Cover

Meaning

The cover is the image that represents a work in platform listings and on its page. Web novel covers are portrait-format (usually 3:4 or close), and in listings they appear as thumbnails, so the composition has to read at a very small size. Each genre has conventions. Rofan uses a character illustration of the heroine or the couple with decorative backgrounds; fantasy and hunter stories show the lead full-body with a weapon or emblem; contemporary stories lean photographic or typographic. Covers are often produced by the platform or publisher at official serialization or conversion; in free serialization writers make or buy their own. AI-generated covers are now common on free boards, and AI-cover rules vary by platform and contest.

Why it matters

The cover is one of the two things that decide the first click, the other being the title. Scrolling a listing, a reader judges genre from the cover in half a second, reads the title if the judgment holds, and clicks if the title promises something. A cover that signals the wrong genre (a fantasy cover to a rofan reader) gets no click; no click means no episode-one views, which means there are no readers from whom to compute read-through. The cover is also a promise. If the character on it does not match the protagonist inside, readers feel the mismatch in the first episode. When commissioning one, prepare the protagonist's appearance (straight from the story bible), the work's temperature (bright or dark), three to five covers of popular titles in the same genre as direction, and where the title will sit.

Example

Cover brief (example)

• Work: The Bankbook in the Drawer / contemporary mystery romance / 200 episodes planned
• Lead: Han Yuri, 28, shoulder-length black hair, no glasses, grey coat. Holding a worn bankbook (must appear).
• Temperature: calm, slightly cold. Snow in the background. Warm color only on the bankbook's cover.
• Composition: upper body, slightly turned rather than frontal. Bankbook at bottom center so it reads in the thumbnail.
• Title placement: top quarter. Serif face.
• Reference: four covers of popular titles in the genre attached (composition only, no copying).

Half the brief came from the story bible. With a bible, a cover brief takes thirty minutes; without one, a week of back-and-forth with the illustrator.

Common mistakes

• Ignoring genre conventions. However artistic, a cover that does not say its genre in a listing gets no click.
• Not checking at thumbnail size. A cover that looks good large turns to mud in a listing. Always shrink it and look.
• Not checking AI-cover rules. On some contests and platforms an AI cover is grounds for disqualification. Read the rules.