Book Cover Process - some Swedish publishers work with authors and designers in the creation of book covers

Sammanfattning: The market for book publishing has changed over the past years. Now the publishers has more pressure on them the to make a profit and every book must now be an economic investment. Meanwhile, more and more new publishers that start up their businesses and every year the competition gets tougher. This leeds to a higher demand on every individual book. The book cover is the face of the book and is supposed to entice the buyer while at the same time represent what's behind the cover. Them significance of the book cover is big and there are high demands that it should fill its function and at the same time help to sell the book.mSeven Swedish publishers has been interviewed for this research paper: Albert Bonniers Förlag, Berghs Förlag, Brombergs Bokförlag, En Bok För Alla (EBFA), Harlequin, Kabusa Böcker, and Opal bokförlag. They have been questioned about how their process in making their book covers in order to investigate if the processes differ from each other or if they are similar. Publishers today don't, for the most part, have a clearly structured process of how they proceed when important book covers are created and there is no time to conduct market analysis and target group analysis for each book. Publishers do, however, find their cover designers in a similar way and many of the publishers use a few regular designers who know the publishers' work process from previous experience. Although, the publishers' attitude toward the author's involvement is similar between publishers, with few exceptions, in the sense that the author himself or herself may determine their own level of involvement. The publishers adjust to what the author prefers. In general, Swedish authors have little authority in the final decision making stage, however they can give suggestions and participate in discussions. This thesis provides insight into how these publishers reason in regards to the bok cover design process and how decisions are made. What is clear is that publishers often rely on their experience, rather than an elaborate analysis of a particular book when a decision is made regarding the cover. However, this is probably due to time constraints which do not make it reasonable to perform a market analysis for each new title a publisher issues. Had there been a clearer working structure of the cover process, maybe more time could be spent on market response.