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11+ Business Book Cover Templates
Let’s face it: we judge a book by its cover. Books are published daily and cover designs become a deciding factor for readers. When it comes to business books, a saturated genre where the number of new titles published monthly are estimated to reach around a thousand, book covers can create a magnanimous difference when it comes to driving in the sales.
Elements of a Good Business Book Cover
Coming up with a good cover for a business book has now become essential, especially during these visually-driven times. If you want to create an effective business book cover, be sure not to miss out on all of the following elements.
- Title: Perhaps the most important part of the cover, titles are the main selling point of the book itself. Business book authors tend to come up with the most clever titles to attract readership. Titles are also sometimes elaborated with subtitles that sometimes serve as a vague tease about the contents of the book.
- Author: The author’s name, prominent or not, is a staple in all book covers. It indicates the author’s property over the contents which prevents copyright infringement.
- Layout: The placement of all the other elements reinforces attention to the author’s efforts in making the title catchy. An effective layout creates a harmonious arrangement of the important information found in books that looks neat and seamless to the eye.
- Spine: The spine is usually just a replication of the front cover but on a thinned, limited space. Texts printed on the spine must still be readable in the usual orientation.
- Back cover: The back cover contains the synopsis of the book, the author’s biography, and other publishing details. They are mostly provided by whoever manages the book so your task as a designer is only up to its careful placement.
- Reviews and awards: Most books are primarily released as hardback editions to attract enthusiasts and critics. When the sales are good enough to print another batch, paperback editions are made to appeal to the masses where the prices are cheaper because of lesser production cost. These reissued versions bear the critics’ positive review to further rake in readers.
9+ Business Book Cover Templates
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Business Book Cover Template
Steps to Make a Great Business Book Cover
- Take note of the book specifications: Set your parameters and scope by knowing about the size and paper specifications of the book cover. Knowing about the limitations will save your time from revising the cover.
- Visualize the book narrative: If the author is the king in his pages where he speaks about his business journey, you, as the book cover designer, has been gifted with authority to act as a herald and echo his or her message to your cover design. Think of the whole conceptualization process like you are cramping all the book’s content into the cover and translate the words into your own unique visual cues.
- Execute your design: Choose readable fonts, make use of pictures, and observe white spaces when coming up with your design. Overall, it is up to your discernment to determine what design element stays or goes on the cover. Put yourself in the reader’s shoes when coming up with your layout. Will, you pick it up or gain a slight interest in the book just by looking at the cover? Ask yourself this question and you will soon find yourself treading on the right path toward making a classic book cover design.
Tips for a Great Business Book Cover
- Hue it with blue: Books about business are stereotyped with the color blue as a cover. While standing out is your goal in coming up with the book cover design, adhering with the norm when it comes to choosing a dominant color helps in making the book easily identifiable by those who are searching for business books.
- Create a digital version of your cover: Most readers nowadays find their next read on the Internet where book covers are barely an inch tall in their screens. The design you used for your physical copies might not translate well into their digital versions so you might have to create a digital copy of your cover. When creating a digital cover, make the title and the author’s name bigger and discard some of your design elements to make room for the upside, but not so much that the design can no longer attract attention.
- Keep your design coherent: A book cover is divided into three parts: front, spine, and back. For hardbound books that use dust jackets, you will be working on the folded flaps inside the books as well. But regardless of how many parts you are working on, make sure that they share design elements to express coherence.
Types of Business Book Covers
- Educational Books: These books are made as references inside the academe. The main target of these books is students or people who are still about to venture into the business industry. Titles from this type are simply topics that the book is expounding on and they do not need that much marketing strategy as authors from these books are commissioned by educational institutions and publishers, hence, their covers are most often plain and simple.
- Inspirational Business Books: Although they also give lessons similar to educational books, inspirational business books adopt a more personal tone. The main audience of this type of book is novice businessmen who are seeking guidance in venturing further into business. The competition in this type of book is pretty steep, which is why authors tend to put their most clever lines as titles and hire designers to create covers that are attractive enough to invite readers.
- Biographical Books: Mainly about the life of a successful businessman, these books imply the lessons to the readers instead of directly telling them. The cover for this type of business book usually bears the picture of the subject businessman, especially if he or she is a prominent one. If it is autobiographical, the size of the author’s name is as big as the title. Covers from this type of books emphasize the author’s name and are direct when it comes to the design.
Business Book Cover Template Sizes
Business books fall into the category of general non-fiction books that observe a 6″ by 9″ size or a 7″ by 10″ when more space is needed for footnotes. For the size of the cover in paperbacks, add 0.25″ to the top and bottom and 0.125″ to both sides. For hardbacks, add 0.75″ to all sides. Make sure to put no bleed at the spine.
Business Book Cover FAQs
Are pictures effective in making up for a book cover?
The efficiency of using pictures really depends on the content and execution. When the topic of the book is too vague that the title cannot supplement attention, pictures aid potential readers to visualize the overall message of the book. Nevertheless, pictures become really effective in biographical business books, especially if it is about a prominent person. Think about business books with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs on the cover, how many people do you think to pick up these books just because they bear their images on it?
What is the best size for a business book?
Readable sizes of business books are in the golden aspect ratio of 3:2 or 6″ x 9″. This size is the most common and they can be easily converted to digital copies or e-books. Larger sizes are available but are not recommended due to the fact that larger books tend to stick out when put on shelves. When reprinting your book to market the masses, you can downsize it to 4.25″ x 7″, as this is the common dimension found in a supermarket, airport, and drugstore racks.
What is a dust jacket?
A dust jacket is the detachable cover of the book with folded flaps to hold onto the cover of hardback books. Because of the presence of the flaps, the author’s biography and book synopsis, which are usually found at the back of the book, are now printed on these flaps. Books with dust jackets are usually in their first edition and are regarded as high in value. These editions of books are greatly sought out by book collectors and enthusiasts.
It is an undeniable fact that book covers let people fall into the pit of prejudice. But just as the jury strikes down the gavel only after witnessing the whole trial, a reader only gauges a book’s quality after digesting the entirety of its content, from the bodacious title emboss down to the careful placement of the last period.