What a cover designer needs from you

A cover designer cannot read your mind, and they usually have not read your book. What they have is the brief you give them. A clear brief saves rounds of back and forth.

The basics

Send these first.

• The exact title and subtitle, spelled the way you want them.
• The author name as it should appear.
• The language of the book. A Hindi cover needs a designer who is comfortable with Devanagari lettering.
• The trim size, meaning the page size of the finished book.
• The page count, or a close estimate, because the spine width comes from it.
• The ISBN and barcode details.
• The blurb and the short author bio for the back.

What the book is about

Give a short summary of two or three paragraphs. Include the mood. Is it warm, tense, funny, quiet? A designer can build a whole look from the right mood word.

Who will read it

Describe the reader. A teenager browsing a shelf, a commuter, someone buying a gift. This affects colour, lettering and how much text to put on the front.

Covers you like

Collect five or six covers you admire, from any book. For each one, say what you like about it. The colour, the lettering, the empty space. Also say which covers you dislike and why. This tells the designer more than any description.

Things to avoid

If there is anything you definitely do not want, say so early. A certain colour, a stock image look, a cliché in your genre.

The thumbnail test

Most readers first see a cover as a small image on a phone. Ask the designer to show you the cover at a small size. Can you read the title? Does the shape still stand out? Many covers look beautiful large and vanish when small.

Feedback that helps

Vague comments like "make it pop" make designers sigh. Try these instead.

• "The title is hard to read against the background."
• "The mood feels too cold for this book."
• "The author name is too small compared to the title."

Point at a specific thing and say how it makes you feel.

Agree the terms in writing

Before work starts, agree how many rounds of changes are included, who owns the final files, and what files you will receive. You will want a print-ready file and a smaller version for websites.

Ask for a flat file and a mockup

The print file shows the full wrap: front, spine and back. A mockup shows how it looks as a finished book. Both are useful, for different reasons.

A designer who gets a good brief can make something in a few days that would take weeks of guessing otherwise.