Book cover suggestions

These are notes from a Reedsy’s web presentation about book covers. The cover critiques was done by Micaela Alcaino

– Less is more. Less chaotic you have the cover the more legible online and on a bookshelf. Avoid taking on too much.
– Don’t be too literal on your cover. It is geared to coax your audience.
– Fonts: 1. Serif font: cursive tails 2. Samsara straight line fonts.
– See what best sellers in the genre you are selling for are doing and what fonts are they using.
– Try to avoid drop shadows on titles. Keep the typeface clean.
– Creativemarkets.com is a good place to find fonts.
– For murder mystery: see what the market is doing.
– Don’t’ have the theme of one section of the book present one image to another section of the cover.
– Make title big so it can be read.
– Tip for self-designing authors. If you have color
– Chick flick/ woman’s fiction. Romantic comedy often has bright color covers with a softer typeface.
– Center the cover so it is not bottom setting
– YA is a bit of a colorful market for covers.
– Crime and thriller use a less variety of fonts.
– Historical markets: Maybe have a shout line to fewer words. If too small it discourages someone to read it. The shout line is used to encourage the reader to read it.
– Techno-thriller: fonts samferreff/block letters. Make titles the focal point and then add abstract images less focal point.
– YA fantasy: less is more here. Focus changing the name to book one of the series. Book number does not need to be on the cover. If you do use one, use it as a shout line. Fonts have more life and fun. fonts like marshal, autozan, or orphis font. Too much use of brown can make a cover less memorable.
– Mystery Thriller: set fonts to more crime associated. More condensed titles. Something bolder. Avoid woman running in the snow in red coat image. Blue covers, or start white covers.
– For YA, for fonts that are not as cartoonish. If you do illusions for a book set make sure they match in design.
– Nonfiction: prominent titled in books work better in the image. Try to have 4 maximum colors. Titles do well in telling what the books are about. Major title and major subtitle. A subtitle tells the audience what they’re going to get. Use your main tile to horn the audient and the subtitle as the hook to get people to buy
– Nonfiction: less is more. Let your subtitles read out a little better.
– Paranormal needs to have images to illustrate the universe. Make have the title be the same color and the author name is a different color. If you want a hint of a paranormal maybe have a darker background.
– Make sure the background does not confuse the book. Don’t underline titles. Make sure the background does not hide the cover.
– Children’s book: titles don’t need an outline. Try to integrate the title into the image rather than separate and must fade out the background so it doesn’t interfere with the title. Be careful to not have names too small.
– Nanotech: fora book series. Grading of shades for the back of the book dates a book. Bigger typefaces for this genera. Maybe have a different color for the different book covers to add distinctions between the books in a series.
– Science Fiction: be careful of having the cover to look too busy. If it’s a debut book don’t need to have your name as big but have the title big.
– Thriller/ techno thriller: too many type fonts maybe consider using fonts: traide gothing, gothem or knock out. Bigger, bold tiles are bigger for eBooks because they’re seen as thumbnails.
– Adult Thriller: maybe use the same typeface for title and author. Be careful of having the title too lost in the margin. Yellow works well. Green is not very good to pop.
– YA fantasy. Script and hand letters type is perfect for the genre. Make sure it is legible to make it not hard to read. Bolder colors also work well in these genera.
– Self-designer authors. If in Photoshop and get color picker open and do Command-Shit Y, it actually grays out all the colors that don’t print in sym Y K.