The app for independent voices
7 tips for designing professional book cover blurbs:
Start with 10pt type and 15pt leading. This usually looks pretty good. If it doesn’t, adjust from there.
Use hanging punctuation—called “optical margin alignment” in InDesign and “Roman hanging punctuation” in Illustrator/Photoshop.
Quote marks and em-dashes should “hang” off the text block so that the left edge of the text is aligned.
Use an Em-dash on the attribution line. Never a hyphen!
Be sure that any titles in both blurb and attribution are in italics.
Set the attribution name visually apart somehow. You don’t need to do all of these, but I recommend at least one:
Set the name in all caps.
Increase the point size slightly.
Use a different font—maybe the font from your front cover, if it makes sense.
Be sure to increase the letterspacing, or tracking if using a bolder typeface.
Change the color to something that has contrast and pairs well.
If you justify your blurb type, be sure to avoid rivers of text. If you don’t know how to do that, I recommend left aligning.
Only center your blurbs is they are fairly short.
Don’t center your book’s synopsis!
Last, but not least: Set your attribution slightly more than one line space apart.
In InDesign, you can assign a numerical “space after” distance to the blurb paragraph.
Happy designing!
