Getting your book Noticed

Your nonfiction book cover serves one purpose—to get people to click for more details about your book and read the description. It’s a one-two punch. If your cover and description speaks to them, you’ve just increased your chances of selling them your book. 

When you browse online book covers you will notice that some of the books pop-out while others don’t. They somehow grab your attention and spur interest. This is because some book covers have strong and effective focal points.

In simple terms, the focal point is an eye-catching part of your book cover that stands out and is distinct from the rest of the other design elements you’re using. Its purpose is to capture and hold the reader’s attention. Effective focal points are one of the key factors that define great book covers. If your book cover doesn’t have a focal point, it will go unnoticed.

7 Cover Design Techniques

Use these 7 techniques to create focal points and to ensure your non-fiction book gets noticed:

1. Use Contrast

Use contrast to create a focal point. Contrast is the most powerful design principle that is used for creating focal points and drawing readers attention. Moreover, it creates a hierarchy, and attracts the reader’s eye to start communication. This is why the most important element of your book cover should be the most emphasized.

The second most important element should be less emphasized, and so on. Since contrast helps to organize information, your reader will know where to look first, second, third and last. That will help you create the visual hierarchy and lead your reader’s eye to the direction you want. For example, the main title of the book below is the “Effective Logo Design,” which has been emphasized the most.

2. Go Big

Make one element on your cover extremely big. It can be either an image or text. This is a simple technique that can give a very professional result.

3. Use Faces and Silhouettes

We are social beings that are genetically programmed to be drawn to living beings. Therefore, images of eyes and faces (humans or animals) are much more likely to grab our attention. Moreover, facial expressions communicate emotions and feelings very well, which help set the mood of your book and trigger associations and fantasies of your reader.

Since we unconsciously tend to make eye contact with other humans, we try to do that even when we see faces and eyes on a picture. Therefore, eyes and faces (human or animal) are some of the strongest focal points on book covers. Use them to your benefit. Look at the example below. Most likely, your eyes are unconsciously trying to meet the eyes of the person on the cover.

4. Direct the Gaze

According to studies such as Eye Gaze Cannot be Ignored, human beings have a natural tendency to follow the gaze of others. Moreover, we have been trained since birth to follow arrows directing us to where we should be looking or going. In marketing visuals, it is a commonly used technique to lead the viewer’s eye to specific information or an element.

You can lead your audience’s eye with the help of arrows, triangles and illustration or photography. If you use a face image, make sure the person is looking at your book title. Double the effect by using a gaze and a pointing finger.

5. Use Symbols

Try to find a symbolic way of showing what your book is about. Utilize a symbol that anyone would understand at first sight. Use it as your book’s cover focal point. If many other books have used this symbol already, present it in a different way. Symbols will help you avoid being too literal and expositional with your design.

Moreover, you will be able to represent a larger idea or concept. To grab the attention of non-fiction audience, combine symbols that are not usually used together and are unexpected. Take a look at the example below. By combining two symbols that are not usually used together, you can make your cover tell a story and pique interest.

6. Utilize white space

White space is very important in creating contrasts and focal points. Covers that have a lot of white space with a color/gradient background and a single image or symbol that illustrates a concept works well both: for fiction and non-fiction covers. Simple and minimalistic covers are more legible which is important for small thumbnail sizes in online stores.

White space is just a term. Actually, it can be any color – red, yellow, black or whatever color or background texture you use in your design. In the example below, the white space is actually yellow. Its main purpose is to reduce noise and clutter so that focal elements of the design can be easily recognized and perceived.  Using white space creatively, you can incorporate multiple meanings in your book cover design like in the example below.

7. Use expressive typography and formatting

Typography is one of the most important elements of your book cover design. A book cover usually has very few words on it, however, those words (title, subtitle, teaser, author’s name) have a huge influence on your audience. The fonts you have chosen for your book cover can either improve its design or make it fail. Correctly selected fonts and formatting will communicate the genre of your book and arise relevant emotions like joy, lust, fear, anger or romantic feelings. It is important for attracting your audience’s attention.

On the other hand, inappropriate fonts and their formatting will confuse your readers and convey unprofessionalism. Nowadays, there is a huge variety of fonts you can choose from. The good news is that you can add new fonts to your computer free of charge.

Check out this list of websites that offer free fonts. You can easily download them by following this tutorial.

One of the simplest ways to create a good quality non-fiction book cover design is by using bright colors, well-aligned and formatted texts and an appropriate image that illustrates the concept. The image should catch the audience’s attention and convey the topic immediately.

Moreover, the chosen picture and design must immediately communicate, if the book is about travelling, marketing, technologies, politics or recipes. When you are looking for an image for your book cover, try to find one that fits your genre and set the mood of the book. Do not use cheap clip art on your book cover. I’m talking about the clip arts that come free with Microsoft Word and similar programs. However, it doesn’t mean that you always need to pay for images. Check out this list of more than 60 free stock images websites. There are thousands of images that are under creative commons (CC0) and can be used even for commercial use without paying a dime.

Be simple.

Put as little as possible on your book cover, use white space and focal points. Remember, that title legibility is a must.

About the author

Anita Nipane is Udemy instructor with more than 12,000 students. She is the owner of the marketing blog Digginet and author of the book “Book Cover Design Formula: Create Book Covers That Captivate Readers”. 

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