Everybody spends a lot of time considering what artwork and fonts and such will appear on their book cover. All of which is important. But don’t forget that you’re marketing the written word (unless yours is primarily a picture book), so spend at least as much time considering the words that will appear on the cover!
Front Cover Text
Before actually writing the text that will appear on your book’s cover, you need to define very clearly exactly what your book is about and how reading it will help your readers. As always, you should approach this one step at a time. Be sure to keep your target audience firmly in mind as you work on this.
Main Ideas: Everything on the cover should somehow reinforce the title and what the book is truly about. List and describe the main ideas (nonfiction) or storyline (fiction), then try to relate them to things that you believe your target audience cares about.
Everything on your book’s cover (front, back, and spine) should be designed to convince a potential reader to buy (or, at least, consider further) your book. Naturally, your title and subtitle (if used) should reinforce what the book’s about and how it’s going to benefit potential readers. Titles can be somewhat less unambiguous if they serve to make the browser pause long enough to look closer at the subtitle or front-cover blurbs or, even better, flip the book over and read the back cover.
Here are a few things to ponder that can help you focus on the best text to use:
- Tag Lines: Try to develop two or three hot-button emotional tag lines — something that speaks to your readers’ desires, hopes, fears, concerns, passions, etc. Why will they care enough to buy and read your book?
- Series: Do you plan a series with the same theme and/or protagonist? If so, now might be a good time to decide on a series title or hook. Don’t jump to a decision. Think about it carefully. A clear notice on the book’s cover that your book is the first in a series sometimes causes people to spend more time considering it. Readers like to think that, if they like the book, they can continue with the world that has become familiar by reading the rest of the series.
- Comparisons: How is your book similar to, and different from, popular books in your genre? How would you compare your writing style to that of bestselling authors in your genre?
- Why You? Describe in 30 words or less why you are qualified to write this particular book. What in your background, training, education, and/or experience is reflected in your book?
- Your Protagonist: For a novel, describe your protagonist in two sentences — not physical but who he or she really is.
- Your Story: What is your story really about? Not just “murder mystery in a grade school” but maybe “grade school teacher helps class solve a murder.”
- WIIFM? You simply must answer the age-old marketing question of What’s In It For Me? Will your reader learn about life in Victorian England or the behind-the-scene shenanigans at the race track?
The results from the above should provide grist for your creative mill. Maybe you’ll have to go back and re-do your responses…maybe more than once. Then coalesce all of that head-work into coherent messages that will help potential readers understand the book and want to learn more.
You certainly won’t put all that material on the front cover. You only want a title, subtitle, author name, and — if appropriate and from recognizable “names” — a dynamite blurb.
But don’t throw out the rest of it. Because, you next need to develop your…
Back Cover Text
The real point of the front cover is get somebody to pick up the book (or click on a link if they’re online). Then you want them to turn it over and read the back cover (which is the kind of text you’re probably going to offer online when they click that link).
Read the flap/back cover text from a dozen or so books in similar genres THAT YOU HAVE READ AND LIKED. How did they hook the reader with the cover text and tease them into wanting the book?
You do read and enjoy books in your chosen genre, right?
There are a few must-haves on the back cover:
BISAC Categories: You should put a shelving category on the top left of the back cover. Go to the Book Industry Study Group’s website and pick one or two categories where you think a bookstore should shelve your book. [Be sure to read my post on To BISAC or Not to BISAC.]
EAN Bookland Bar Code: If you expect any bookstore (and that includes Amazon.com) to sell your book, you’ve got to have the bar code. FMI: Read my The Lowdown on Book Bar Codes.
Blurbs: If you’ve gotten some good blurbs, be sure to use the best of them (or, at least, excerpts from them) on the back cover. (If you haven’t, read my Getting Book Promo Blurbs and go get some!)
For the rest of the back cover, get to the meat of the reading meal. What’s it all about? What’s it really all about?
For fiction, this is a good time to tantalize and tease…and make them want to open the book to read some of it (or click through to your sample chapter online). This writing should be as good as — or even better than — the writing inside the book.
For nonfiction, give them some idea what you’re going to tell them in the book. Bulleted lists work great. Don’t overload the back cover with text that’s hard to scan (which is what most people do, at least to start with). Keep plenty of white space, so they can see at a glance what it says.
Make the text jump out at them. Don’t make them work hard to read it…or understand it. Short, declarative sentences (or pointed, pertinent questions).
That’s my take on developing cover text. What’s your tactic for brainstorming and creating the text for your books?
