Month: November 2020

5 Hacks for Designing an Eye-Catching Book Cover

How to design an eye-catching book cover?

Stuck with no ideas on how to begin on creating a brilliant design for your book cover?  Let’s face it. Designing a catchy book cover can be a challenging task. Book cover designs require diligence and creative flair! It’s not just the plot, characters or writing quality that makes a book a success. Remember, books are often judged by the cover! A snazzy book cover will attract more readers, convey the theme of the book and seal the sales deal.

Essential Elements of a Book Cover

With book cover designs, various elementsplay a pivotal role in defining the aesthetics. Key elements of any book cover include imagery, colors, format, typography layout and fonts. The key is to put these together in a successful blend to design an eye-catching cover. When designing a book cover, you need to keep in mind dynamics like the title, subtitle, portraits, background images, graphics, summary, synopsis, author’s trivia, recommendations and many other relevant components depending upon the genre of the book. These will essentially work together in harmony for a brilliant graphical impact.

 

Visual elements for any book cover fall into three broad categories:

  • Typography

This includes the background colour and the contrasting hues for all artwork included in the cover design.

  • Graphics/Imagery

This is the collection of artwork that goes in your cover design, synching with the genre and overall layout.

  • Colour

This includes the background colour and the contrasting hues for all artwork included in the cover design.

These three elements are organised in a ‘layout’ that defines the arrangement and scope of the elements. The layout works together with the ‘size’ and ‘format’ to display all elements in an aesthetically pleasing manner. The format determines whether a book is a ‘paperback’ or ‘hardback’. This plays a significant role in cover design as designers often create covers keeping the format in mind.

Two key pieces of information all covers need to convey is the ‘book title’ and the ‘author’s name’. The layout will define how these two informative pieces are scaled, positioned and combined on the cover..

Hacks to Use for a Striking Cover

A picture can say 1000 words. Every aspect of this famous saying is true when designing a book cover. You need to demonstrate to the reader what secrets the book holds inside.

A book cover is essentially the face of the book. Creating an eye-catching cover is certainly a daunting task. But, don’t fret as these handy tips below will help you design a fantastic piece meant for a poignant impact.

 

Know That a Book Cover Is Linked to the Genre         

An appropriate book cover will sync well with the genre of the story. For example, if your book is a gripping thriller that will leave your readers shaking in their boots then ensure that your book cover represents the horror which will be revealed inside. Readers often have specific genre preferences and therefore use the cover to identify which genre the book is, highlighting the importance of this.

Have a look at some of the examples below.

– Horror

Heptagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

– Children’s

Diversity

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blossoming Kindness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

– Romance

For the Bound Hearts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a While

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Choose Appropriate Font & Colours

The book title and author name are one of the most important elements of the front cover, as this is what they will remember when recommending your book to their friends/family. Therefore ensuring you pick the correct font and colouring for these key elements is imperative to the success of your book.

The colours should complement the genre and the graphic/images you have selected on your cover. You want them to stand out but not stick out.

Ensuring the font is easy for your readers to read is as important as picking the graphics, after all you did not spend hours, weeks, month, or years writing a book for your readers to get your name wrong,

Think outside the box

Remember, you will be on a bookshelf with thousands of other books…you want your book to jump out at shoppers. Thinking outside the box is a great way to grab readers attention.

Conducting research is a great way to see what else is out there. Look other book genres in your genres, write a list of things you like and things you don’t. Can you think of something that hasn’t been done before?

Pay for Catchy Artwork

Avoid using the free graphics available from various sites online. It’s a good strategy to buy stock images and photography licenses that will add value to your book cover. Investing in the art will ensure you’re designing a fabulous cover that has the potential to turn heads and step up your book sales. Look for photos and artwork that will make your cover look more refined and professional. If you need to hire a professional designer or photographer and have your custom illustrations commissioned, then do so as it will enhance the aesthetics of the cover and this may be the difference of whether the reader picks up your book or the neighbouring one.

Make the Book Cover Elements Work Together

The three most important elements of a book cover are the background, image and type or texture. A cover’s background should blend in well with the artwork on it. However, it should have a striking contrast with the type or texture to accentuate the title. The image or artwork should be imagery that evokes the right kind of feelings and emotions. Usually, imagery is not required if the background and type blend well. For some genres, however, vivid images are essential for the right impact.

A title is the most significant element in the type or typography that should stand out and be readable and apt for the specific genre. In general, the three elements should work together to create the correct effect that clearly defines the essence of the book.

So, next time you’re designing a book cover, use these hacks above and design a winning cover that will inspire readers, entice them and boost your book sales too!

Submit us your manuscript today to fulfil your dream of becoming a published author.

Conquer Your TBR Pile with Austin Macauley Publishers

Austin-Macauley-Conquer-the-TBR-List

This book seems interesting!

Man! I wanted to try this genre.

Maybe I should buy this book; the visuals seem stunning.

Now you probably are thinking to yourself these thoughts seem familiar. Well, that means you are one of the very large group of people who cannot seem to take their hands and money off that one corner of a stationery shop. There is something so captivating about that corner that lures a bookaholic into the designated buying trap. Once you find yourself there, the urge of buying everything will not wear off until you get your hands on them. As a person who loves books, the temptation of buying and adding a new book in that TBR pile is a temptation we cannot resist, do not worry we understand, there is just nothing better than diving into the pages of a great book. We all have been in that very similar situation time and time again. Passing by that book store or that magical book-corner without giving it a visit seems impossible..

Read onto the blog to find out ways of conquering your TBR Pile. Let’s go together!

 

  • Make it necessary to read

“Life is short and TBR lists are long.”

― Katja Millay

Chances are that you were all riffled up to start reading that book, but to be honest, you just could not find the time. You’ve scheduled a relaxing day reading the book top of your TBR pile but, ding dong, the doorbell goes, you see a pile of clothes just as big as your TBR pile that needs washing, suddenly it’s the end of the day and you have not been able to sit down with your book. Luckily, it’s not that big of a deal and you can still finish the quest of tackling that stake of books, reading should be enjoyable and not a chore so do not force yourself to.

 

  • Prioritize and set the daily/weekly/monthly goal challenges

Whenever we start to embark on a journey, what is the first thing we do? Yes, you probably thought of planning it out. Plan your journey of tackling off the respective pile of yours by initiating mini-goal challenges for daily/weekly/monthly TBR book reading. Select the books you want to finish off in that specific period and decide on which among the selected ones you would like to read first. Considering the books you select, you can set goals on how you are going to do it. Set challenges for completion of goals and don’t feel defeated up if you could not complete them every time…Success is usually built on many small victories.

 

  • Associate a positive reinforcement with reading

What is reinforcement? It is something that mitigates encouragement in you and pushes you onward with motivational cues to keep on repeating the same behaviour that resulted in that specific outcome. So? How to read faster? Try aligning positive reinforcement with reading. How can one do that? You can reward yourself with something that will ensure the possibility of a similar pattern of behaviour in future. Pat yourself on the back every time you receive that positive outcome after reading a little bit more of that book.

 

  • Stop stacking up the shelf

Though there may seem a lot of interesting books to read and buying it will satisfy your thirst but, sometimes the problem lies in ‘our buying behaviour’ pattern. Sometimes it’s not the interest for book reading that makes us make that buying decision but rather it’s our underlying impulsive reaction. Take it as a stimulus for initiating action, good or bad. If that is the case, then it’s time to make it stop. Time to find the reason for this obstructive buying pattern. Try examining your environment for any underlying red flags that bring about that reaction from you. Set yourself boundaries to curb that thirst, for example only purchase a book when you have finished two existing books.

 

  • Don’t buy the book because it’s visually appealing

A good book is the one that captivates the reader through the essence of the story. However, chances are that the readers or non-readers might fall for appealing cover and not for the actual book. We’d suggest all the booklovers or non-readers out there to go for the comprehensive note at the end of the book or skim through the contents before making the buying decision.

 

  • Keep track

How about tracking the books you buy, read and even those which you have not touched in a while? How about tracking them in excel log or online tracking software or even a list in a notepad? You can keep a record of every book purchase and mark the ones you have finished and the ones that are still sitting in a dust-coated old shelf. This will surely keep you in check and even result in reducing unnecessary book purchases.

 

  • Buy books that interest your taste

“I am addicted to reading, I will never reach the end of my TBR list because it multiplies all by itself. It is not my fault; I was born this way.”

― Lani

There are chances of you buying a book just because someone recommended or gifted it to you. But it may not necessarily be of your interest. What are you supposed to do now? Firstly, give away that book because you are never going to read it. Gift or donate it. This way, the shame of stocking up the bookshelves will trim down a little. The second thing is to buy books that are of your taste. We got you covered on the latter. Check out our recommended books to read that might be useful to be added up to your “Active Read Shelf”.

 

 

100 X 100

Book: 100 X 100
Author: Seena Zarie

Happiness can be found within each of us. Get to know about the tools to unlock happiness in the workplace. Read through this book to manifest what real happiness is about. Who knows, maybe adding it in your active read might do some wonders for that pile.

 

 

 

 

A Mysterious Marking

Book: A Mysterious Marking
Author: Taiba Albahrani

A gripping and tantalizing tale of Amara’s journey full of mysteries, powers and discoveries. Readers will surely enjoy the story and would be able to finish off without adding further to their enormous to be read piles; because it is just that type of mesmerizingly thrilling story. You will have to read it to find out the greatest storylines to have existed.

 

 

 

 

Divine Decree

Book: Divine Decree
Author: Z.A Soliman

In her book, the author explains that each and everything is meant to happen. There is a high decree to everything that happens in our lives. Take this that you are reading this blog because it was bound to happen. It was through the law of nature to get you some help with your reading habits.

 

 

 

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