Kirchweg is a debut literary novel from Ninefold Press that trades cosy village mystery cues for something quieter and colder. The jacket needs to read as serious literary fiction at a glance, on a shelf and as a thumbnail, while carrying enough restrained menace to signal the book's unsettling core.
Overview & Goals
- Signal serious literary fiction, not cosy village mystery, within a single glance
- Carry the novel's quiet, precise, cold tone through typography and image rather than illustration cliché
- Make the spine work as hard as the front cover, since that is what bookshops actually display
- Ensure the title stays legible at a 200 pixel thumbnail size
Budget & Timeline
Cover concepts are due in time for approval by the end of October so the title can be locked into the spring catalogue. Final print ready files follow in December, ahead of the offset print run.
Publication & print
- Format & extent
- 125 x 200 mm, 288 pages, hardcover with a dust jacket.
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Content
- Text ready, images missing
- Print run & paper
- 4,000 copies, offset. Uncoated jacket stock with a soft-touch feel, printed in two colours plus a foil if the budget allows one.
- One-off or series
- One-off
- Trim, pages & spine
- Trim 125 x 200 mm, 288 pages on 90gsm bulky paper, giving a spine of about 24 mm. The jacket has 90 mm flaps front and back.
- Cover parts
- Front, Back, Spine, Flaps, Dust jacket, Ebook version
Target Audience
Kirchweg is aimed at readers who actively seek out serious, unsettling literary fiction and who will dismiss anything that reads as gentle or twee. They are discerning about design cues and will judge the book by its restraint as much as its story.
Style
Colour
Direction chosen
Dark & premium
Deep grounds with one metal accent. Restraint doing the work.
Examples of the mood, not the colours anyone has to use.
In the client's own words
Ninefold Press is a small independent publisher. We are bringing out a debut novel called Kirchweg next spring, first print run four thousand, and it needs a cover. The book is about a woman returning to the village she grew up in to clear out her mother's house, and finding that the village has decided a different version of what happened. It is quiet, precise, and quite cold. It is not a cosy village mystery and the cover must not promise one, which is exactly the mistake we made on our last title.
Scope & Deliverables
- Front cover design
- Spine design
- Back cover layout with copy
- Front and back flap design, including a non-portrait solution for the author flap
- Full dust jacket assembly for print
- Ebook cover adaptation
Do's & Don'ts
Do
- Design the spine with the same care as the front, since that is what bookshops show
- Make the title legible at a 200 pixel thumbnail size
- Solve the back flap without an author portrait
- Keep the palette dark and premium throughout jacket and flaps
Don't
- Do not put a woman walking away down a lane on the cover
- Do not use a handwritten script typeface
- Do not let the cover read as a cosy village mystery
- Do not rely on an author photograph anywhere on the jacket