Publishers frequently have several alternative covers designed, which they test market. Among those they consult are large booksellers, mainly retail chains. Cover design is critical because readers do judge books by their covers!

The book’s spine and its interior design are also important. The spine can be vital because most books are displayed in bookstores spine out. If the title cannot be clearly and easily read, book sales will suffer.

Since readers frequently leaf through books they are interested in, the interior book’s design is also important.

Books with narrow margins and small type that are jammed densely with words are intimidating and off-putting to potential readers. Volumes with wider margins, larger type, illustrations, bullets, boxes, call-outs, and white space are much more inviting. Plus, well-designed books are easier and more enjoyable for readers, which enhances both the writer’s and the publisher’s reputation, which can translate into dollars.

If your book involves visual content such as pictures, photographs, or illustrations, check the publisher’s other books before you sign on.

Try to negotiate a clause in your contract that gives you some input into the final design. Unless you’re a renowned artist or designer, publishers won’t give you design or visual approval. The most they will do is agree to consult with you on these matters.

If you’re concerned about the quality of reproduction in your book, go only with a publisher that has a consistent history of producing top-quality visual books.

Promotion

The promotional campaign for your book is usually developed by your editor and the publisher’s sales and publicity departments. Although publishing houses excel at many elements of the book-production cycle, publicity is usually not their forte. Therefore, most savvy authors hire outside book publicists to work with their publisher’s publicity people.

Get Involved

In today’s highly competitive book-selling market, authors’ involvement in the promotion of their books is essential. In fact, publishers look for authors who have platforms. Having a platform means regularly speaking before groups where they can sell their books; appearing on TV or radio; writing articles, columns, or books; teaching workshops, classes, or seminars; and having extensive lists of names.

Publishers expect their authors to dedicate themselves to working to sell their books. So your willingness and ability to promote your book can play a large role in a publisher’s acquisition decision.

Rick Says

Despite the conglomerate takeovers and consolidations, publishing remains a people-driven business. Machines may print, bind, and deliver books, but the key decisions on what books to publish are still made by living, breathing people. At every step in the publishing process, decisions must be made and people must make them.

Publishing has always been a work-intensive business, and consolidation and job losses have made it more so. Although publishing industry personnel are underpaid and overworked, they have become brilliant multitaskers.

The web is a great example of pictures and words together. It wouldn’t work with either/or. Text is great for left-brained thinkers who need the supporting words to help them visualize and learn, whereas pictures are a necessity for right-brained thinkers who process content based on creative thinking. In reality, since we are all a little bit left-brained and a little bit right-brained, your best bet in conveying information is to make sure you do both: Put words and pictures together.

The word together is key, here. We won’t explore the importance of this idea in picture books – surely that’s self-explanatory. But graduating from picture books to novels or non-fiction changes the landscape of our reading, considerably. The thought, as I’ve always understood it, is that once we give up our childish needs for colorful graphics (Is this true? Do we ever actually give that up? Tufte would argue against that, and so would most designers) , we are supposed to learn via the text, and if an image is necessary, it can be placed anywhere within the document or book, as long as it is tagged with appropriate text.

Patently untrue!

Pictures, regardless of their color (variations on black and white such as grayscale or full color encompassing all manner of combinations) are always a positive addition to your book. Reality tells us that readers of all ages enjoy images that partner with words.

Explanations written to an audience of your peers are the basics of your book, of course. But, never forget that each reader has his or her own way of digesting your content, and supporting different learning styles with a combination of words and pictures is always a welcome format.

With today’s superior technology, designers can create wonderful grayscale images that pop off the page to accompany your text. A recent commercial on TV shows viewers how they can use a particular store’s imagery tools to turn color pictures into grayscale or create faded looks that mimic days gone by. The goal is to have pictures that will impress the viewer, and sometimes that means leaving color out. In the world of print-on-demand (POD), grayscale or black and white are most cost-effective, which is one reason most POD companies do not do children’s books.

New writers who aspire to self-publish can overlook this truly vital area of publication. Image placement is a primary part of what your page-layout designer should be doing for you. Many POD firms charge extra for image placement, precisely because it requires not only expertise and a good eye, but it’s very time consuming. One does not merely click a button and set an image in a body of text.

Just as the actual task of laying out the page is a careful, thoughtful and sometimes intense job, the task of adding pictures to that text more than doubles the concentration and time involved. Sometimes the designer needs to vary the page borders – on the outside of the page, as the inside borders fold into the binding. Not remembering this can create a disconnected flow of text and could cause the pictures to end up on a page opposite the text that describes them.

Luke Wroblewski, who spoke recently in Rochester, NY, uses this concept in his web design work and cited Edward Tufte in his presentation. Today, as Senior Principal, Product Ideation & Design professional at Yahoo!, he is a good example of someone who values the intention of design, as opposed to the object of design.

The intention, let us all agree, is to make the page, regardless of whether it’s online or in print, more understandable to the reader. The content must convey the message – and pictures that accompany it must be placed close to the text – else confuse the reader. Luke showed the attendees at the seminar in Rochester the importance of getting your reader’s attention in the first few seconds and of maintaining that attention by using well-designed and well-thought out “words and pictures” together.

We’re all on the web. Our books are on the web. “Search Inside” is expected today. Readers want to browse books online in much the same way they browse books in a physical bookstore. This gives authors a great opportunity to utilize the “words and pictures” together idea – to engage readers and draw them into the story.

As technology continues to improve the writing and publishing process, we will likely see more e-books – and the opportunity to use image placement, B/W or Color, as more than objects added to support text or break up the monotonous flow of paragraph after paragraph. We will see image placement become the norm – books will have full-color pictures, and I predict we will see books with mini-movies embedded in them.

But that’s a story for another day. It’s enough to say that today’s technology allows designers to utilize pictures so effectively, for authors and publishers, that pictures are worth at least a thousand and one words.

Special technologies can be used on dust jackets and covers to make books stand out to consumers and national retail buyers. Two such technologies are Elkote (also called JagKote, depending on the vendor) and ink on foil, which only recently appeared in bookstores. Because they are newly developed, not all printers can produce books with these technologies, but several vendors are starting to leverage Elkote and ink on foil to create brilliant covers designed to attract buyers.

What do the new technologies offer you? Simply put, Elkote and ink on foil make your book stand out on the shelf. The Elkote process blends superb special effects with practical resilience. It is an alternative to matte lamination coatings, where books are run through laminators that apply a coating to the cover. Elkote applies a liquid coating to paper similar to the application of ink. The coating is printed onto the surface with pinpoint precision. It stands up against scuffing far better than matte lamination and offers new aesthetic possibilities. Elkote makes it possible to produce a gradient from gloss to dull, when desired.

For a sleek metallic appearance to be added to your cover, take a look at ink on foil. This breakthrough technology applies foil to paper and allows for inks to be printed on top of the foil. Most book covers currently using this new process are covered completely with foil before being printed, but it is also possible to apply foil only to select areas on the cover. Less costly alternatives to ink on foil are available, such as foil with no ink overprint and metallic ink instead of foil.

Before starting your next cover design, give some thought to the impressive new technologies, Elkote and ink on foil, and make sure to hire a designer who is familiar with cutting edge materials and technologies. With the right design, they could help you get noticed by the big buyers.