Book cover design
A cover that works at thumbnail size
Most readers will meet your book as a two-centimetre image on a phone. We design for that first, then make sure it also holds up as a printed object in someone's hands.
The job a cover does
It is not decoration. It is a promise
A cover has about one second to tell a browsing reader what kind of book this is and whether it is for them. Get that wrong and the writing never gets a hearing.
This is the single most common place self-published books give themselves away. Not because the design is ugly (often it is perfectly attractive) but because it signals the wrong genre, or no genre at all. A literary cover on a cosy mystery will lose the readers who would have loved the book.
Good cover design is therefore mostly a research problem. What do the top fifty books your reader already buys look like? What do they have in common? Which of those conventions can you break, and which are load-bearing?
Design process
From brief to final files
Typically three to four weeks. Two rounds of revisions are included as standard.
Brief and genre research
You tell us about the book, the reader and any covers you admire. We research what is currently selling in your category on the Amazon Australia storefront and elsewhere, and report back on the conventions your cover needs to acknowledge.
Visual direction
A short direction document (palette, typographic approach, imagery style and mood) agreed before any design work starts. Cheaper to argue about at this stage than at concept stage.
Concepts
Two or three distinct front-cover concepts, presented at thumbnail size as well as full size, because a concept that only works large is not finished.
Refinement
You pick a direction and we develop it. Two revision rounds are included; further rounds are quoted if you want them.
Full wrap build
Once the front is signed off and the final page count is known, we build the complete print wrap (front, spine and back) to your printer's exact template.
File delivery
Print PDF with bleed and correct colour profile, a separate RGB ebook cover at retailer specification, and social crops. All yours to keep.
Print wrap
Three surfaces, three different jobs
Front cover
Genre signal, title hierarchy and author name, legible at thumbnail. Everything else is secondary to whether a reader can read the title at 200 pixels tall.
Spine
Width is calculated from your page count and paper stock. Text must sit centred with enough tolerance for print drift, which is why the spine is built last.
Back cover
Blurb, author biography, barcode area and ISBN. The blurb is doing sales work here: we will typeset what you supply, and can write it as part of marketing.
Typography
Type does most of the work
Readers rarely notice cover typography consciously, and respond to it completely. A heavy condensed sans says thriller. A high-contrast serif with generous spacing says literary. A rounded, warm face says the book is going to be gentle with you.
- Title, subtitle and author set in a deliberate hierarchy
- Faces licensed for commercial use: checked, not assumed
- Tested at thumbnail before anything else is judged
- Series titles built to a repeatable template
- Contrast checked so the title survives a busy background
Series covers get particular attention. The template has to be distinctive enough to recognise and flexible enough to survive book seven.
Specifications
The technical requirements we handle
Most cover rejections at upload are specification failures, not design failures. These are the things that cause them.
| Requirement | Print cover | Ebook cover |
|---|---|---|
| Colour space | CMYK, printer's profile | RGB |
| Resolution | 300 dpi at full size | Retailer minimum pixel height |
| Bleed | Required on all outer edges | None |
| Dimensions | Depends on trim size and page count | Fixed aspect ratio, typically 1:1.6 |
| Barcode | Space reserved on the back | Not applicable |
| File format | Flattened PDF | JPEG or TIFF |
Spine width cannot be finalised until the interior is typeset and the page count is fixed. If your cover and interior are being produced together we handle the sequencing; if you are bringing your own typesetter, we need their final page count before building the wrap.
Licensing
Every image on your cover is properly licensed
Cover imagery is either commissioned, licensed from a commercial stock library with a licence that covers book covers specifically, or created from scratch. We record what was used and under what terms, and pass that record to you with the files.
This matters more than authors expect. A licence that permits editorial use does not necessarily permit use on a product for sale, and discovering the difference after a print run is expensive.
Questions
Cover design questions, answered
Yes, and many authors do. If you have artwork you own or have commissioned, we can build the cover around it. If you have a concept rather than artwork, bring it to the brief, though be prepared for us to test it against what is actually selling in your genre, which occasionally leads somewhere different.
Two or three distinct front-cover directions, presented at both thumbnail and full size. After you choose one, two rounds of refinement are included. We deliberately do not show six concepts: it tends to produce a committee decision rather than a good cover.
You own the finished cover artwork and receive all production files. Licensed stock elements remain under their original licence, which is why we document exactly what was used and what that licence permits.
That is fine, and actually helpful: we need the final page count to calculate spine width. Send your typesetter's specification along with the trim size and paper stock.
Yes. Series work is quoted as a template plus per-book application, which is more economical than designing each cover independently and produces a shelf presence readers recognise.
Not exactly: screens emit light, paper reflects it, and CMYK cannot reproduce every RGB colour. We design with that in mind and strongly recommend ordering a physical proof before release. It is the only reliable way to see your actual cover.
It depends on whether artwork is commissioned or licensed, whether you need print and ebook or ebook only, and whether it is a standalone or a series template. We quote after the brief.
Continue
What pairs with cover design
Most authors combine two or three services. Tell us where your manuscript is and we will recommend only what it needs.
Get started
Tell us about the book and who it is for
Send the title, genre, word count and a short description. We will come back with genre research, a visual direction and a quote.
- Genre research before any design work
- Concepts shown at thumbnail size first
- Two revision rounds included
- Print wrap, ebook cover and social crops supplied
Prefer to talk it through? +61 2 8531 1369 · info@harbourbridgepress.com