Nonfiction and fiction covers are different jobs
Most cover advice is written as though every book has the same problem. It does not. A novel and a business book are asking a reader for two different decisions, and almost every design choice follows from which decision you are asking for.
A fiction cover is selling a feeling. The reader is deciding whether to spend eight hours inside a mood, and the image is what tells them what that mood is.
A nonfiction cover is selling a claim. The reader has a problem, and is deciding whether this book solves it. The words do that work, not the picture.
Get the job wrong and you can produce a beautiful cover that fails — an evocative, atmospheric jacket on a book about small-business accounting, or a novel whose cover explains its plot in eleven words of subtitle.
What a fiction cover has to do
It has to establish tone, genre and register before the reader reads anything. The art carries that. Color temperature, the density of the image, whether a figure is facing you or walking away — these land faster than words do.
Which means the title can be oblique. Gone Girl describes nothing. It does not need to, because the cover around it has already said what kind of book this is. In fiction the image makes the promise and the title supplies the hook.
The consequences are practical. Type is usually smaller relative to the cover, because it is sharing the space with an image that is doing real work. There is normally no subtitle. The author's name is set modestly unless the author is the reason people buy. Nothing on the cover argues for the book; the whole thing works by suggestion.
What a nonfiction cover has to do
It has to state what the reader gets. Typography dominates, and it is typically much larger relative to the cover than anything in fiction — business and self-help covers often read closer to posters than to jackets.
The image, where there is one, is frequently just a ground for the type: a flat color field, a texture, one simple object. It sets a register rather than telling a story. A nonfiction cover with a rich, busy illustration usually has a legibility problem it did not need to have.
The subtitle is load-bearing. It is where the reader learns the outcome, the method and who the book is for, and it is the field a searching reader's words actually live in. In fiction a subtitle is rare and usually a mistake. In nonfiction it is the second most important text on the cover. Choosing a title that can be found and remembered covers how to write one.
Credentials belong on the cover. In nonfiction the author is part of the claim, so the name is set larger, and a qualifying line — MD, former head of X, author of Y — earns its space. On a novel that same line is clutter.
An endorsement can work. A short quote from a recognizable name, or a line like Foreword by —, gives a nonfiction reader a reason to trust the claim. On a fiction cover, cover quotes work only when the endorser is genuinely known to that genre's readers; otherwise they are one more element competing with the title at thumbnail size.
In the Cover Maker. Title, series and author stay live vector text rather than pixels baked into the artwork, which is what makes a long nonfiction subtitle workable — you can rewrite it and watch the cover re-set instead of rebuilding the file. The back cover and spine come out of the same design, so the panel you need for bullet points or a blurb is already there. Start a book → · about the Cover Maker
The back cover splits too
This is where the difference is starkest, and where authors most often write the wrong document.
A novel's back cover is a blurb: two or three short paragraphs of story, in the voice of the book, ending on a question the reader wants answered. It is a sample of the experience.
A nonfiction back cover is a sales page. A short promise at the top, then bullet points — what you will learn, what you will be able to do — then the author bio with the credentials, then any endorsement quotes. Bullets on a novel look like a manual. Paragraphs of atmosphere on a how-to book look like the author is avoiding the question.
What goes on the back cover has the full layout for each.
Memoir is the one that trips people
Memoir is sold like fiction and shelved like nonfiction, and authors pick the wrong half.
It is sold like fiction because the reader is buying a story, a voice and a mood — so the cover wants atmosphere, a photographic image, restraint, and a title that suggests rather than explains.
It is shelved like nonfiction because it sits in a nonfiction category, the author is the subject, and a browsing reader still needs to know what the book is about. So the name is set larger than a novel's, and a plain subtitle usually earns its place: not a second poetic phrase, but a sentence telling you whose life this is and what happened.
Narrative nonfiction, popular science and history sit in the same middle. Treat them as story-shaped books that still have to answer the question about what?
What both jobs share
Three things do not change.
The thumbnail test. Both kinds are bought from a grid of postage stamps. Run the thumbnail test whichever side you are on.
Real value contrast. A title that relies on hue rather than lightness disappears when the cover is small or printed dark.
One clear idea. One image, or one typographic statement. A cover trying to say three things says none of them at the size a reader sees it.
Make yours
Everything here is built into the tools, and they are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: Testing a cover with readers · More: Genre conventions: what your cover has to promise · What goes on the back cover