Welcome back as we continue to look at ways that you can work with a designer for the cover of your book.

Based on what brief you gave your designer, they will come up with a few concepts of their own. Check them over carefully and, once you have decided which one you want, your designer will go ahead and develop it, keeping in contact with you all the way. They will let you see the design, ask for your feedback and make any changes you want. Normally, the initial fee will cover a couple of rounds and any extra work tends to be charged hourly.

One of the more overlooked areas of book design is how the inner pages are laid out. You can ask your designer if they would be able to typeset these pages into a format ready for printing. If you are self-publishing, your platform may already provide a few templates for you to choose from and if you are prepared to put in the effort and use standard designs, this can save you some money.

Here are a few more tips to bear in mind as you work with your book cover designer.

Your images must be copyrighted – when you use images from the internet, always use stock libraries that charge a small amount for the images. Alternatively, look for free libraries and make sure you credit them as the image source. One such library is Wikimedia Commons – their guidelines require you to credit them.

Your images must be high-resolution – if they are low they won't render correctly so ensure that any images to be included are a minimum of 300 dpi.

Make sure you have a thumbnail image – online bookstores use thumbnails to display a book cover so make sure that your design is optimized to render correctly at thumbnail size.

Be minimalist and original – put too much on your cover and it can overwhelm your potential readers and it doesn’t look very attractive either. Use a minimalist design to get your message across and try to be original.

Make sure your book blurb is edited – if you are opting for a printed format, the book blurb for the back cover must be edited.

If you really can’t make a decision on the options that your book designer provides you, ask for another opinion. You could ask friends and family but they are likely to be biased. Go to a company like PickFu; they help you to do split-testing on designs and titles and what they find is a decent indicator of which cover design and title you should choose.

One of the biggest advantages of self-publishing is that changing the cover is dead simple. When your book has been published, if sales don’t look too healthy, you can change the cover and see if it makes a difference. Try several if necessary but be prepared – if your book doesn’t take off, regardless of which cover you use, it may not be the cover holding it back.