The old saying holds true, you can judge a book by its cover, especially a self-help book. When it comes to designing the cover for a self-help book it’s helpful to throw any artistic taste out the window. Bright colours and lots of lines at different angles are important when it comes to making your book stand out on the shelves of the bookshop. You don’t want your book to be buried in a sea of boring book covers, you want it to stand out like a pink neon sign in a black and white movie. Self-help book covers are one place where sticking out like a sore thumb or being a sunflower in a field of lavender is a good thing. It’s also important that your name feature prominently on the front cover.
The back cover of a self-help book is just as important. Readers of self-help books like to check who has been helped by either the book or its author in the past. It’s a good idea to have some positive quotes from well-known people or something quotable from a review your book received in the press. This doesn’t have to be the real press as it’s almost unverifiable. You could just send a letter to the editor of a really small newspaper that publishes everything and use your own quote, but only do this if you get really desperate.
An artist’s impression of the ideal book cover…