Gordon Woolf

What is important about a book cover

You obviously want a book cover to look good but what are some of the other points bear in mind when you are either creating a cover idea yourself, or you are considering designs produced by others?

The title needs to stand out not only when the book itself is on show, but also in the miniature cover reproductions in catalogues and on line. What will it look like on the Amazon website or in black and white in the local newspaper?

The back cover is usually used for a brief selling spiel about the book intended for those who pick it up in bookstores, maybe a brief biography of the author emphasising his or her expertise in the case of a non-fiction book, plus some brief reviews often written in advance of publication by those who were invited to comment on the manuscript or an "advance reading copy". It also contains, usually, a category classification, used by bookshops as a guide to the shelf where the book should be displayed, and a barcode using the standard Bookland format understood by all bookshops worldwide and by many libraries.

The spine is what will show when the book is on a bookshelf and needs to have the short version of the title and, usually, the surname of the author and a logo for the publisher. A problem in book production is that the spine width can only be calculated when the printer, number of pages, and paper to be used are all decided. This can mean that the cover cannot be completed until all other aspects of the book have been decided. However that does not mean that you should not make an early start on the cover, as it can play an important part of getting advance publicity.

Note that in the USA and the English-speaking world in general, the title runs from top to bottom so that it reads correctly when the book is face up on a table. However in Europe (other than the UK) and in many other parts of the world it is normal for the sideways title to read from the bottom up.

I also believe that the spine should be integral to the cover, and not a separate piece of artwork. Several of my designs have a cover picture which folds around the spine and fades away on the back. This does give a small leeway to the bindery, although it is still important that they centre the spine title within a very small amount of variation. A hard edge on the fold will emphasise any tiny variation in binding, and two hard edges will invite problems if the spine width or the caliper of the paper (its thickness) is even the tiniest amount out from the specification: even the strength of the grip on the book block within the binding machinery can cause very small variations in spine width.