In the article Book Covers: Do They Matter?, Melanie Figueroa from The Poetics Project discusses the importance of book cover design at marketing level, after having stumbled upon some statistics about booksellers’ view on the visual factor. She wittingly quotes Terri Giuliano Long’s article to argue that many readers do factor cover design into consideration when purchasing books online or in a bookshop, and while I agree with her that authors may not always be responsible for the quality of cover design, they certainly should take this aspect more seriously. True, the book writing itself is a piece of artwork and it is a shame that readers would not purchase your book because of the bad cover design, but wouldn’t a good design help you get across your message even more directly and add to the book’s artistic value?
In this interview with Jane Friedman, the bloggers of Book Venture share their view on why authors should pay attention to book design and hire professional designers, common mistakes that indie authors make during their book publishing process, how much a typical trade print paperback novel is expected to cost, and whether a print book and its electronic version should have different cover designs.
If you wish to go for a short read about visual design in book production, I recommend you check out Layout & Design: Good Looks Sell Books, in which Ahmad Meradji outlines the factors that you need to consider for layout & formatting and cover design, as well as introducing the roles of graphic designer and illustrator in publishing services.
Image Credit: Writely Designed