Quick answer
A useful cover design brief fits on one page and answers twelve things: title, author name, series, genre and subgenre, a one-paragraph pitch, three comparable covers, mood words, what must appear, what must not, formats and trim size, page count, and your deadline and budget. Copy the template below.
We read cover briefs every week for our $120 to $350 custom packages, and the pattern is consistent: the projects that finish fast were briefed well, and the projects that drag were briefed with adjectives. A good brief is not long. It is specific. This is the template we wish every author sent, with a plain explanation of what each field is for and what a useless answer looks like.
Copy the template
Paste this into an email or a document and fill in every line. One page is the target length.
Book cover design brief 1. Working title: ____ 2. Subtitle (if any): ____ 3. Author name, exactly as it should appear: ____ 4. Series name and book number (if any): ____ 5. Genre and subgenre: ____ 6. The book in one paragraph (plot or promise, and the mood it ends on): ____ 7. Three comparable covers (books whose shelf you want to sit on): ____ 8. Three to five mood words: ____ 9. Must appear on the cover: ____ 10. Must NOT appear on the cover: ____ 11. Formats needed (ebook / paperback / hardback) and trim size if known: ____ 12. Page count (or best estimate), deadline, and budget: ____
That is the whole thing. If you can fill in fields 5 through 10 with real answers, your designer can start concepting the day the brief arrives; on our packages, first concepts usually reach you within 24 hours of us confirming the details.
The fields that decide the design
Half the fields are logistics. The other half steer the artwork, and those are the ones authors most often waste. Here is the difference between an answer that helps and an answer that only feels like one. These examples are typical composites of what lands in our inbox, not quotes from anyone’s brief.
| Field | Useless answer | Useful answer |
|---|---|---|
| Genre and subgenre | “Fantasy” | “Epic fantasy, adult, closer to grimdark than cozy” |
| One-paragraph pitch | “It’s hard to summarise, you really have to read it” | “A disgraced knight escorts the heir she failed to protect across a frozen border. Slow-burn loyalty, brutal ending” |
| Comparable covers | “Something unique, not like anything out there” | “The type treatment of X, the palette of Y, the mood of Z” (three named books from your shelf) |
| Mood words | “Eye-catching, professional, bestselling” | “Cold, mythic, lonely” |
| Must appear | “Whatever you think works” | “The iron crown; no character faces” |
| Must NOT appear | (left blank) | “No hooded figure with a sword, no dragons, nothing that spoils the twin reveal” |
The pattern: useless answers describe the outcome you want (“eye-catching” describes every cover ever briefed). Useful answers give constraints a designer can act on. Constraints are not limits on creativity; they are the brief. “Whatever you think works” does not produce freedom, it produces a first concept that guesses, and guessing costs a revision round.
Why three comparable covers beat every adjective
Field 7 is the highest-value line on the template, and the fastest way to fill it is to browse the shelf your book belongs on. Twenty minutes on a fantasy shelf or a mystery and thriller shelf tells a designer more than three paragraphs of description, because covers are a coded language: palette, type weight and figure treatment all signal subgenre to readers who have seen ten thousand covers. Pointing at three of them transmits the whole code at once.
Two rules make comps work harder:
- Pick covers from your actual subgenre, not covers you merely admire. A literary cover you love is bad evidence for a romance novel.
- Say what you are pointing at. “The typography of X, the colours of Y” is precise; a bare list of three titles makes the designer guess which feature you meant.
What you can leave blank
An honest note on fields 11 and 12: you do not need every number on day one. To start concepting, a designer needs the title, author name, genre and the pitch. Trim size and final page count can follow later, before the print wrap is built, because the spine width depends on them; the maths is in our book cover size guide. Back-cover text can arrive late too. What cannot arrive late is field 10. Telling a designer about a forbidden spoiler after the concept round throws away finished work.
Budget deserves one honest sentence as well. Stating it up front does not invite overcharging; it tells the designer which options to even propose. Photo composite, licensed art and full illustration sit at different price points, and a designer who knows the ceiling designs inside it. What those price points typically look like across the market is in our cover design cost guide.
What happens after you send it
At our studio the sequence is: we read the brief, come back with any questions, and first concepts usually follow within 24 hours of the details being confirmed. Revisions then run by email until the design is right, and the print files are built once your page count is final. The better fields 5 to 10 are, the fewer rounds that takes; most delay in custom work is not drawing time, it is guesswork the brief could have prevented.
And one more honest note, since we sell both formats: if reading this template feels like more decisions than you want to make, that is a signal worth listening to. A premade cover skips the brief entirely; the design already exists and only your title and author name change. The trade-offs run both ways, and we laid them out plainly in premade vs custom.
FAQ
Brief us properly and we will show you what your book can look like: custom covers run $120 to $350. Prefer to skip the brief? 1,619 premade designs are in stock, each sold once, from $24.99.
Twelve things: working title, subtitle, exact author name, series details, genre and subgenre, a one-paragraph pitch, three comparable covers, three to five mood words, what must appear, what must not appear, formats and trim size, and page count with deadline and budget. Specific constraints matter more than adjectives.
One page. A brief that fits on a page and answers the twelve fields above beats a five-page synopsis, because designers need constraints, not chapters. The one field where length helps is the pitch paragraph: a few concrete sentences about the story and its ending mood.
Three covers from your own subgenre, each with a note saying which feature you are pointing at: the typography of one, the palette of another, the mood of the third. Add any real reference that constrains the artwork, such as a character detail or setting photo. Skip covers you love from unrelated genres.
Not to start. Concepts and the front cover only need your title, author name, genre and pitch. Page count and trim size become necessary when the print wrap is built, because spine width is calculated from them, so a close estimate is enough early on and the final number can follow.