Every genre has its own visual language, built up over years of readers learning to recognise it. Your cover can use it, bend it or ignore it, but it should never be unaware of it. Here is how the main styles tend to work.
Illustration
Often suits: children's books, fantasy and science fiction, cosy and light-hearted fiction, graphic or stylised romance.
Illustration can create worlds that photography cannot, and it offers a distinctive look that is hard to confuse with anyone else's. It also suits any book where tone and personality matter more than realism. For picture books, illustration is usually the point.
Watch for: a style that is out of step with the genre. A cover that looks like a children's book will confuse readers of a serious thriller.
Photography
Often suits: memoir, narrative non-fiction, literary fiction, some thrillers and contemporary fiction.
A strong photograph conveys mood and realism, and gives a sense of a real person, place or moment. It can feel intimate and authentic, which is why it is common for memoir.
Watch for: generic stock images that look like countless other covers, and photographs that lose impact at thumbnail size. Check the licence, too: you need the right to use the image on a book cover.
Typographic covers
Often suits: non-fiction, self-help, business and some literary fiction.
When the title and the promise carry the book, bold type may be all you need. A strong typographic cover is clean, easy to read at small sizes and quick to recognise.
Watch for: typography that is flat or forgettable. The lettering has to be as carefully designed as any image.
Mixing styles
Many covers combine styles: a photograph treated with a graphic overlay, an illustration with strong lettering. This can work well, as long as the elements fit together and the result is still simple.
How to decide
- Look at the bestsellers in your genre. Note the colours, the lettering and the imagery they share.
- Decide how to relate to them. Be recognisably in the genre, but find your own angle.
- Think about the series. If you will write more books, choose a style you can repeat.
- Check it at thumbnail size. A style that works large may fail small.
- Ask what the book promises. The cover should deliver the same promise as the description.
Commissioning artwork: what to agree
If you commission an illustration or a photograph, agree the following in writing:
- Who owns the artwork, or what licence you are given, and for which formats and territories
- How it can be used, including on retailer pages, social media and advertising
- How many revisions are included
- How the artist or photographer will be credited
- What you receive, such as the final files and the layered source files
Stock images are cheaper, but they come with licences that may limit print runs or use on the cover, so read them carefully. Once you have a front cover, plan the rest of the wrap with our back cover checklist, and test the result with the advice in what makes a cover work at thumbnail size. Picture books have their own rules: see picture book basics.
Our process
We start every cover with genre research, so that the design fits the shelf and still stands out on it. See our book cover design and book design and illustration services.
Want to know where your book stands?
Submit your manuscript for a free book review: the whole book, or at least the first three chapters. We'll read it and send you our feedback. There's no obligation.