Writing a cover brief, for a designer or for yourself
Covers go wrong in the brief far more often than they go wrong in the artwork. A designer who was told the wrong thing will execute the wrong thing beautifully, on time, and you will not be able to say what is missing.
The brief is the cheapest hour you will spend on the cover, and it is the only part you cannot delegate. It is also the first step of a longer sequence — How a cover actually gets made, start to finish shows what comes after it.
Why it exists
A designer cannot read your book. Reading a 90,000-word novel is several days of unpaid work, and nobody prices a cover on that basis. They work from what you tell them, so what you tell them is the book as far as the cover is concerned.
"Something atmospheric, maybe with a forest" is not a brief. It is a hope with a noun in it. It cannot be executed against, it cannot be checked against, and when the first draft comes back you will have no grounds for the feeling that it is wrong.
A brief is a list of decisions you have already made, so the designer can make the ones that are actually theirs.
What goes in it
The book in one sentence. Not a logline for a query letter — a sentence that says what a reader gets. "A widowed cartographer walks the length of a drowned country looking for her sister." One sentence, and stop.
Genre and subgenre, precisely. "Fantasy" tells a designer nothing they can use. "Adult grimdark, low magic, medieval siege warfare" tells them the palette, the type and the level of ornament before they open anything. If your book sits between two subgenres, say which one you want to be shelved with — that is a marketing decision, and it is yours. A nonfiction brief carries a different burden, because the cover has to state a subject and a promise rather than a mood: Art direction for a nonfiction cover covers what changes.
The reader you are aiming at. Describe them by what else they buy, not by age bracket. The person who finished the last book in their series last night and is looking for the next one is a more useful picture than "women 35–55."
Five to ten comp titles, each with a line. The list alone is close to useless; the line is the whole value. "This one — the way the title sits in the top third and the art stays dark underneath." "This one — the color, not the illustration." "This one is what I do not want, and it is the closest to my book." See Comp titles: reading the shelf you want to be on.
The mood, in adjectives you can defend. Three to five, and be ready to say why each one is on the list. Drop anything you cannot defend. "Atmospheric" survives no scrutiny at all, because every author says it about every book.
What must appear, and how long each string is. Title with its exact capitalization, subtitle, series line and number, your author name exactly as it will read on the retailer, any award or endorsement you have the right to print. Then count the characters. A 12-character title and a 46-character subtitle are two different design problems, and the designer needs to know which one they have before they compose anything.
What must not appear. Two kinds. First, the images you are tired of seeing in your category — the hooded figure, the lone tree, the mug on a windowsill — named specifically, because a designer working fast will reach for exactly those. Second, anything that misrepresents the book: a gun on a cover with no gun in it sells a copy and buys a one-star review.
The formats and the trim sizes. A paperback wrap, and for which printers — KDP, IngramSpark, Lulu and B&N Press each cut a wrap to their own geometry, and a file built for one is not a file for another. Then hardcover if you want one, case laminate or dust jacket, the ebook cover at 1600 × 2560, and the audiobook square if that is coming. Name the trim: a 6 × 9 front with bleed is 6.125 × 9.25 in, and the wrap is that plus a spine plus a back.
The budget, as a number. Designers price to a brief, and a brief with no figure in it gets quoted at whatever the designer assumes. Say what you have before you are shown work you cannot afford — What a cover actually costs is the range to calibrate against.
The deadline, and what happens after it. How many revision rounds are included. Whether you get source files. What rights you have for ads, merchandise and a boxed set. And who rebuilds the wrap when your page count changes, because it will — every edit moves the spine.
In the Cover Maker. The mechanical half of the brief is handled for you: live trim, bleed and safe-area guides, a spine computed from your real page count, paper color and printer, and one design re-cut into up to eleven wraps across four printers and three bindings. Start your cover → · about the Cover Maker
The two things authors get wrong
Giving a scene instead of a direction. The lighthouse in chapter fourteen matters enormously to you and not at all to a browsing reader, who has no idea it is coming. A cover is not an illustration of an event in the book. It is a promise about the experience of reading it, and the two coincide only by accident.
Describing the plot instead of the feeling. Three paragraphs of synopsis leaves a designer to guess the one thing they needed: whether this is bleak or warm, fast or slow, funny or grim. Say that first. If you have room for synopsis afterward, fine, but the feeling is the brief.
Feedback on a draft
React to whether the cover says the right thing, not to whether you like it. You are not the buyer. The question is never "is this to my taste" but "does this promise the book I wrote, to the reader who buys books like it, at the size they will see it."
If two or three directions come back rather than one, hold each of them against the brief rather than against each other; the one you like least on Tuesday is sometimes the one that survives the shelf. Choosing between cover concepts is the method.
Give the reason behind each request, not the fix. "Make the title bigger" is an instruction that may be wrong; "the title is the second thing I see at thumbnail size, and it should be the first" is a problem, and a designer can solve it in three ways you would not have thought of.
Gather everything into one message per round. Drip-fed notes over four days cost you goodwill and often a revision round. And decide in advance whose opinion counts — a cover improved by five relatives is a cover with five compromises in it. More on this in Feedback, revisions, and knowing when a cover is done.
Write it even when nobody else will read it
The same document, addressed to yourself, is what stops a solo design from drifting. Design without a brief is a week of small adjustments, each one reasonable, ending somewhere you cannot explain and cannot get back from.
Written down, the brief is a thing you can hold the draft against on day four. Either the cover meets it or the brief was wrong — and both of those are answers, which is more than fiddling ever gives you.
Make your cover
The Cover Maker is free to use: name your book, bring your artwork, and it draws the full wrap — front, spine and back — to your printer's own measurements. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: Hire a cover designer, or do it yourself? · More: Genre conventions: what your cover has to promise · The thumbnail test · Feedback, revisions, and knowing when a cover is done