When designing your book cover, you may want to consider adding a tagline.
A tagline is phrase or short sentence that aims to entice readers into reading the book or at least looking more at it by reading the blurb or a few pages. The lettering typically is small and appears at the top of the cover.
Three major kinds of taglines are:
• Credentials – If you’re a bestselling author or if the book has made a bestsellers list raises the quality of the book in many readers’ minds. Such a tagline might read, The #1 New York times Bestselling Author.
• Endorsement – Should a reviewer, blogger or expert in a field have written nice things about your book, including those words also can boost readers’ interest. An example would be, “Ice-pick sharp..spectacularly sneaky…impressively cagey.” – Janet Maslin, New York Times.
• Shout line – This typically is a compelling line that points to the story’s central problem, major conflict, or theme. For instance, The strange death of World War II’s most audacious general.
Taglines always should be short, usually only a few words. Rarely should a tagline take up more than a single line of text on the cover; if it does, the cover often can appear cluttered, and so the tagline’s benefit is nullified.
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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.
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