But … BUT …

That doesn’t mean you should unthinkingly go with your designer’s choices either.

Back in March, Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame was battling her publisher over the design of her latest book, The Signature of All Things. The situation was somewhat unusual. While traditional publishers have final say over book design, Gilbert has a bit of leverage as a bestselling author. They wouldn’t want her running to another publishing company as soon as her contract was up. Still, they didn’t think Gilbert’s first choice would compel readers to buy, and that was a problem.

With three covers up for consideration and no resolution in sight, Gilbert and Viking Press agreed to let the masses decide. From Gilbert’s Facebook page, March 21, 2013:

I got so tired of debating over “what the reader wants” that I decided instead to just try asking you guys directly.

So tell me, valued readers … what do you want?

Which one of these three beautiful book jackets do you most like?

Which design would most draw you in, if you were browsing a bookstore?

Which is the one that makes you say, “My goodness, I will certainly have to buy THAT book!”?

You can see the choices here.

Gilbert preferred the beige cover in the middle. So, as it turned out, did most of the 8,500 people who voted. By a ridiculously wide margin.

The takeaway: It doesn’t matter what I think. It doesn’t matter what you think. It matters very much what your readers think. Find out, and everybody wins.

      (a)  Introduce yourself and say you’d like to meet for coffee
      (b)  Propose marriage

It sounds like a silly question, but file it away. We’ll come back to it.

Not long ago on a LinkedIn discussion group, a bunch of writers were talking about how to obtain a professional-looking book cover on a budget. One participant—we’ll call him Lloyd—said his strategy was to figure out exactly what he wanted his cover to look like before he hired a designer. The more specific he was, the easier and cheaper it would be for the designer to do the work.

Jim Hayes of Ha! Yes! Graphic Design had this to say about Lloyd’s approach:

Lloyd mentions that he got a good deal by having already mentally designed the cover. In my 30 years designing, I’ve found this to be a dangerous talent in a client. I love to hear and utilize their ideas and integrate their desires when possible, but designers come up with several ideas, some of which will not work out. Non-designers typically come up with one idea. When I used to accept that type of job, I often found myself trying to make a dead-end idea work. Designers come up with dead-end ideas, too, but they get thrown away.

Yes!

Jim nailed it.

I’ve produced many design drafts that, despite my best efforts, were never going to look as cool in print or onscreen as they did in my head. Those drafts got tossed onto the scrap heap.^* Frustrating, but no biggie. Ideas that don’t work are part of the creative process.

When a non-designer only has one idea and it doesn’t work, that’s okay. The problem arises when the non-designer refuses to consider any other possibilities. When the cover needs to look just like they mocked it up in MS Word, sometimes right down to the fonts, and they will not budge from their vision regardless of how many other ideas you pitch.

Let’s replay that initial scenario in a publishing context. You rack your brain for cover ideas until you hit upon one you like. In your head it looks professional, accurately represents your book, compels readers to pick it up, the works. Do you:

      a)  Have a designer mock up your idea so you can see what it really looks like
      b)  Decide this will be your cover no matter what

By no means are all amateur cover ideas destined to fail. If you have a concept in mind, you should absolutely share it with your designer and see how it goes.

Just don’t be married to it, is all I’m saying.

^{* This works in reverse, too. I’ve had clients pitch ideas that sounded awful at first, but kicked serious butt when I played around with them in Photoshop.↩}

As it turns out, though, all designers deal with a metaphorical version of the browser problem eventually. And by “eventually,” I mean every time we design something that’s intended to be seen by more than one person.

The perfect example presented itself when I was developing a new promotional product for authors: Book Memes. A Book Meme is a little graphic that contains a short excerpt from your book and an accompanying image. The idea is to post the meme on social networks like Facebook or Google Plus—and hopefully get other people to share it too—making viewers curious about the book.

An author of a poignant coming-of-age novel I’d designed had agreed to be a test case for my new product. I created a couple of different concepts and asked him to compare. I also posted both versions on my own Facebook wall and requested feedback:

What do you think? Which Book Meme would people like better?

If you said the one on top, you’re right! And also wrong. Votes were split equally between the two.

“The blurb mentions a hawk, but there’s none in the [bottom] picture, and they couldn’t live underwater anyway,” said one commenter. “The first picture is really nice, and oh, there’s the hawk.”

“Top one looks too much like an inspirational poster,” another commenter argued. “Bottom one picture-wise looks a lot more intriguing. Would be more likely to click the bottom than the top.”

The moral of the story is, you can’t please everybody. So what do you do?

Know your audience.

If you don’t know your audience, get out there and learn. Do the sorts of people who’d buy your book go for happy images, or do they respond better to potentially disturbing intrigue? Do they like inspirational messages or snarky ones? Talk to people who read and enjoyed your manuscript and ask what they think would hook them.

Just as the same HTML will display differently in Firefox, Explorer, Safari, etc., the same design will be interpreted differently by different brains. If you know what kinds of attitudes your target readers bring to the equation, you’ve won half the battle.

Shameless plug: Cover to Cover Book Memes will be heavily discounted through November 2012. If you act quickly, you can hedge your bets and get two for the price of one.