Do’s and Don’ts of a Winning Book Cover Design
It's not always easy for wordsmiths to express their book's core ideas in visual form. In this post, head North Street Book Prize judge Jendi Reiter breaks down their book cover do's and don'ts, with concrete examples.
Annie Mydla, Managing Editor
So you've written your book. The long slog is over...or is it?
Not quite. Without a standout cover to get readers' attention, your book might have a hard time getting off the ground.
Readers are picky. They need to know at a glance what a book's genre, tone, and main ideas are before they commit to a purchase.
Contest judges are even pickier. In the North Street Book Prize, fewer than 1% of our hundreds of annual submissions will win an award. So, while we don't judge books solely by their covers, an attractive, professional-looking cover can make the difference between books that are equally strong in other ways.
Being open about our book preferences is a core value at Winning Writers. That includes our reactions to book covers. So if you're curious about how to improve your chances in North Street, and potentially your book sales too, read on. Head North Street judge Jendi Reiter's insights are concrete, specific, and actionable.
Front cover images
Your front cover is your book's greatest marketing opportunity, but so many North Street submissions miss their chance. Let's look at some of the most common pitfalls.
First, Jendi advises against using amateur illustrations. We know that self- and hybrid-published authors are often working with limited time and budget, but this is not a place to cut corners. A good cover can translate into sales, so it's worth prioritizing, even if the central image costs money.
Books for early and middle-grade readers are at special risk for looking unpolished. Jendi remarks that "even if it's a children's book, the cover shouldn't look like it was drawn by a child." Just because your intended readers are young doesn't mean they can't tell professional from unprofessional. And their parents—and contest judges—certainly can.
Sentimental stock photos on poetry book covers are another no-no. Jendi warns against "flowers, sunsets, or anything that looks like it belongs on a calendar." These well-known symbols may convey certain tones, like peacefulness and wistfulness, but they're not specific enough to give readers that lightning bolt of recognition that leads to sales. Old-fashioned and cliché images give the impression that the poems inside will have the same flaws.
To Jendi's observations, I'd like to add that AI images can immediately kill readers' and judges' interest. AI gives an impression of low-effort and fakeness. Some authors think that we won't notice, but it's easy to spot AI once you've seen as much of it as we have. It's true that AI visuals can work when integrated into a larger design by a professional book cover designer, like our North Street co-sponsor, Laura Duffy. But for the untrained, it could be the biggest risk they take with their book.
For book cover success, Jendi says that one of the best things you can do is to research books in your genre from mainstream publishers to see what colors, fonts, and design elements are hot right now.
2024 North Street Genre Fiction honorable mention My Boyfriend Satan is a great example of taking cues from the industry. Jendi complements the cover design as "completely on-trend" with its "cute handwriting font and a sensual, playful illustration of [the main couple] against a Barbie-pink background". These design choices by author Leah Campbell smartly situate her novel alongside traditionally published romances and women's fiction like The Best Wrong Move (Joffe Books, 2025), Flawless (Piatkus, 2005), and mega-hit Confessions of a Shopaholic (Dell, 2000).
Patricia Striar Rohner's cover for her 2017 Fiction Honorable Mention Tzippy the Thief is another goodie. The luxury handbag is a symbol of the main character, an elderly kleptomaniac, but it also follows the popular women's fiction cover convention of featuring accessories associated with femininity, e.g. The Woman with All the Answers (Boldwood Books, 2025), Prep (Random House, 2006), and The Devil Wears Prada (Anchor, 2003).
The cover for Vacui Magia, North Street Genre Fiction First Prize winner in 2016, immediately communicates the book's horror/weird fiction genre. Its central image is a horror cover classic: a partially obscured human form inside a frame. Four recent covers sharing the same convention are What Kind of Mother (Quirk Books, 2023), Glass Girls (Gillian Flynn Books, 2025), Our Wicked Histories (Delacorte Press, 2024), and The Ladie Upstairs (Baskerville, 2025). All four of these books make use of the "body in frame" idea in different ways, but they are united by the eeriness of the partially-concealed body and the frame's suggestion that the body is being presented or even served up to our gaze. Vacui Magia's cover is so successful partly because it harnesses horror readers' subconscious expectations about this type of image.
Remember, when it comes to choosing design elements, don't be afraid to follow the crowd. Readers need to know that your book is a good example of their favorite genre. Too much originality could signal that your book is an outlier which may or may not hit the spot.
Front cover text
You might be surprised how many covers fail based on text appearance. Font size alone can lower both professionalism and readability. Choosing the right typeface can make all the difference in what your cover communicates emotionally.
Chunky fonts often have a cheeky, upbeat, or in-your-face feeling. Thinner fonts can show that a book is elevated, thoughtful, yearning, serious—perhaps about psychology, emotions, complex relationships, or inner conflict. However, be aware that thinner fonts appear lighter and have less contrast against the page, which can cause readability issues, depending on your color scheme and font size.
The North Street Grand Prize winners in 2020 and 2023 both used thin fonts incredibly well on their covers. Christine Mulvey's memoir Mine to Carry has a delicate, wood-block typeface that communicates timelessness, yearning, and wisdom. Its Celtic style coheres with the book's setting in Ireland. Daniel Victor's literary novel The Evil Inclination uses a seriously skinny serif font to amplify the shock and stress of the black-and-white figure at the center of the cover.
At the same time, the wrong font can do your cover dirty! Readers are strongly conditioned to associate certain fonts with certain connotations, and might be angry if the impression they get from the cover is not what the interior actually delivers. For example, Jendi cautions against using fonts that belong on a pulp horror poster, "unless your book is in that genre or satirizing it." Authors would do well to extend that insight to their chosen genres, as well.
Low color-contrast between text and underlying image can be another pitfall for covers. For example, Jendi has seen too many examples of hard-to-read small type against a low-contrast color (dark on dark or light on light). They also stress not printing important text over a multicolored photo or illustration, unless the picture is in such pastel or grayscale that it's more like a watermark.
2020 North Street Literary Fiction Honorable Mention Finding Land, a story collection by Marian Pierce, solves the problem of making text legible against a busy Japanese street scene by using a large, chunky font and keeping the title brief. In contrast, the author name is in smaller print, but it still shows up clearly against the blackness of the sky.
Finding Messi: The Miracle Cat from Kyiv by Trevor Ostfeld and Iryna Chernyak, the 2024 North Street Children's Picture Book First Prize winner, uses high-contrast colors to its advantage. The bright yellow background and blue title text don't just stand out, they immediately reinforce the Ukraine focus because they're the colors of the Ukrainian flag. A similar but more subtle example of the blue/yellow color scheme for title and background can be found in the tree's leaves on the cover of the 2019 Picture Book Honorable Mention, Melissa Yap-Stewart's Little Moss, Big Tree.
The wrong color scheme can push readers away. Jendi remarks that "Many of our entrants have this predilection for a red title font over gray, sepia, or olive photo cover images, which can really clash!" But how to know what colors to use on a cover? Jendi recommends using a color wheel or color theory guide to ensure that your palette is harmonious.
The Corpse Bloom by Bryan Wiggins, 2024 North Street First Prize for Genre Fiction, is one of the best thriller covers we've ever received, and its color scheme is a key part of its success. The palette has shades of blue for the most part, with red flowers and just a touch of red in the lower right corner. The red components work together to lead the eye through what web designers call the "Z-pattern"—important in an era when book covers are often viewed online first.
The cover for 2021 Picture Book Honorable Mention Mighty May Won't Cry Today by Kendra and Claire-Voe Ocampo might seem a bit busy at first look, with a more varied palette than, say, Finding Messi. But there's still a strong sense of order with the use of the Z-pattern from the title, to the window, down and across May, and back over the authors' and illustrator's names. The engine behind this movement is the alternation of the cool tones of the background and the warm tones of the title, window, and May's orange hair and pink skirt.
The design is more spare in the cover for Cameron Beach's young adult novel The Jigsaw Project, a Literary Fiction Honorable Mention for 2022. The palette is limited to the three primary colors, immediately giving an impression of directness. Meanwhile, the wide field of brick red creates a sense of high stakes even before we open the book.
Titles and subtitles
Less-successful covers sometimes have lengthy additions to their titles, like: Miss Fortune—The True Story of a Small-Town Girl Who Fell in Love and Almost Lost Everything (not a real title, but you get the picture). Jendi comments that subtitles like this are rarely needed for a novel and can make covers look amateurish. Remember—writers tend to be word people, but readers expect the visuals to do the heavy lifting on covers.
Here, again, scrolling covers in your genre for tips can be key. Jendi points out that "certain images, fonts, and background settings are commonly associated with thriller, sci-fi, historical fiction, etc." Use those tropes to your advantage to visually spell out for the reader exactly what your book is all about. There's plenty of time for text in the book's interior.
Subtitles aren't always bad, of course. They can be key in situations where the main title doesn't immediately indicate the umbrella genre of a book, like literary novel, memoir, or short story collection. In those cases, Jendi recommends that the genre subtitle be as brief as possible, for example, Mosses from an Old Manse: Short Stories or My Father's Glory: A Memoir of Provence.
And the shorter your subtitle, the more prominent your main title can be! Juliette Chen's 2018 North Street Poetry Honorable Mention Home Water: Poems, Stories, and Prints uses an evocative main title to convey mood, with a concise subtitle to indicate umbrella genres.
Meanwhile, the cover of 2020 Genre Fiction First Prize winner Kunda by Rachael A.Z. Mutabingwa conveys everything it needs to with no subtitle whatsoever, despite having a one-word title that readers without a connection to Uganda likely won't be familiar with. The gentleness of the watercolor wash, the slightly troubling feeling created by the blending of opposites yellow and purple, red and green, and the thoughtful, somewhat uncertain posture of the young woman's back as she gazes towards the horizon tell us that this is a literary fiction coming-of-age novel about navigating challenges that are new to the main character, likely in a country in Africa. Kunda's cover is brilliant in its concision and specificity.
That said, there's such a thing as too little text, too! Jendi advises never leaving the back cover or book spine entirely blank. Readers might think the book is just plain unfinished. Covers that leave out crucial information also create extra work for our contest admins. You'd be surprised how often we receive print books with no author name on them, at all!
Blurbs and awards
It's not wrong to be proud of the awards your book has achieved, and wanting potential buyers to know about them, too. But beware overcrowding your front or back cover with accolades. Jendi's experienced opinion is that it's enough to highlight a single honor that your book has received and add a relevant sticker ("Book Excellence Awards Finalist") on the front cover. Any more than that could make the cover feel visually cluttered and give the impression that it's trying too hard.
As for blurbs, Jendi recommends putting them on the back, "unless it's from someone extremely famous or a prestigious source like the New York Times Book Review." In that case, don't give in to the temptation to quote at length! Put a single pull-quote of 5-8 words above the title, for example, "A groundbreaking memoir of surviving a shark attack—Roxane Gay". Just one complementary adjective and a few keywords from the book can make all the difference without overwhelming the eye.
Back covers
Back covers can be a real danger zone when it comes to overcrowding. It's a chance for authors to use their word skills—but on back covers, as well as front covers, it's better to let the visuals do most of the work.
Jendi emphasizes making sure there's neither too much, nor too little, text. For example, they strongly advise against summarizing the entire plot, including the resolution. Keep in mind: "It's a hook, not a synopsis." They also warn against using fonts smaller than 9-point on your back cover. If you can't fit all your text at a larger size, it could be an indication that you have too much text!
Some authors make the mistake of filling the back cover with praise-blurbs that don't clue us in to the actual contents. Beware language that is generic or vague ("these are poems about love and motherhood"). Be specific. What's the unique perspective? Try giving concrete details of setting, or representative phrases from poems. Jendi comments:
From the back cover, I should be able to tell: Who are the main characters, what is the genre, where and when is it set, and what's the overarching goal or question that the protagonists will address in the narrative, along with a hint of the obstacle that causes tension.
This is true for memoir as well. For instance, "I wanted to grieve my complex relationship with my recently deceased father by revisiting his hometown, but then COVID happened and I was locked in with my mother instead."
Jendi says of the back cover of My Boyfriend Satan, "Though light-text-on-dark isn't always the most readable, the author wrote the right amount of text and gave the essential hook and genre of the story." Similarly, the back cover text of 2015 Genre Fiction First Prize Prosperity, a dystopian satire by Jenna Leigh Evans, perfectly sets up the premise and main characters. However, its skinny block-capitals font is too cramped and positioned too low on the page to stand out well against the bright yellow background.
In comparison, Mighty May Won't Cry Today has a back cover as effective as its front. Jendi says, "It's simple, sweet, colorful, and it shows that she has two moms and gives the main moral of the story." This cover effectively targets the demographic of progressive parents who would buy the book.
2022 Grand Prize winner Diane Chiddister's One More Day, a literary novel set in an old age home, also gets both covers just right. The muted blue-to-orange gradient suggests the sunset years, while the photo of an older man gazing wistfully into the distance indicates that this will be a sensitive novel about taking stock of one's life. On the back, the same color scheme creates unity while the text says just enough about the main characters' goals and setting. Jendi says, "Consider how much more professional the front image looks because the color gradient also washes over the photo. If the face had been left black-and-white, it would look like an awkward Photoshop collage, and the coolness of the portrait would clash with the warmth of the background."
Trim size
Did you know that the size and shape of a book can instantly convey its genre? While text-dominant books of poetry and prose are typically a vertical rectangle, art books and children's picture books are often wider than they are tall. Defying those conventions can make readers subconsciously uncomfortable.
There's a special risk for improper dimensions between middle-grade fiction and picture books. Jendi recommends making your middle-grade novel the size and shape of a regular novel for adults, not oversized like a picture book, even if it's illustrated. "Kids are sensitive to appearing babyish, and adult purchasers will be confused about the target age group." An exception would be a middle-grade nonfiction book that is an illustrated reference text, e.g. mini-biographies of women role models in STEM. The emphasis on the visuals in these books makes the oversized dimensions acceptable.
2023 Middle Grade Honorable Mention winner Sally Hinkley's Elephant and Bird takes just the right approach with its trim size. The dimensions are like a normal book for adults, showing young readers that they've taken a step up from the wider-than-tall books of childhood. Meanwhile, the image of the elephant reaching up to the girl with its trunk gives a definite MG feel, perhaps drawing inspiration from other MG older child/larger creature images like Lucy and Aslan or Sophie and the BFG. And look, the cover even makes use of that emotionally resonant blue-and-yellow contrast mentioned earlier, with a combination of white tints and yellow highlights to guide the eye through the Z-pattern.
A cover's physical qualities can matter, too. Authors working in visual-based mediums are advised to use sturdy, non-bending covers for hard-copy oversized books such as art books and picture books. Soft covers can lead to floppiness, making the book hard to handle just when the reader wants to be examining its visuals. Glossy surfaces can be a pitfall if employed in the wrong circumstances.
Jendi points out that a glossy cover will make text less legible because of reflected light. Additionally, the glossy film on the paper makes the text underneath a little blurrier than it looks on your computer screen. So just because the cover of the eBook looks good, that doesn't mean the design will automatically shine in glossy print (ironically, because it's shining too much!) Jendi observes, "It's rare that traditionally published trade paperbacks will have glossy covers these days, so give your literary novel or memoir a classier feel by opting for a matte cover." If you do decide on a glossy cover for your genre fiction or illustrated book, amp up the font size and color contrast for your back cover text to ensure readability in hard copy.
Conclusion
If you've read this far and are thinking, "Wow, that's a lot to keep track of," my response is: Exactly. Cover design is a skill that takes professionals years to learn and many additional hours annually to keep up to speed on the trends and tricks of the moment. The irony is that readers, who lack all of that training and experience, can still tell in milliseconds whether a cover looks professional or not—building up or demolishing our first impression of the author's competence. The stakes are high.
North Street judges know that time and money aren't unlimited for most self- and hybrid-published authors. For some authors, there's also a moral or philosophical component: they might think that paying for a cover is cheating, or that a book can't really be self-published if they haven't done it all themselves. The integrity of the work might be harmed by "going professional". Or maybe our pride is just hurt when we consider that our skills might not be enough to make our book look its best.
No one would want to argue against what our consciences—or wallets—are telling us. And there are some contexts, like books written for family, where the cover matters a lot less. But if you are writing with an eye to raising sales and winning literary contests, it really is worth striving, and perhaps even sacrificing, for the best cover you can buy. Different venues have different requirements.
At the very core of this post, we're asking you to develop this mindset: self- and hybrid-publishing isn't just about writing. It's more like a biathlon, where visuals and writing are both crucial to success.
So feel great after completing that manuscript.
Then gather your strength and continue to the next leg.
Categories: Advice for Writers, Annie in the Middle
