Thinking About Stock Images And Book Cover Design

Good book cover design requires careful reflection and a considerable amount of compromise between what the author wants and what will actually work in practice.

In this article, I want to set out why choosing the right cover design is harder than it may at first appear. You can read a more detailed article about the importance of design within a genre http://fantasybooksdesign.com/book-cover-design-genre/

The single, most important concept to grasp and accept is that your book cover is the first – and often the only – chance you will ever have to make a sale. Consider this: the average potential reader will typically skim over tens or hundreds of books as she tries try to find something she might want to read.

The typical reader decides whether to investigate a particular book further based purely on its cover.

If she does not like what she sees, she will move on without a moment’s reflection or a second thought. There are, after all, plenty more where that book came from.

She will make up her mind about your book in less than half a second.

So your book cover design needs to stand out from the crowd.

It gets worse.

Your cover  has to work at many different sizes. Your book cover design has to work very hard for a living. Take a moment to think about how and where it might be displayed.

01. Your book, of course. However, were you talking about your e-book cover image or your paperback cover image?

02. Your website, perhaps.

03. Your newsletter for your subscribers.

04. The website of your distributor, whether that be Amazon, Kobo, iBooks, Barnes & Noble or any other digital retailer.

Each version of the image must be displayed at a different physical size to fit its environment and at a different resolution: anywhere from a tiny thumbnail to a huge, full-scale image; anywhere from 150 dots per inch (dpi) to 1,600 dpi or more.

And it has to look good at every possible size and every possible resolution.

This is your first, major consideration and the area in which most compromise is normally required.

The next aspect you need to consider is the nature of the image you want to use for your image. I strongly advise you not to choose a scene from your story to illustrate your book. Scenes contain lots of detail. A lot goes on within them. If you want to hang your book cover design in the Louvre and devote an entire exhibition gallery to it, then go ahead! In real life, however, you must always remember that most potential readers will only ever see your book cover at thumbnail size. A small number of them may click through to your product page and see your book cover at a slightly larger size. Almost no one is ever going to see it at the same size and resolution as Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

The purpose of your book cover design is to sell your books. To sell your books, the cover must work at the lowest size and resolution at which it will be used – which means thumbnail.

Simple images with strong, vibrant colours work best at thumbnail.

The third technical consideration you need to think about concerns the genre of your book. Readers of any genre have certain expectations which you must meet if you are to stand a chance of catching their attention for even a moment. At its most ridiculous, imagine writing an intimate, Regency romance and then designing a book cover which features the Starship Enterprise.

Quite.

You need to think about what readers in your genre expect to see and then deliver it to them. A certain degree of adventurousness can help you to stand out from the crowd but, if you wish to write commercially, you cannot lead from too far in the front. You may turn around and discover there is no one following you.

Now we get into some of the more technical considerations. These are the problems that any professional graphic designer should tell you about. If your designer is always uncritical of your image choices and cover ideas, you should probably be looking for someone else. That designer is not thinking about your needs but only his or her own. Author and designer should be working together to make the best product they can between them.

So what am I thinking about when you come to me? I have already mentioned that you should avoid scenes in your covers because they do not display well at thumbnail size. Now, you have visited an image library such as Shutterstock and you have found a model you like. You want me to work my magic – and I say “No”.

Why would I do that?

It is because I need the highest qualiy image possible to work with. You see an attractive model. I see an image file beset with problems. The resolution of the image is highly important to me. The higher the resolution, the more raw material I have to work with. Giving me an inferior quality image is like asking me to build a brick wall with four bricks.

So, choose your model but let me choose the highest quality image of that model from what is available. And if I tell you that I cannot work with the range of images on offer, please accept that as the expert advice of a professional.

I’m on your side. Sometimes, in order to work in the client’s best interests, I may have to say “No”.

If you really want me to work on a particular image, then you will need to start thinking as I must. Does your cover depict a daytime or a night time scene, for example?

If it is a day scene, then you cannot choose images which have strong, black shadows.

If it is a night time scene then you need to avoid high key images presented against a white background. What is a high key image? It is one where the model is carefully lit so as to contrast less with her background than would otherwise be the case. The technique was first used for film and television because early cameras could not cope well with high contrast. Now, it is often used to convey an upbeat mood. Whichever way you look at it, such an image is not suitable for a dark background.

These are only a few examples of what I need to consider for every commission I undertake.

The technical quality of the core image file is absolutely crucial to the success of your book cover design.

There are a couple more technical problems I would like to describe for you and these are some of the most important reasons why I might reject an image on which you have set your heart.

When you preview images in an image library, you normally only see a preview size of that image. If you like, that is the first and only chance the image library has to sell you a licence for that image. Is this beginning to sound familiar?

It is only after you have purchased the image and downloaded a full size version of it that any problems will come to light. Too much “noise” in an image, for example, can make it unusable.

Noise? You bouhght a picture, not a sound track! Actually, “noise” is a technical term which is used to describe random variations of brightness in an image. Unless you know what you are looking for, the chances are you would be completely unaware of it because your eye will automatically compensate for it. The problem for me is that, because every change in colour or brightness is represented by a digital value and because computers understand numbers but have no appreciation of aesthetics, it can become impossible to manipulate the image to produce the desired result.

As the computer geeks say, “Garbe In; Garbage Out”. As any chef will tell you, “You cannot make five star cuisine from one star ingredients”.

Same thing.

Another common problem with stock images is to do with that nice, white background. You would think, if you gave it any thought at all, that I would absolutely love a white background. Surely it means I can just work with the model you gave me and produce something amazing – something truly magical.

Well, yes I do love white backgrounds – but, in photo-imagery, all is rarely as it seems. In order to create that pure white background, some photographers will process their images through software such as Photoshop before they upload them to Shutterstock or other image library.

They lighten the background electronically. In doing so, they also brighten the edges of the model. In many cases, this destroys important details and this makes it almost impossible for the poor graphic designer (me!) to blend the model with whatever background we have agreed upon. She will always stand apart from the background rather than form part of an overall design.

Can I work around the problem? Yes – but you would not want me to. In such circumstances, the best that I or any other graphic artist can do is to lighten the whole image to reduce the contrast. Trust me: it does not work for book covers, which is why you rarely see them in the real world.

I hope you have enjoyed this little insight into the mind of your graphic designer. I really am not being obstructive when I tell you I can’t work with your image.

I say “No” because I know what I am talking about. It is what I do for a living.

I say “No” because I do not just want to give you something “that will do” but a cover design of which we can both be proud.

I say “No” because, ultimately, I am one of your business partners. I am on your side.

So, if you want to use a stock image library, I really recommend that you pick your model but you let me choose which image of that model we should use.

Send me the links to your preferred model and let me browse the options for you. Obviously, I will always consult with you before the final choice is made. It is not my job to tell you which model you must use but I always need to check the technical qualities of the preferred image to ensure it can be used to deliver the highest possible quality of design.

You wrote an extraordinary story. Now it needs an extraordinary book cover design.