Fonts, Fonts, Baby

I briefly touched on fonts in my first post, but let's delve into them a bit more.

While your choice of images can impact the feel of your cover a great deal, so can your choice of fonts. If you choose something that is off genre (yes, fonts can be considered genre specific) you may confuse readers.

If the images and your title scream, "this is a romance book", but your font yells much louder that, "oh no, this is a horror book", readers will likely scratch their head and move on. Do some research into types of fonts. You can Google your genre. You can also type into the search bar things like, "fantasy fonts", or "dystopian fonts" or whatever your genre might be. It can give you an idea of what's out there. So can taking a stroll through the book store to see the covers on other books in your genre.

The fonts you choose will tell a story whether you want to believe it or not. The type of font will affect how a reader looks at the title.

Let's look at an example of how fonts affect how you might read something -

Bebas New bold - it makes the sentence read as demanding. This makes the book appear as if it's going to be an abused partner story

Alansky - this font gives of a sweet romance vibe and takes away the threat that the first font gave

Double Feature - this one is pretty self-explanatory. It immediately makes this into a horror story

Times New Roman - the title is quite simply, boring. It doesn't really evoke much of an emotional response

Tweaky - readers are now wondering what sort of dystopian/Sci-Fi nightmare this book could possibly involve

You can see how your font choice can affect your cover. If you aren't consistent throughout your design it can confuse readers. People have short attention spans, if the explanation for something isn't directly in front of them then most won't dig deeper to discover answers on their own. They want to buy a book not go on a scavenger hunt to discover what your book is about. They'll simply move on and choose a book that puts all the answers right in front of them.

Here's another example of how font choice can change the feel of a cover -

You can see how each font changes the feel of the cover. Your font choice must match not only what your blurb is telling readers, but what your cover image is conveying.

Choose your fonts carefully and if you aren't certain or your stuck between several choices it never hurts to ask for a little help from your friends. Even other authors or your social media followers can assist. Readers love to be involved, if you have curated a large following, asking readers for assistance makes them feel a connection to not only you, but the book as well.

However you choose your fonts, make certain it fits with the genre and the images you've chosen so readers will be drawn to your book.

If you have any questions about cover design you can contact Tori at:

darkangelgraphics282@gmail.com