Ebook Cover Design - blog post roundup

[elf]

I'm now working with a digital publisher, which means I get to see a lot of ebook covers and overhear a lot of discussion about ebook covers. So I went looking for info (I'm the web-research person, because my Google-fu is good and my skim-and-read rate is phenomenal) and came up with a roundup of posts about ebook cover design, ranging from technical to artistic to commercially-focused.

What I concluded:

• Every frickin ebook store on the web wants different shapes of ebook covers. Find a good compromise, and expect to make a few variants anyway.
• Readability, or at least recognizeability, at thumbnail size (about 150 pixels high) is crucial.
• Covers are not part of the story; they're part of the advertising.

Jan Marshal at iwritereadrate.com: Tips For Authors: eBook Cover Design Advice from @Jan_Marshall
"• Aim to create three covers, then choose the best. You don’t have to stick with these; you can wander off at a tangent as you work.
• Look at covers in your genre and analyze how they work. Sticking with genre conventions, make something about your cover better or more striking. (Easy to say!)"

Craig Mod: Hack the Cover
"This is an essay for book lovers and designers curious about where the cover has been, where it's going, and what the ethos of covers means for digital book design. It's for those of us dissatisfied with thoughtlessly transferring print assets to digital and closing our eyes."

Joel Friedlander at The Book Designer: Monthly ebook cover design awards
"Learn why some covers work better than others—sometimes you have to ask yourself, “what were they thinking?” when you see little thumbnails that are straight reductions of a print book cover, and are now unreadable. Isn’t the book worth more than that?"

Most recent awards: May 2012
Nonfiction winner notes: "Amusing and it tickles both the mind and our visual sense. Controlling both the palette of colors and the way you use typography results in winners like this one, where a clever concept for a book meets a design that matches it perfectly."

Natasha Fondren, Adventures in Writing on the Road: Ebook Cover Design and Optimum Size Specifications for Amazon, Kindle, B&N, Nook, iBookstore, and iPad Formats
"If you self-publish, you should read this post before hiring a cover designer. I get a lot of covers from authors whose designer made a standard cover without knowing what size is best. I’m not sure how they decide on the image size, because it’s never optimized for anything. Also, I’ve seen cover designers give clients the wrong size, and then charge more when their client asks for the right one."

Keith Snyder: Don't Judge a Book by its JPG
"Here’s the draft of eproduction terminology that I volunteered to write. Help out here, trend setters and production hounds. This isn’t for me to feel smart; it’s for all of us to be less confused—and to try to set some intelligent standards before Ed in marketing says the same stupid thing over and over long enough that it ends up sticking."

Patrick Samphire's Blog: Seven Tips for Designing an Ebook Cover:
"Your book cover has two jobs:
    1. To represent the type of book it is.
    2. To grab the attention of a potential reader."

Peggy at WizardofeBooks.com: Designing Your eBook Cover:
"Keep this front-of-mind: eBook cover design is not an act of art, it is an act of marketing."

Jane Friedman: 2 Tips for Professional E-Book Covers:
"The trick to creating an effective e-book cover is to know your target market. That way you can gear the cover toward them and reassure them it contains exactly the type of information or story they are looking for."

Lindsay Buroker: Ebook Cover Art Tips with Designer Glendon Haddix:
"What are some of the mistakes you see people making when it comes to cover art (no poking fun at mine now *g*)?
I feel a little guilty answering this one, but mainly what I see is the covers don’t look professional. Text not aligned when it should be, poor choice of fonts, ultra super fancy illegible text, and the overall design creates confusion as to what genre the book is in."

Dean Wesley Smith: Think Like a Publisher #6… Covers and Publisher Looks:
"You must, and I repeat must study other covers. Stand in front of book racks and really look at bestsellers and see if you like the cover design, the font, the use of colors and art. Go through your own bookshelves.

And for heaven’s sake, look at tag lines on the covers and blurbs and quotes. And the size of them. All that goes into a professional look in a cover. And you will need to learn how to write blurbs and back cover copy for your POD books.

Then just browse online through Smashwords and Amazon and so many others, studying the covers that catch your attention. And figure out why."