Smashwords Bestsellers : What do the self-published books’ covers have in common?

In the last post I was analyzing the covers of the fifteen best-selling books from Barnes & Noble to distinguish some trends or common characteristics among them. Today I will try to see if similar trends rule on the covers of the self-published books. To get a representative sample, I took a look at 15 book covers on the  Smashwords Self-Published Bestsellers List, June 2016.

Broken Silence

brokenslience

Book cover design traits:
  • alignment: centered
  • style: minimalistic, subtle; young woman on a blurred background
  • typography: one type of font, two colors; letters are both uppercase and lowercase
  • colors: muted; green, black, blue, yellow

Hold You Against Me

holdyouagainstme

Book cover design traits:
  • alignment: centered
  • style: quite minimal, disjointed composition; elegant man at the top of the cover, blurred background at the bottom
  • typography: three types of fonts – serif, sans-serif and handwritten
  • colors: blue, grey

The Miracle Morning

miraclemorning

Book cover design traits:
  • alignment: centered
  • style: quite minimal, man silhouette on the sea background, prominent typography
  • typography: one type of font – sans-serif, two colors
  • colors: blue, yellow, orange, black

Beautiful Burn

beautiful-burn-official-cover

Book cover design traits:
  • alignment: centered
  • style: quite busy, peacock feather in flames on the forest background
  • typography:  two types of font – serif and script, two colors
  • colors: red, orange, green, blue

Rootbound

rootbound

Book cover design traits:
  • alignment: centered
  • style: quite busy, photomanipulation, woman figure on a fantasy background
  • typography:  two types of font, both serif, more decorative font for the title, two colors
  • colors: pink, yellow, white, orange

Empire

empire-smash-cover-art

Book cover design traits:
  • alignment: centered
  • style: quite minimalistic, man figure on a simple black background
  • typography:  two types of fonts, serif and sans-serif, one white color
  • colors: black, white, red, orange

Hunted

hunted

Book cover design traits:
  • alignment: centered
  • style: photomanipulation, couple on a fantasy background
  • typography:  four types of fonts, both serif an sans-serif; unique font for the title, two colors
  • colors: orange, green, white, orange

Fated

fated

Book cover design traits:
  • alignment: centered
  • style: monochromatic, chaotic; naked bodies in the background, symbols on the foreground
  • typography:  three types of fonts, serif, one color
  • colors: black, white

Undone

undone-brenda-k-davies

Book cover design traits:
  • alignment: centered
  • style: photomanipulation, movie-poster like; men silhouette on the forest background
  • typography:  one type of font, serif, golden effect
  • colors: gold, yellow, brown

Zenith

zenith

Book cover design traits:
  • alignment: centered
  • style: minimal, symbols on an abstract background
  • typography:  one type of font, serif, silver effect
  • colors: purple, blue, silver

Den of Sorrows

denofsorrows

Book cover design traits:
  • alignment: centered
  • style: disjointed; symbols and female face on a black background
  • typography:  one type of font, serif, two colors
  • colors: green, black, orange

Stripped Bare

strippedbare

Book cover design traits:
  • alignment: centered
  • style: minimal; men silhouette on a black background
  • typography:  one type of font, serif, two colors
  • colors: black, yellow, blue

Forever

forever-chanda-hahn

Book cover design traits:
  • alignment: mixed
  • style: busy, photomanipulation; symbols and female face on a gradient background
  • typography:  two types of font, more decorative for the title, serif, one color
  • colors: pink, blue, yellow, white

Mercy Watts Box Set

mercywatts

Book cover design traits:
  • alignment: centered
  • style: cartoonish; bubbles and female face on a blue background
  • typography:  one type of font, handwritten, three colors
  • colors: white, yellow, blue

Baked to Death

bakeddeath

Book cover design traits:
  • alignment: mixed
  • style: busy, photomanipulation; cookies on flames on a kitchen background
  • typography: five types of fonts, serif and sans-serif, three colors
  • colors: red, yellow, white, blue

Conclusions

self-published book covers

It is interesting that the analyzed covers, unlike the covers studied in the last post,  were not representatives of a wide variety of genres. Smashwords Self-Published Bestsellers were mostly romance books, with a few exceptions for a self-help book, fantasy and young adult books. This could be one of the explanations for the fact that the most of the covers feature human face or silhouette. Few other dominant trends in book cover design can be noticed:

  • central alignment
  • photomanipulations
  • busy fonts
  • rich color palette – mostly two or three main colors for the cover
  • typography not a main priority – often generic fonts
  • faces and human silhouettes as the main objects

As you can see, dominant trends are quite different for the self-published and in-house published books. The question is – which trends should self-publishers take into account when trying to design eye-catching, professional looking book cover?

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