What Makes A Book Cover That Gets Attention

In this episode, we delve into one of the most crucial aspects of book publishing: the cover. Hosts Dixie and Brad discuss why a strong book cover is vital for grabbing attention and making an impact. Learn what it takes to create an eye-catching and professional cover, common pitfalls to avoid, and the importance of consistent styling for your author brand. 

The episode also touches on designing covers for different genres, the significance of readability, where to place the author's name, and the role of thumbnails in online marketplaces. Whether you’re a first-time author or looking to refine your approach, this conversation offers valuable insights and practical tips to make your book cover stand out.

The Expert’s Journey podcast is dedicated to empowering authors, content creators, experts and professional speakers worldwide.

Join hosts Brad Hauck, author of AI Powered Profits: Use AI to Automate & Accelerate Your Business in 90 Days, and Dixie Carlton, author of Start With the Draft: How to Easily Plan and Write a Non-Fiction Book, as they share practical insights to elevate your speaking career.

Each episode delivers actionable strategies to grow your audience, sharpen your skills, and increase your impact through speaking, publishing, and smart marketing.

Whether you're looking to boost your influence or explore new ways to share your expertise, The Expert’s Journey gives you the tools and direction to succeed.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Experts Journey Podcast, where we're all about creating your path to impact. Join your hosts, Dixie, Mary Carlton from Indie Experts Publishing, and Mr. Web Marketing, Brad Howe, as we look at how you can grow your business and influence by leveraging your knowledge for profit. Welcome to the Experts Journey Podcast, the show that helps you grow your impact and income as a speaker, author and expert. Today, we're talking about one of the most important parts of any books you publish, your cover. A strong cover can stop people mid scroll, spark curiosity, and set the tone for everything inside. A weak one can sink even the best content. In this episode, you'll learn what it takes to make a good book cover that stands out, the biggest mistakes to avoid, and how to make sure your book looks professional and compelling in any marketplace. So let's get started. Good morning, Dixie. Good morning, Brad. How are you going? I love this topic. Good. Yeah. I knew you'd like this one. You're a little bit focused on books for some reason. It seemed like it was a good one to me. I really. I spent a bit of time doing this because sometimes I create my own book covers. And those book covers can be on reports, they can be on proper books, they can be on all sorts of things. So the COVID makes an impact. And I'm sure that everybody listening has been to a bookstore and you've Scandal on the shelves and your eyes go, yeah, and you stop and you go, oh, what's that about? Because there's something about that cover that stops you. One of the biggest questions I get asked all the time is how do I get a cover that makes people stop as they're walking towards the gates to their airplane and will make them stop and maybe even be late to catch their flight. Being punished to catch some flight because you stop to look at a book cover is an author's dream, right? The one that always, of course, comes to mind is the one that the subtle art of not giving a. If you'd see, kids. Yeah, it's such a famous cover and it is a really good cover because people do stop and look at it. They stop and look at it because of the word that's in there. And swear words do obviously count when it comes to arresting people's eyes and ears, of course, in public. But also the color, the bold orange. You can do things with bold type, bold covers, bold words. But at the end of the day, it still has to actually work for the book as well. It's not just a simple matter of saying, I'm just going to Chuck something together that's really big, bright and has got a swear word in it. And hope that works because actually, often it will just as frequently turn people off. Yeah, you raise a really good point, because when that book came out, it really did stand out, because it's the first time I think I've ever seen a book where it actually had a square word on the COVID But since then, I've seen numerous other books come out and try and use the same technique. My first thoughts are, oh, you're trying to copy them. To me, that actually damages the effect of the COVID and it's, oh, it's just a cheap copy. Even though the topics weren't the same. Yeah, it's the fact that they'd done that. And the first time I saw it, I thought, wow, that really stands out. That takes guts to actually put a swear word on the COVID like that. But the impact was massive. It really worked. But it's not for everyone. And at one stage there I was doing some research into cover design. I went and looked at the bestselling books, the top 10 bestselling books of all time, and their covers, and none of them had anything in common except that the name was clear. That was the first one. So a clear, bold title was something they all had. Some had it where it took up all the COVID some took up part of the COVID but either way, it was always very easy to read. Yes. And that's a big part of the success of any book, is you've got to have a simple, easy to read title and something that stands out on a cover and even in a thumbnail. For example, if your book is being promoted in some situations where it is a thumbnail version of what the COVID is going to be, it still has to stand out and be visible and arresting to the eye. There's a favorite book of mine, the Old man who Climbed out the Window, and gosh, I can't even remember the rest of it. It is quite a long title. But it is interesting as a title. And that's for a novel. But if you're selling a business book or you're working on books that explain things and educate people, you want to be a lot harder, a lot sharper with something, not just put half of the narrative onto the COVID You want to be clear about what your book is about. Yeah. And making sure that people can read it is so super important because if people can't read it at a glance, they're just going to pass right over it more often than not, unless there's an image on the COVID or something like that. And the second thing that I looked at was where the name went, your name as the author. And that was funny too, because some had it at the top, some had it underneath the title, some had it at the bottom. It was always somewhere else. It's like, where's the best spot? I don't think there is one. I think it depends on why you're writing the book, sometimes where it goes. And also how well known you are and whether or not it's part of the films. I saw a really good book that is written by someone who has lots of books. For example, I think most people know I read a lot of David Baldacci. His book covers are always similar. They've always got his name very boldly on the front. And so you know immediately that it is a David Baldacci book. Many authors do the same things. Jit, Sean Coutts, Stephen King, a lot of them follow that rule of thumb very carefully. And I think that's a good thing. If I'm putting my name on any of my books, I'll always make sure that it is in a similar font and it is in a similar place. And it's the same with the general style of my covers. For my books and also for most of our author's books that we do, the name, if it's not already famous, is less important than the title. So if it's someone that you know you're looking for their book or you go into get people to stop and read it because they recognize the name, that's fine. They may find that the name is more important than the title or equally as important. Being consistent with your styling and your design of your covers is an important thing to do. Having something that's completely never looks like it's come out of the same stable, especially if it's similar topics, does you actually does damage your brand. I think you need that. You need that kind of commonality between the different books. I like a particular style for my business books. I like a particular font. I use the word profits, for example, in my titles because I'm building a series like that. And also you've got to look at things like the genre, appropriate design. Business books look a certain way, romance novels look another way. Other sorts of stories look another way. If you pick up a romance novel pretty well, every romance novel has some guy and a girl on the front swooning. That's. It's a pretty kind of standard sort of thing, isn't It. And yet it works. It actually sells. You confessing to being a reader of romance novels, Brad? No, but I was impressed. I was reading an article about someone who wrote them and why they started writing them because it's such a huge audience. Like, I was really impressed with how many people read them. Yeah, it's interesting. Like with a romance, for example, or a novel, you can play around more with fonts that might be a little bit more soft and curly and whereas when you're writing business books, nonfiction books, you want something that's a lot more solid and easy to spot, easy to read, just something that stands out and there's no guesswork. You don't have to get up right up close to actually make out what that title says because of the number of curlicues with. With the Fs and the Ss on the title, because that can be quite frustrating. But then for a romance novel, that can work really well. I wonder if that has to do with the way people read books. As in people who read romance novels will read the next one they find, so to speak. So there's that, oh, there's one I haven't read thing. Whereas with business books, you're like, you're targeting a specific niche and you try and hit a specific audience and all those sorts of things. Maybe, maybe there's something there. Yeah, I think there is. And there's a lot of studies being done about use of color and use of fonts for specific marketing purposes and readability. And you have to think about that. Like if I'm writing a card for a friend or writing a letter and I'm wanting to keep it friendly and soft, I might use something like Architect's daughter or finger paint as a font because it's soft and friendly and it appeals to my non business side. You mean you get Comic Sans out? Oh, yeah. You said that would be something that would be more off business thinking. But if I'm doing anything for business, I'm going to use something that's more serious. Calibri or even Times New Roman Helvetica. Those actually have a more of a solid, upstanding feel to them when you're reading them. So you are then conveying subtly that message that this is an important piece of information, whether it actually is or not. It's obviously subjective. But if you're wanting to say, take me seriously, then you have to use serious fonts. Yeah, and we move from fonts. We move on to the next piece, which is actually the image on the front cover. And we've seen this change a lot over the years. There was a stage where business books basically just had words on the COVID And then we started to see images on the COVID And then if you're going to publish a book, you had to be on the COVID because it's your brand, you need to be on the COVID Or you can use other imagery. For example, for my book, obviously, we've got Run towards the Flames. We've got a business person running towards a fire because it illustrates the title. I want to come back to your book there because you do some really cool covers with your workshop books and your prophets books, but with Run towards the Flames, because we did that for you. And we had to use a bit of careful design elements to make sure that the image was done in the right way so that it didn't get swamped by the flames. That the right sizing and positioning of the flames and the image and the title and everything were. That nothing clashed. It didn't all look like a jumble. And a lot of people will look at a cover, any kind of COVID but that is a good example of one. They'll look at a cover and they'll think, oh, yeah, that's just someone running towards claims. And then you've got the words there and et cetera. Anyone could have chucked that together on Canva, for example. The reality is that you often will still need to use a professional to at least get the first couple of versions of a book. Or if you're using images or a face, you need to have a good eye for the detail, how things fit together, how to not lose the COVID power of the COVID by messing around too much with the image. That's going to detract from the wording, et cetera. So there are specific arts to creating a really good cover. And so I would encourage anybody listening to this to not just assume that they could just go ahead and get something that's going to be an amazing cover that will make people stop and sit and think about looking, picking up the book by just thinking that they can just go on Canva in instances you can't. Coming back to that, when I first originally thought about that cover, it was. I always thought, oh, it'll be a picture of a firefighter heading towards flames. And you guys came back to me and kind of said, no, actually, this is a business book, so it should be a business person. And then the concept was created and I looked at and I thought, you know what, you're really right. This is this is what I want to say and this is who it's for. So it actually was much better. And look, in the end, the person looked like the back of my head, had no hair. Yeah. Blue suit, that sort of thing. So it looked like me anyway, but it really worked and I really love that cover. So, yeah, it's absolutely worth not jumping into the first design you come up with too, and getting an expert to look at it when you're looking to launch a special book, a real game changer for your business, but getting an expert to do the covers or bring a range of COVID thoughts to you and say, okay, this is why. And this is what. Absolutely worth coming to someone like yourself to do. Yeah, because it does. You know, when you're working in this space all the time, and this design space is different than brochure designs or website designs or business card designs or what goes on the back of your car. There are specific skills and aspects to cover design that are quite important. And I haven't even started on the back cover, but I will come back with the other covers that you do, which you do a fantastic job. Of those, they are a very uniform style, different way, but that's a series. That also means that the Run towards the Flames is a different book and stands out as being a different book. But all of your books would look good together on the same shelf. And that's what you've got to think about. Your book covers should always look like they have got some quality thought into them, into the colors, the designs, the fonts. Just some consistency is always important. And the other thing to remember, too, is that when you are doing images, unless your face is famous or there's absolute relevance for why you use your face on the COVID don't. Shout. It's like, who's this Dick? Yeah, we did. We did a fantastic book a few years ago for Bill Blakey, called Back from the Brink. And he was Lieutenant Colonel Bill Blakey, and he was talking about his experiences coming back from the Afghan war. And he had a fantastic photo of himself in uniform, obviously, in a desert setting in Afghanistan, and it was a perfect image to use on that cover, so that it was relevant. It was fantastic. But if he'd just been sitting there, like, looking like a normal person and just a headshot and whatever, who knew who he was? So relevance in the imagery, including using your photo, is really important. And often you see speakers that are using their face because they think, hey, this is my book and I should have my face on there. I'm gonna sell it from stage. I'm not saying I'm looking like a real estate agent's photo. I think he could have done better. So I think that's important. And again, using some feedback and some getting some expertise advice, if you want your book to be taken seriously, don't let it look like it's being personally designed by your kid who's studying design. Even your canva covers, they're okay, but they're not great. They're there to help you rather than be professional. Again, if you're doing a report or you're doing a quick, short, tiny book or something of 20 pages, maybe they might be perfect for that. But when you're writing a proper book, you need to just spend a little bit more time doing it. You just mentioned the back of the book and that's a key element too. There's so much you could put on the back of a book. Let's face it, there's all that space and it's all empty. So I can write tons. And if I use size 5 font, I think I can tell my whole story on the back there. But that's not the answer, is it? No. And there are certain things that we do on the back of covers, which again, there's a little bit of science to it when I say science. Pseudo science, emotional science. I sat there in book buying situations, like for example, at international book fairs where you do see how the buyers function and how they operate and when you start to look at how fast they will go through picking up a book and it's literally, have I got a cover for my ending? They'll literally pick it up. Here's the COVID Look at it, look at the back. Maybe open it, look at the first couple of pages and then that's it onto the next one. And if you've got a really good quality back cover that tells people just well laid out that it's got maybe three or four paragraphs, maybe a couple of bullet points, and maybe an italicized or bolded comment at the bottom that someone might have said, this is a fantastic book. Maybe have a small version of your personal photo on the back of it. But then again, you don't have to put all about you, the author on the back because most of that's going to go on to the end of the book. You need to be really smart about how you use that real estate. And then if you're using that same information for your back cover. Sorry, the same information for your back cover design for your listing On Amazon, for example, you're going to want to make sure that you've got good keywords in there and that it is well laid out and easy to read and maybe even scan down there quickly. And if you're thinking about someone maybe wanting to taken everything they're going to about the book in literally two seconds, then you want to be really clever about how you design that. Yeah, interesting. You were talking about the buyers looking at them. What a lot of people probably will never know about me, that I actually managed a school library for six years in a primary school. So my position where I was, I act as a librarian as well, which means I bought a lot of books. And it's true. You pick them up, they come in with boxes of them and you're like, okay, we need some for the young kids, we need some for the middle, we need some for the high, we need some specifically targeting boys or whatever. And you just go through and you look at the COVID and you go, okay, did that catch my attention? And then you have a quick read of the back and then you flick through and you go, yep, that's good. Or you read a random page, which is something else. So you know, it is absolutely essential because you get a bad cover, you'll look straight over the top of that book. I know because I've done it many times. I've gone, no, they won't read that. It's just. You just know they won't pick it up. There are reasons why many industry people within the publishing industry do cover design awards. And getting a cover design award, which some of our team has done a couple of times, that's a big deal. Good cover designs will do huge things for your book. A bad cover design will just literally put it into being a desk thumper category. Yeah. And that brings me to the one emotional resonance, which is what we're really talking about here. When you pick it up, how does it resonate with you? Does it make you feel excited? Does it make you curious? What sort of feeling do you get from looking at the COVID and reading the information on the back? Really, it's an emotional decision, buying a book. It's not just a case of most people who read to read. Yeah. Simply. And so it's an emotional thing. They enjoy going to bookstores, they enjoy going to libraries. It is a really important part of their life. Yeah. There is emotions involved in choosing books and you gotta remember that. Yes, absolutely. And if you don't want to treat it as a professional concept to develop it professionally, then don't be surprised if you don't get the results that you want with your book. Yeah, look right back at the start, you mentioned thumbnails and I think this is a good one to tidy this episode off on. Thumbnails are really important these days. Obviously everything we do is online, so your book is going to show up in all different sizes. It's not always going to be a physical book. In fact, nine times out of 10 it's probably not going to be a physical book. To be honest, people are going to see a thumbnail or see a 500 by 500 image or whatever it happens to be. Having that thumbnail is really important. So is there anything you'd like to add to that? Finish off our chat. Don't make it too cluttered, keep it simple, get it professionally designed. If you can afford to do at least the first one in the series, be cautious with your imagery and yeah, that's pretty much it. Think about all the ways that it's going to be looked at, all the placement that's going to be seen and is it going to be something that makes people sit there and pick it up, turn it over, open it up, look at the contents, or is it going to be something that they're going to say, oh yeah, and go straight ahead, straight away into kind of moving on to the next book? Because people have got plenty of choices of whatever books they're going to read now. Exactly. And on somebody like Amazon, you're going to have a hundred on a page each rolling past. So it's not like it's going to be presented to you individually necessarily. So. That's right. So yeah. Thank you for joining us on the Experts Journey podcast today. If you enjoyed this conversation, take a moment to subscribe, share the episode with a fellow author or leave us quick review. It really helps us reach more people. And don't forget to check out our books on Amazon Dixies. Start with the draft how to Easily Plan and Write a Novel Non Fiction Book and my book Microcourse Profits. Build a seven Figure Income with Bite Sized Courses. Both are full of tools and strategies to help you grow your brand and income faster. We'll see you next time. And remember, your cover is your first chance to make an impression, make it count.