spend more time educating them." Anatomy of a Book Cover

This may be 'Cover Design 101' for some, but it never hurts to touch on the basics. For cover design they are: the title, subtitle (if applicable), and author name on the front; a category listing, sales statement (including a headline), price and bar code with an ISBN on the back; and the title, author name and publisher on the spine. These basic components are like the foundation for a house: they are the beginnings, what you build on. And just as a farmhouse would look out of place in the middle of suburbia, a book needs to belong in its environment.

"When you have a book that's made for a bookstore, yes, it has to be different, but it can't be too different," says Linda Nathanson of Edin Books Inc., a small-press publisher in Gillette, N.J. "It has to look like it belongs in the category."

Ryan agrees. "There is a general schematic look to certain books," she says. "A business book needs to look different than a fiction book. You can still, however, do very unique and special designs for individual books because there is not a formula that has to be followed."

Typography

The choice of type, and how it will be used, is a key consideration in a cover's design. Sometimes it's the entire design. Such is the case with Pulitzer Prize winning author Jane Smiley's last novel.

"It just says, 'MOO, a Novel by Jane Smiley,' and you can't miss it," says Robin Feld, store manager for Barnes & Noble in Deerfield, Ill. "Conversely, Ann Tyler's new book has sort of a non-descript cover, but her name gives it recognition."

Most designers recommend using type sparingly. "The shorter the title and the descriptive copy, the easier it is to work with," says Aulincino. "How much are people going to read, anyway?" Additional information about the book is best reserved for the back cover.

Color

A dilemma many small publishers face when budgeting for cover design is choosing a one-, two-, three- or four-color process. Four-color book covers are becoming commonplace primarily because they do demand attention.

"The book cover is not the area to be conservative," Ryan says. "This is the one visual that sells the book. You can have some gorgeous covers with one and two color; it just depends on what you do with it. Four-color does give more room to maneuver around in."

Goldstein, for one, believes the minimalist motto of "less is often more." "People look at four-color and they see this tremendous visual excitement, but there doesn't have to be as great a design concept behind it. With one-color, the design must carry it. Often it is a single color cover with a strong graphic that is very demanding."

Choice of color is unlimited - sort of. "Unfortunately, we work in a world of clichés," Ryan says, noting that some colors tend to be associated with certain book categories. "Right now, for example, many spiritual and religious books are using beautiful, soft colors, while the new age-type books have lots of purples and dark blues. There are exceptions to the rule, but you don't want to confuse the person who is picking it up."

Webster likes to leave his options open. "It all depends on the individual book and what you are trying to achieve with it," he says. "If I want colors to recede and fall back, I'll use a cool color. If I want colors to come forward and stand out, I'll use a warm or hot color. Then I'll start experimenting with colors and how they affect the colors I use around them. A color can be great in one combination and awful in another."

Aulincino recently redesigned a book cover for an author who had previously done his own design but felt that his book needed increased visibility. Aulincino chose gold, red, blue and black for the new cover. This made the book appear bigger, even though its size hadn't changed. "It looks like you're getting more for your money," he says.

Ultimately, Aulincino says, a book cover should have depth and dimension. "There's no reason a design should look flat. Even before the computer, there were ways to create a dimensional effect. Paintings aren't flat - why should a design be flat?"

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