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Your Questions About Book Cover Art

Susan asks…

How important is the cover art to get you to read a book?

http://www.thelastrejection.com

I was wondering if anyone has published a book and had a lot of success based on the cover of their book? I think my cover art for my book is pretty nice, but can it really get someone to buy it simply because of the look?

Also, do any of you actually read the synopsis before buying? Does it sway you at all? Or is it just the pretty colors? ‘)

Marketing Snark answers:

Cover art has to be not only visually pleasing but also appropriate to the content of the book. The old saying might go, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” however, people do. The publishing industry knows this and designs covers accordingly. The cover of a thriller, for example, looks nothing like the cover of a sweet teen romance. Continue reading


Book Cover Design Mistakes, an Update

The End of Poverty

Example of a well-designed book cover. Image via Wikipedia

Awhile back I wrote about how you can judge a book by its cover and the importance of book jacket design in selling books. (The same could be said for most packaging design.)

As an example I used a nameless series of novels that had become highly successful with classy covers and then switched to unprofessional and rather repulsive cover illustrations—apparently to save money.

Last week in the grocery store I noticed a book from that series with yet another a new cover design. The illustration was midway in competence between the original sharp designs and the subsequent bad ones. However, I think the publisher finally got it right.

The books are a bit more serious than the original designs were. As I explained before, a cover that does not match the contents can turn off the intended audience and attract people who will put the book right back down again when they flip through it and see what is actually about.

The new illustration is attractive enough and gives a better idea of the content and tone of the series. Yay!

Needless to say, I bought the book.

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Cheesy Graphics Turn Buyers Off

Mass-market paperback, Life, the Universe and ...

Image via Wikipedia

Recently I wrote about how you can judge a book by its cover—and should be able to. At that time, I was talking about the appropriateness—or congruency—of the design to the topic.

(The Douglas Adams book on the left is an example of good design from a series that was well designed, well marketed, and highly successful, establishing a huge base of loyal fans and eager buyers.)

Today I want to talk about the recent trend to cheap, ugly art on book covers. It is really obvious in some of the genre book series I follow.

For example, a series of books starts out with classy covers that convey the true nature of the contents. The series becomes highly successful and profitable—perhaps not a best seller, but a solid income producer for the publisher, with a great future ahead as the series grows.

Then the publisher commissions poorly executed, even repellent art for the reprints. Does that make sense? Not to this former book publisher.

You see the real profit in publishing is in the reprints. The first edition of most books does not make much money. Between the advance to the author, the costs of printing and binding, and the huge discounts required by the major bookstore chains, publishers often do not break even on the first book in series.

But they know that as more books in the series are published, new readers will go back and read the earlier ones, and the market for the series begins to build. That is why you often see the first few books in a series in paperback only, then the series switches to hardcover with paperback reprints of the hardbacks about a year later.

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