Best Book Cover Designs - 3 Questions Your Cover Should Answer

There are three questions your book cover needs to answer. If you want help to create the most appealing and marketable nonfiction book cover, then you're in luck. This video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie, the book broad of book launchers. Every month, except for July and August, we host deep dive training sessions. These are Saturday sessions where we work on helping you write your book, dive into a subject for in depth training, like interviewing experts or talking about marketing. If it's something that's gonna help you on your nonfiction author journey, we cover it. If you feel like you're missing out, you probably are. So head over to book launchers.com and get on our launchletter newsletter list so you get invited to the next one. In the meantime, you can enjoy a snippet from our March training session where Melissa Sobey, our production supervisor, took you through three questions your book cover should answer with examples. Take it away, Melissa.

These are the three questions we feel really target your reader. And that very first rule is the most important in the entire book production process is what is the reader looking for? What is your ideal reader looking for? So you've heard Julie talk about what your hook is on so many videos and so many presentations and posts and things like that. So your hook plays a big part in this as well. When you're thinking about the problem, what in the hook of your book, what is the problem you're identifying there? Think about, you know, if. If you're. If you're writing a book, let's say, about real estate, like Matt Piccini, you know, is the problem. The investment side of it is the problem the people side of it, is it a combination of those things?

This is Matt Paccini's book. We talked about it in the minutes before this video recording as she discussed having a subtitle that sells your book to your ideal reader and showcases your hook. For Matt, his book just isn't another real estate book. He's taken his cool theater background and integrated it into this book and addressed the core problem he found in real estate, which was people saw real estate investors as slumlords and greedy. But he sees real estate as something that can be profitable and improve communities and help the people who live in the buildings and properties. You get that from his title produce passive income, write your own story, and direct your dollars towards positive change. And so his title and subtitles speak to his reader and. And his cover starts to allude to the problem he is solving and the interesting way he's solving it. But Melissa has a Cool example in it as well. So let's go back to her.

This book is. This has a great title and subtitle. There's lots of keywords in here. But Sam Nix, his book deals with empowering teachers so that they can have a classroom full of students that are actually accomplishing something wonderful and reaching their full potential as students and in, in general, as they go on from high school and into college and into their careers, like things that they can take with them throughout their whole life. And he's coming at it from an administrator's point of view, and he's looking at it, how am I, as an administrator, passing the baton to my teachers so that my teachers can then pass the baton to the students? And so it's a very interesting image story that he's putting together. And we really loved this cover. It was. It was difficult to put, to get it exactly like this. There were a lot of little tricks and tips that our cover designer had to put together to make that happen. So. But it was very much worth it in the end.

One thing Melissa says here that I've never really talked about with you is what is the story you're telling on the COVID I think that's a great perspective. Now the next question.

So the second question is, does the COVID reveal part of the method? So, in other words, do you have a specific diet that you're. That you're a proponent of? Is there a step by step process that you endeavored or you are putting together for the reader on how to obtain wealth, things like that? Is there something in your book, in your hook of your book that is showing what the steps are to get to the result that you're promising? So for the next slide, I know I changed this one at the last minute, so. Oh, yes, Odile and Steve. So this is a fantastic book. I love this book. I love this couple. They are just super passionate and wonderful people. And what they have written together is a book about transforming childhood memories. And so when we were sitting down to talk with them about their cover, there was this idea of really focusing on a childlike idea, a childlike design. And this design is obviously, you know, it's a little bit cartoonish, but in an artistic way. And there's. There's a child there grabbing onto a string of heart balloons. And it just gives you this feeling of like, oh, that's very sweet and very joyful and, like, kind of hopeful and all of that mixed together. And it's very parallel to what their methods are that they're Sharing with you in the book. And so it's a very artistic way to show what their method is. And I love this title. I love this couple. I love this book.

One other book we talked about later in this deep dive that has a really illustrative cover of the method is one called Hacking Chemo by Martha Tettenborn. Martha was on the live, so it was fun having her hold it up. That cover does such a great job of revealing the method contained inside the book. Okay, back to Melissa for question three.

So question three. Does it make a promise to the reader or offer a result? So again, going back to the hook, what are you. What in your hook? What are you telling the reader that they will gain from your book by the end of the day of the book or even just in the process of reading it? And so for the next slide, this is one of our favorites. Guy Blaze. He wrote something before this and then got a bunch of letters in from the readers. And this book is him answering those letters. And it's wonderfully put together. It's hilarious. It's sometimes shocking. It's sometimes, you know, it's just. It's a really well done book. And most of it is the advice that he received from his grandmother, his French grandmother. And so it's just. It's a beautiful book. It's very well written. And when we went to put this cover together, he really wanted to show that this was about reconnecting or strengthening the bond that you have in your relationship. And so we found these beautiful photos of couples in Paris. Like, this is one of the neighborhoods in Paris. And we put several of those together. Some of the iconic architecture were some of the options that we showed him. But ultimately we came back to this one because it just has that feeling of intimacy and that feeling that we were hoping to convey with the results that you could get from reading this book.

Isn't Melissa awesome? I love my team at book launcher so much. And I learn every time we do one of these trainings. And the next book she talked about was one where I found out my team team is thinking about something that I hadn't even really considered. Smash that thumbs up button in celebration of what I'm sure you've already gained from this video and from Melissa. But wait, there's more. What Melissa goes into next is talking about combinations. Maybe your cover tells the story, reveals the method and the solution, or maybe it teases the problem and the method. Your cover may do more than one thing, as this next example shows.

It seems simple. It doesn't really look like a story. But when you get into what the book is about, Darby is telling us like there is a conflict for leaders. Some people are much more management oriented and some people are much more vision oriented. But what happens when you combine the two? It makes you a lot stronger. So it doesn't have those ideas don't have to be a conflict. These things, when they come together, can actually illuminate your ability to lead others. And so that's kind of what this, this cover story is about. And I put a little bullet point down there that not just the imagery tells a story, but the color combination and the text tells a story. Like Leader is the main focus of this title, it catches you right away. It's the light bulb and the word leader are the first things you see and they're starkly contrast in color from the red to the white. So it's, it's a fun way to show like even a simple image can communicate some of these ideas.

Now here's the piece I didn't even know my team was helping our clients with. Jacqueline Kyle, our production manager, jumped in and shared an absolutely golden tip. Check this out.

Something to be aware Looking at light bulbs. They're very popular on covers for nonfiction books, anything technology illuminating the we get a lot of requests for light bulbs and puzzles. Puzzles are really difficult to be able to create an emotion around. Light bulbs though, have an interesting problem going on that in 10 years no one's going to really remember that that's what a light bulb looks like. They are changing rapidly. So if you are going to do like a light bulb on your cover, you need to think about 10 years from now, do you want to use the new style light bulb or how do you want it to create the longevity of your book?

Now, it would not be a complete discussion of book covers if we didn't touch on putting your beautiful face on the COVID My simple solution to any author who wants to be on the COVID is to suggest they Visit the top 10 of their category and see if any other authors are on the top 10 there. If nobody else has their face on the COVID it's a really good indication. Your face should not be on your cover either. But Melissa does a great breakdown and also has an example of how you could be the exception and what to do to be that exception.

If you're wanting to be on your cover, do a stock image search, see if there's something out there that would be relevant. So this one I put jump kick because you know this could be relevant for maybe a book about getting your energy back or maybe a book about kicking butt in business or, you know, things like that. These are, these are. There's some general ideas that can be applied to look for these stock images, but not just for images where you want to put yourself in the place of the stock image. You know, take a look at stock images before you go down the route of COVID design in general. You know, find some, some terms, some ideas, some images from stock images that you can share with your designer and say, hey, I really like this feel, but I want to personalize it by doing this, this, or this.

We also talked about text based covers, you know, using text to tell the story and stand out. Here are a couple examples of text based covers that do a great job of telling the story and drawing attention. Okay, now one last thing. On choosing your book cover. When you want to make sure you have something that's going to stand out but fit into your category, or you're choosing between two different designs, put it in a top 10 lineup. We did that with self publish and Succeed and the choice was so obvious we could no longer ignore the yellow cover.

You want your book to stand out. You want it to be the first thing that people see when they look at these thumbnails on Amazon. And in this case, this actually really helped us pick the final design for Julie's book. And I think she's told this story before, but she was not leaning towards yellow. Yellow was not her favorite. And then when we put it in the top 10, it stood out so starkly against the rest of them and that it was undeniable that this was going to need to be the COVID So we were all blown away when we saw this top 10 put together thumbnail list. We were like, oh yeah, it's got to be the yellow. Whew.

That was an intense training on book covers. Thank you to Melissa Sobey for her prep and for the great examples she showcased here. And if you're thinking, man, I need that awesome Book Launchers team to help me with my book, well, it would be our pleasure. Connect with us@book launchers.com Application Take a couple of minutes to tell us about your book idea and the help you need and we'll set up a call or send you resources to support you forward. Now, if you're wondering how to make sure your title and subtitle are set up for success, this video is a must. And if this video has you anxious to finish writing your book, but you really don't want to do any more typing. Well, that video right here. Not that one. This one is on writing without typing, and it's exactly what you need to watch. Both are guaranteed good times, so click on over and I'll see you there.