Book Cover Psychology

 

Like most people, I respond emotionally to color. I personally like deep colors ~ a deep blue or deep purple ~ because they evoke a sense of calm. I abhor pink and other "pale" shades. They don't make me feel good, and in the case of pink, it's more irritating than calming. Maybe that's why seeing romance novels on Amazon's shelves turns me off; their covers are often bathed in pink.

Since I'm almost certainly going to be tasked with creating my own cover for my novel, I searched online for some guidance; some hints as to what might catch a potential reader's eye. I never did any research for my previous covers; I just went with something that appealed to me. After all, no one is going to view them more than me, so even if I have very few sales, at least I can admire my covers.

One comprehensive article I found regarding the psychology of book covers mentions that if an author wants to signal that her book is an emotional read, she should choose warm colors, so reds, yellows, orange, gold, beige, creamy neutrals, brown, tan. I can get on board with most of these hues, except that red, to me, doesn't feel warm; and tan is boringly bland. 

Genre expectations are really a pain in the ass. While I'm going to try to steer clear of the women's fiction label, when it comes down to it I may have no other choice. I guess my book has to be "something". Except I hate the current trend in women's fiction covers. They say absolutely nothing. I could draw two squiggly lines on a sheet of paper and it would be just as good as the covers I've seen. When did "abstract" become associated with the genre? And who's the demon who came up with that? No, I want my cover to be attractive. Call me cuckoo. 

The article tends to agree with me. (I would give the writer credit, but he or she is labeled as"Guest". Doesn't seem like a sensitive topic that requires the author to go incognito.)

Anyway, "Guest" posits that a potential reader should be able to look at a cover and understand what the book is about. That's how I've operated. I use images of women on my covers, ones that show some kind of emotion, whether it's pensive or hopeful, that match the story's mood. I think for "Still Untitled", if I find an image of a woman with a microphone, that'll pretty much provide the backdrop of the story. And, per the article, the cover should be uncluttered. I completely agree. A too-cluttered cover is disorienting and off-putting. Far from presenting a calm image, it sets my nerves on edge.

My bigger concern with creating covers is font. I've been meaning to do a search for "best book cover fonts on Canva", because the ones I've found don't give off an aura of professionalism. But this article also informed me that placement is important, too. It advises a "Z" formation, which is what the human eye naturally follows. In practice, what this means is, text should run across the top and bottom, with the image in between slightly off-center. I've always centered everything. I would need to play around with that to find out if I like it. Because the most important criteria is me. 😀

I'm not totally sure about the article's last bit of advice, which is to use contrasting colors and incongruent fonts. I'd need to see some examples. With Canva's font limitations, I did use two different fonts for the title and the author name, but both were bold enough to be clearly visible in a thumbnail. That's really all I could accomplish. I believe what the writer didn't clearly specify is that the title should combine different fonts. That make more sense. A two-word title, okay; a three word would, I think, want the most important word to have a standout font. If your title is practically a sentence, you're on your own.

Things I've learned on my own that might seem rudimentary, but are helpful reminders:

1. Don't, whatever you do, have a border around your cover. If your image is too small to fill the screen, enlarge it. Depending on your image, that might be tricky when trying to insert a title and author name, but borders remind me of the free covers offered by KDP. I haven't checked in years, but I remember them being mostly orange and green geometric shapes; truly awful. 

2. Choose or buy an image with plenty of free space at the top (and enough at the bottom) to add your title and author name in large enough font to be clearly readable on a thumbnail.

3. The font style should convey the mood of the book. For Bad Blood I chose an ominous one; both Lies and Love and Once in a Blue Moon use different forms of cursive.

4. Canva's book cover templates can work, but you'll do a lot of scrolling to find one that's right for your book. I've only ever used two of them; one that's actually pretty representative of the novel and one that (unfortunately) conforms to its genre expectations. I'm not particularly crazy about the second.

5. If none of Canva's image choices work for you, find your own image and upload it to the site. If you're looking to purchase a stock image, narrow your selection to "vertical" or "portrait view". A horizontal image just won't work. That sucks when you find just the right image and find it's unusable.

I actually enjoy designing my own covers, and I believe the only hint of "amateur" that stands out are the fonts and the simplicity, although I happen to like simplicity. Those two things, plus the fact that my covers don't conform. But conformity is overrated.