Michael Gelb and Kelly Howell’s Brain Power: Improve Your Mind As You Age offers a 7-step guide to creating the perfect front cover design strategy for your book.

Brain Power is not only required reading for anyone interested in keeping their brain in peak operating shape throughout their life, the book’s front cover is a case study in book cover best practices.

Here are 7 lessons you can easily adapt for your nonfiction book, so the front cover of your book will act like a billboard engaging and convincing readers to buy whether they see your book online or offline.

1. Choose a short, benefit-oriented title.  Your title has to attract attention and instantly communicate what your book is all about. You have to instantly engage your prospective reader’s attention. The fewer the words, and the shorter the words, the better! There’s another benefit to short titles; a title can be set in larger, heavier type on the front cover and spine, so the book has added presence on a webpage or in a bookshelf.
2. Provide more details in the subtitle. There are several ways the subtitle can support the  title; the subtitle can describe your qualifications for writing the book, it can tell how you’re going to deliver on the promise, or–as in this case–it can identify a specific target market for the book. In this case, the subtitle also restates the promise of the title using keywords the intended market is likely to use searching for information.
3. Simply state your name. Although “by” and “author” are occasionally used to introduce an author’s name, it’s usually not that the name on the front cover of the book refers to the author.
4. “Sell” your credibility. Provide proof of your credibility as close to your name as possible. Credibility can refer to your qualifications, your training, your experience, or–as in Brain Power’s case–a simple reference to Michael Gelb’s brand-building and bestselling book, How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci. (By the way, it’s never too soon to start thinking of how you want to describe your qualifications for writing your book.)
5. Bonus. Direct marketing success is based on always providing a bonus, premium, or special incentive to provide the final push needed to convert an interest, but not yet convinced, prospect to overcome their hesitation and purchase the book. In this case, readers can download a special Brain Sync Audio. (What’s the purchase incentive you’re going to offer with your book?)
6. Locate an expert to provide a credibility-building Foreword. As Michael Gelb and Kelly Howell prove in Brain Power, you don’t have to be a new author to benefit from the credibility-enhancing power of an expert in your field. For the Foreword of their book, they turned to Tony Buzan, the inventor of mind maps. Who will you turn to? It’s never too early to build your network of published experts in your field.
7. Solicit a keyword-rich quote that summarizes the benefits offered by your book. Don’t wait until the last minute to ask for pre-publication quotes from experts in your field as well as lesser-known individuals your target market can easily identify with. Although you can’t “write” reader quotes, it’s possible to provide guidance in the  materials you send to advance readers along with your manuscript. More important, the earlier you start soliciting quotes for your book cover, the less likely you’ll have to settle for an “everyday” quote instead of the perfect quote from the leading author in your field.

Takeaways

As a Michael Gelb fan ever since I interviewed him about 10 years ago about his Think Like Leonardo daVinci, I’m fascinated by the amount of thought, effort, and careful craftsmanship that went into the front cover strategy of Brain Power: Improve Your Mind As You Age. Basically, I’m impressed that even established authors with worldwide reputations can’t afford to slack off and slap a quick cover on their latest book–no matter how good it is.

The 8th Lesson. Brain Power also teaches an important 8th lesson; the quality of the book you’re writing today will play an important role in your future success, long after you write and publish your first book.

The seeds of the credibility elements on Brain Power’s front cover–the Daniel Amen quotation, the Tony Buzan Foreword, the reference to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci–were planted years ago.

Every book you write, every speech you give, and every expert in your field you reach out to, influences your brand and the book covers you’ll be preparing 10 and 20 years from now.

Successful front covers for nonfiction books require both strategy and skilled execution. The thinking behind the design determines the success of the book. What’s your take on Brain Power’s front cover? Is there anything missing, or anything you’d do different? BTW, here’s where you can view a larger version of Brain Power’s front cover, (click the image on the page), and here’s where you can learn more about choosing titles & subtitles for nonfiction books.