I am currently finishing off the final edit of my new book due out in September. Early this week I was on a call with fellow authors and the question came up about book covers and what actually sells and draws people into buying a book either online or in a book store. There was a lot of conversation around this topic, should it be just a simple large text title, should it have an image on the front cover, is it an idea to put your face on the front of the book and so many other questions were discussed?
Everyone had a number of suggestions of what they thought would work but it really comes down to the content of the book and what message you are trying to give. You want to entice readers in and grab their attention. There are so many opportunities you can look at and sometimes you will get overwhelmed if you overthink this.
You know the saying, go with your gut it is always the right option to take. When you are writing your book you will have a vision in your own head of what you think the book cover will be and as you work through the textual content that may vary over the course of writing the book.
An example of this would be, that friends and colleagues have always said that I had a book in me and I am so knowledgable when it comes to Digital Marketing and Social Media. So at the start of this year, one of my goals was to write this book and share the expertise and experience I have gained over the year in this industry and help people navigate the Digital landscape.
While researching and writing this book, I was trying to come up with the name for the book and after a conversation with a good friend, they mentioned that Digital Marketing was a complete puzzle to them. The word PUZZLE stood out to me and got me thinking about what type of puzzle would it be, and how best could I explain it. That is when we came up with the idea of a jigsaw which has so many different pieces. The challenge is to sort out all the pieces of the puzzle and put them together and create a complete picture which is similar to putting together a Digital Marketing Strategy and campaign. So this is where the title came from for the book "Solving The Digital Marketing Jigsaw Puzzle".
Now I had the name of the book it gave me so many ideas for the cover of the book. I wanted the book to stand out and let people know it is me that wrote it plus keeping with The Digital Mentor Brand colours. You can now see how I was building the cover in my mind's eye for the book even before it reached the design stage.
- I had the title
- I knew the colours I was going to use
- I knew I need a photo of me on the front colour
- It also needed to refer to a Jigsaw Puzzle
The vision of the cover was starting to really take shape now which also helped me be more focused on colours and style. Studies have shown that the use of certain colours emulates emotions and connection. See the graphic below for more details on the psychology of colours.
When I was developing The Digital Mentor Branding I was always drawn to blues and oranges, which if you look at the colour chart makes perfect sense in what I was trying to achieve with the brand and later with the book as I have used these colours for the front and back cover.
The BLUE colour creates Trust, Loyalty, Calmness, Dependability and Honesty and they are all elements I believe in and want to project. The ORANGE colour emulates Friendly, Powerful, Warm, Cheerful and most importantly Social, which is what I aim for every day in everything that I do both personally and professionally.
So you can see why choosing the right colours is so important and sending out the right messages. There is also a train of thought that you will be automatically drawn to your choice of colours in your own mind.
Think about this the next time you are designing graphics for your website, social media or any variation of content that includes colour palettes.
So here is a question for you, what are the colours of your branding? Do they align with the colour chart above and does it resonate with your values and message? You can be guaranteed they will in some shape or form and if they don't maybe think of incorporating them into your brand or next project and campaign.
Talk to you soon
