A Review of Photo Book Covers

Photo book covers are one of the design elements to consider when making your own photo books. The original books had only one cover option and your choices were which color you would use. Now there are more materials to choose from and the option of printing on the front cover or even creating a book jacket.

We only discuss the cover choices here. Book Binding describes your binding choices.

Cover Choices for Hardcover Photo Books

There are five basic cover types:

Die Cut

Printed

Dust Jacket

Leather

Spiral Bound

Die Cut

wedding photobook

This is the original photo book cover design. The book is covered with linen or leather, and the front has a die-cut rectangle that allows a picture on the inside to show through. It is very attractive and you can have a cover color that frames the picture that you choose to have show through. Besides linen and leather some publishers offer faux suede, faux leather, and satin-finish.

Printed

This is a newer type of cover and the front cover, spine, and back cover can be printed. Some publishers will only do the front cover, but many will print all three areas. The cover has a glossy laminate. The first size that had printed covers was the 8x8, but now there are many sizes that have printed covers. These are commonly called custom covers.

Dust Jacket or Book Jacket

Some people really like to have dust jackets for their books and this is now one of the choices you can have. The dust jacket can be printed on in a variety of layouts.

Leather

The leather photo books are very elegant and are usually used for a special occasion. Some of the printers allow a title to be printed on the cover or spine, but some do not.

Spiral Bound

The spiral bound book is only available from a few photo book publishers. What is good about this book is that the pages can stay flat when the book is open, and it is usually cheaper than other hardcover books.

Cover Availability

Deciding which type of cover to use will help you decide which publisher that you wish to choose. Since even the same publisher will not offer all the covers for all sizes it is hard to chart the availability. Here is a basic chart, but be sure to check on the publisher's site to make sure that the cover is available for the size book that you want to use.

Linen Leather Faux-
leather Dust
Jacket Printed Spiral Bound

AdoramaPix X

ArtsCow X

Blurb X

Bookemon X

Clark Color X X X X

Create Picture Books X

CVS Photo Center X X

DigiLabs X X

dotPhoto X X X

Hoorray X X X

Inkubook X

Kodak Gallery X X

Lifephoto X X X

Lulu X

Memory Escape X X

Mixbook X

MyCanvas X X X

MyPublisher X X X

OurHubbub X

PhotoWorks X X X

Picaboo X X X

Printmyphotobook X X

Qoop X

RitzPix X X

RocketLife X X X

Scrapblog X

SeeHere X X X

Shutterfly X X X

SmileBooks X X X
Snapfish X X X X X

Viovio X X

Winkflash X X