Planning a Cover Design Brief as a Self-Publishing Author

If you will be self-publishing your book, it is vital that you have a great cover design. This will ensure that readers notice your book and stop to find out more about it. If nobody notices the cover of your book, nobody will find it organically, so you would be relying on referrals or your existing readers, which limits your selling opportunities. You will also want to make sure that you have a compelling blurb to encourage readers to actually buy your book once they have picked it up. In this way, you should be able to constantly draw in a new and growing fan base. Make sure that your cover and blurb accurately reflect the contents of your book.

What is a Cover Design Brief?

When you hire a designer to create your book’s cover, you will want to include a detailed design brief. A good design brief sets out the main points of the book, as well as the genre, target audience and anything particular you would like to be on the cover. The clearer the better – this will avoid misunderstandings and make sure you get the cover you want. This should save you (and the designer) a lot of time that might be spent on revisions, as well as keeping the cost down for you.

The primary aim of a cover design brief is to improve communication between you and the designer, ensuring the cover suits your book and stands out in stores. We will now look at some things to bear in mind when writing your design brief.

Keep Your Audience in Mind

One key thing to think about is how to attract your target audience. Firstly, you will need to identify this target audience, which you can do by considering some questions about your book. For example, what age and gender would you expect it to appeal to? What sort of social background will they have come from and what sort of challenges will they be able to relate to? You will also want to make sure you attract fans of the genre, so make sure your cover design fits in with similar books.

Give References and Examples

To make your cover design brief clear and easy to follow, you will want to include various references and examples for the designer to study. Make a list of book covers in your genre that you like and ask your designer to use these as inspiration. You can also spend some time researching images that suit your style of book and annotate these to explain what you like about them. For example, you may like a city skyline from one image but the colour scheme of another. The more you can think about and explain what you want for the cover, the more likely you are to get the cover you want, so it is worth the time spent researching.

Explain Your Ideas

You will also want to explain your ideas for the book. For example, what general mood do you want to convey? Is the book dark and gritty, or does it have a lighter tone? If you have an idea of where you want the cover setting to be, even if it is just something simple like a sci-fi or a jungle setting, this is an excellent starting point to work from. You can then include more details, such as what else you want to be featured on the cover. Are there any major plot points that would work well? Do you want the protagonist to be on the cover? If so, make sure you include details of what they look like and the type of clothes they would be wearing.

Communicate

One of the most important things to do to ensure that you get the book cover you want is to communicate with your designer. Part of this is what is explained above, making sure you are very clear about what you do and don’t want to see on the cover. However, another equally useful thing is to stay in contact after the initial discussion and brief. Ensure you are available for any questions your designer has and regularly check in on how they are getting on and whether they need any input from you.

You can also use this dialogue to give constructive feedback. If there is something that you don’t like, just say! Be specific about what you don’t like – don’t just say that you dislike it and hope the designer will figure it out. Instead, identify what elements of it you don’t like and explain these. For example, is it the art style? The protagonist’s clothing? The more precise you can be, the more constructive your feedback will be.

Wrapping Up

I hope that this helps you to plan for your cover design brief. In my next blog post, we will be looking at how to actually write a cover design brief and what sections you will want, so come back in two weeks for that!

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