Readers who love books develop a sharp instinct for cover design whether they realise it or not. They absorb thousands of covers over the course of their reading lives and they know immediately when something looks right and when it does not. A font that belongs on a thriller appearing on a cosy romance. A colour palette that signals literary fiction on a fast-paced action novel. These mismatches register instantly and they cost authors sales before a single page has been read.

Our designers at London Publishers study genre conventions across every category we work in. We understand what distinguishes a children’s book cover from a memoir, how academic and business titles need to communicate authority without appearing inaccessible and what separates a commercial fiction cover that converts browsers into buyers from one that gets scrolled past. Every brief starts with your book specifically, not with a template we have already applied to a dozen other projects.

We also design with every platform in mind from the outset. A cover that looks striking as a full-size print edition needs to work just as effectively as a tiny thumbnail on an Amazon search results page. We test for both every time.