The Perfect Cover Briefing – Here's How February 1, 2018

The perfect cover requires a great designer and a detailed briefing. If you can’t tell a designer exactly what you need, you’ve got a problem: You might end up with something technically perfect, but you could be targeting the wrong readers—which can be an expensive mistake. You might think that finding a true professional is the hard part, but you’d be wrong. There are tonnes of talented, affordable designers who consistently deliver great work. You just need to know exactly what you want to achieve. Here’s what to keep in mind during the briefing:

#Author Name and Title

This may seem incredibly obvious, but it’s worth taking the time to think it through beforehand. Choose something short for the title—punchy and memorable (that’s often hard enough to do and easy to say, I know ;-)). Why's that? E-book covers are usually first noticed by readers on a smaller scale, for instance in search results. Yes, they’re naturally much larger on the product pages themselves. But most people who haven’t heard of you yet will likely first come across your book cover as a thumbnail (in a sea of others). So there’s a reason why you won’t see too many self-publishers using long book titles. The only exception: nonfiction. So choose a short and snappy main title, followed by a subtitle with lots of keywords. And, of course, check how the bestsellers in your category are doing it.

#Slogan

This can be used for all sorts of things, from the cover to the blurb, in a tweet, in advertising, and so on. You’ll find endless uses for it, and the exercise itself is useful because you learn to distill your book down to the absolute essentials.

#Blurb

Writing an enticing blurb is an art that you can improve at incredibly quickly with a little practice. Almost every author, however, struggles to find the necessary emotional distance for it. The typical author—and you’ll probably be no different—is in love with their story and has every possible plot point, minor character, and distracting proper noun at their fingertips. But those have no place in a blurb. The purpose of a blurb is to sell the book—not to summarize the plot.

#Target Audience and Comparable Authors

It’s important that you have an idea of who you’re writing for. You should always keep your target readers in mind when thinking about a cover. You’ll learn more over time and can draw on your experience—but if you don’t have that yet or are unsure, engage with your readers. Take a close look at who is reviewing your book, analyze the data Facebook, Instagram or Tik Tok provide, see who likes your page, and so on. Over time, you’ll get a better sense of who you’re writing for and what kinds of readers enjoy your books. If you’re aiming for the readership of a bestselling author or another benchmark, then you should explicitly emphasize that in the briefing. In any case, your designer needs a few reference points.

#Defining Your Genre

There’s just one last step before you approach your designer: You need to look at charts. Kobo, Amazon, and all the various retailers have all kinds of different charts. Not just the overall Top 100 bestsellers, but also these incredibly niche charts—like the Top 100 for mystery books or even Freemasonry topics. Take a close look at everything and only then decide exactly where you want to position yourself. So here’s what you should do:

Identify two or three subcategories that best fit your book. This doesn’t mean top-level categories like “Science Fiction & Fantasy” or “Romance,” but actual subcategories, such as “Alien Invasion” or “New Adult.”
Look at the covers in the Top 100—all of them! Pay special attention to the similarities. Check out the charts for your sub-genre and make your book look the part. You don’t want to slavishly copy anyone, just make sure your cover fits in with the rest.
Kidnap your inner designer and hide them until your cover is finished. What does that mean? You’ll quickly develop your own vision for a cover—and that will mislead and limit you. Your natural creative impulses will rebel against the idea that your cover should look (a little) like someone else’s. The artist in you just wants to be different. Unique. But unfortunately, that person cannot be trusted.

A book cover has only one job: to get readers to click on it and buy it. And not just anyone, but the right readers. Do you remember the people you’re writing for? Those are the ones who should click: your target audience. “But I want everyone to click” is, unfortunately, not very sensible.

It’s simple, really. The cover’s job is to attract the right readers to your page on Amazon. So make no mistake: Choosing a cover is a business decision—and one that must be made with careful calculation and deliberation.

And keep in mind that a reader has only two seconds to look at your book online. Make it easy for them to click. If not, they’ll move right on to the next book…