A book cover design brief is something that is vital to any design project. It provides, me, your book cover designer, with clear and precise information about your book so that I can effectively do my job and create a book cover that you love!

Without some direction, your designer has to make assumptions about what they think you will like. Sometimes it works out and you get a cover that is acceptable, but more often than not, without a proper set of expectations and guidelines, it misses the mark and they have to go back to the drawing board and begin again. This can be frustrating to both the author and designer as it inevitably adds more time and cost to the project.

This scenario can be avoided by taking some time before the design process begins to develop your ideas and vision. A book cover design brief will help you collect, compile, and distill these ideas, thoughts, and research into a format that you can hand to your book cover designer. Think of this as an opportunity for you to deeply explore what you want your book cover to look like and then tell your designer exactly what you want to achieve. A book cover design brief is no place for generalities. Here, you should be as specific as possible and move past the impulse to say things like “I want this design to pop” or “Just make my cover look good.”

To help you with this process, using resources and suggestions from other designers as well as pulling from my own experience, I've compiled a book cover design brief that you can review and start developing the specific vision and goal for your book cover. When you sign up for my newsletter, you can download it for free!