Questions About the Cover Designing Process

1. What Do You Look for in a Good Book Cover?
2. What Type of Artist Do We Work with?
3. What Is the Cover Designing Process?
4. What Importance Does the Back Cover Have?
5. What Is the Author’s Part in All of This?

1. What Do We Look for in a Good Book Cover?

Designing a successful cover for a book requires combining artistic skill with spiritual insight. We, therefore, don’t use secular designers at all. Our designers pray about the message and sometimes read the Introduction and table of contents or even more of the message before the book is fully finished, to try to capture the essence of the message in the cover design. That design must be attractive enough to draw potential readers, and it must speak to the subject of the book. A cover is everything. Should you judge a book by its cover? Absolutely! Everyone does. 

2. What Type of Artists Do We Work with?

The cover artists we work with are also in ministry. They pray about the theme of the book and come up with some cover concepts they feel will be suitable (usually no more than two or three).

We look at those concepts and also send them to the author (these days as PDF or JPEG files) to be viewed and commented on. Then we tell the artist what we like and don’t like about her original ideas, and she makes the necessary adjustments to come up with a design suitable to all.

Since we pay our artists so little (they, like us, are doing their work as a ministry), we always hope that we can agree on a cover design as painlessly as possible. Two or three rounds of adjustments should be the limit. Over that, and we’re imposing on her good graces.

3. What Is the Cover Designing Process?

• We supply the artist with some information on the book.
• She prays about it and comes up with several (usually no more than 2 or 3) front cover concepts.
• We send these to the author, and we look them over ourselves. Between us, we give her enough feedback to help her perfect the design we feel comes closest to meeting our mutual needs.
• When we are getting close to a final front cover design, we ask the author for bio information and a photo suitable for the back cover. With that in hand, we write a proposed back cover text and submit it to the author.
• Through author feedback, we are able to polish the back cover text.
• When the back cover text has been agreed upon, we forward it to the artist so that she can then supply us with a full cover design. This will include the front, back, and spine (with corresponding title, author’s name and logo.
• Once the full cover has been approved, we are ready to upload the needed files to the printer.

4. What Importance Does the Back Cover Have?

The back cover of a book may not seem all that important, but it can actually make or break the book. Exhaustive studies have been done about what a prospective reader looks at. First, it’s the front cover. If that appeals to her, she then turns the book over and reads what’s on the back. If that gets her attention, she’ll look at the table of contents and Introduction, but if not, she’ll put the book down and move on. Therefore:

• The back cover text must be short, to the point and targeted.
• The author’s photo must be of good quality.
• The author’s bio cannot be wordy or boring.
• The design of the back cover, although much less important, should pleasantly combine with the front cover. Fonts should be easy to read and not too many different ones should be used.

5. What Is the Author’s Part in All of This?

Many authors have a definite idea about what they want to portray in the front cover. This may be good, but more often it can be a serious hindrance. Authors are not necessarily artistic, and although they might know when something looks good or not, they can’t always tell someone what to do to make it look exactly as they would like. In these cases, authors should trust the artist’s tastes. If an endless round of changes is ordered up to the cover, this becomes burdensome for everyone, pushes the project far beyond its original budget, and can easily delay the release of the book.

The author’s part, therefore, is to quickly turn around the cover proofs, making any suggestions in a clear and understandable way. “I just don’t like it,” is not a very helpful critique. Help the artist to know what to do to make it acceptable. More than just your own tastes are in play. Let a few potential readers look at it and get their opinions. It is, after all, readers who will be buying the book.