How many times did they tell you a book isn’t judged by its cover?
They lied.
Even though it shouldn’t be like that, the truth is that most of the time people won’t even bother with your blurb. If your cover or title can’t hook their attention and insert some compulsion in their mind to give you a few minutes of their time, then all is lost. I mean it. Some advertising services, like Booksy, will only show title and cover in their promotional e-mails!
An attention-grabbing cover, then. Is that all you need?
Nope. Sadly, it is not quite so easy. The cover will refer the reader to a genre, consciously or not. If the book between those covers does not deliver, you’re going to end up with a bunch of disappointed readers. It doesn’t matter if your blurb pointed them in the right direction: if the cover made them expect something else, they’re going to be befuddled at best.
And here’s another fact: as a rule, authors aren’t graphic designers. And that’s OK: we’re wordsmiths. We don’t need to understand composition and color and other obscure stuff. We don’t even need to know what’s trending in our genre (although that one definitely helps). We have to find great professionals who will hear our rambling and give us something that’s exactly what we asked for, nothing at att like we expected, and one-hundred-percent better. If you need to cut back costs, don’t cheat on the cover.
Here’s my own example illustrating my point:
- A working cover I did myself
- A professional, good looking cover that follows my design guidelines and leads the reader to expect a different genre (contemporary instead of paranormal)
- A professional, good looking cover that follows the designer’s guidelines and leads the reader to expect the right genre (paranormal, romantic, sligtly spooky)
I think I’m on the rigt track. In the following days, I’ll be sharing a cover reveal with you regarding a new project, and you’ll see exactly what I mean about professional, great looking covers that tell you at a glance what kind of book you have in front of you and, more importantly, tell you that you do indeed want to read it.
Stay tuned!