#11 Judging books by covers
The idea of people judging a book by its cover can be an appalling thought to a writer. After years of writing, editing and enduring the hard slog of seeing your book finally published, success ultimately depends on the two seconds that potential buyers afford your book when viewing the cover. If the cover strikes a chord with them, then perhaps they'll pick it up and read what its about. If not... well, you've been afforded as much time as studies show the average book receives from potential buyers. It's a ready known fact that people really do judge a book by its cover. No matter how defiant they are in trying to convince you otherwise.
Take my 2007 release The Long Way Home for instance. Six years after the self-published release of my debut novel, sales figures had reached the point where it had simply stopped selling. Despite the fact I was still touring up and down the east coast of Australia with it, and my two more recent releases. Sure my latest novel had a catchier cover, but The Long Way Home was still, in my opinion, a very good book. So what could I do about this?
It just so happened at the time, that I was shifting my platform as a writer from being a mainly print published author, to focusing solely on eBooks for my future releases. The Long Way Home had never, up to this point, been available in eBook format. So rather than press ahead with an eBook release using the same cover, I sought out a professional cover designer to give the book a much needed face lift, resulting in a completely different cover designed by Laura Gordon.
The new cover I felt was more polished and to the point in seeking to capture the 2 second attention span afforded to most shoppers perusing page after page of eBook cover thumbnails. If they thought it looked like the kind of book they would normally like to read, they would surely stop, read the blurb and decide that $2.99 was not a lot of money to risk on buying a book by an author they were yet to read. So did they? Yes, and in droves.
The new cover I felt was more polished and to the point in seeking to capture the 2 second attention span afforded to most shoppers perusing page after page of eBook cover thumbnails. If they thought it looked like the kind of book they would normally like to read, they would surely stop, read the blurb and decide that $2.99 was not a lot of money to risk on buying a book by an author they were yet to read. So did they? Yes, and in droves.
The eBook (new eBook cover on the left, original paperback cover on the right) notched up five times the downloads in its first month of release alone, than sales that the paperback had accumulated over the course of six years! On eBook store Kobo, The Long Way Home reached as high as number #3 on the Religious Fiction Bestsellers list. Sure a lot of things including timing, price and availability on eBook for the first time may have contributed to its surge in success, but when it was the cover only and not the contents in-between that changed, you've got to ask why. The answer appears to be that first and foremost, the new cover held potential readers' attention for more than two seconds.
With millions of books available worldwide, the trick it seems is to match a cover with your message. Whatever your message is, it is likely to be found anyway by like-minded individuals searching for it. Yet whether someone searches for your book, or randomly comes across it, unless it is something on the scale of the Bible, the cover is ultimately going to shape their opinion of your work before they even pick it up. Want them to pick it up? Then be sure the cover is relevant and interesting. Why? Because people really do judge a book by its cover. No matter how much we try to deny it.
With millions of books available worldwide, the trick it seems is to match a cover with your message. Whatever your message is, it is likely to be found anyway by like-minded individuals searching for it. Yet whether someone searches for your book, or randomly comes across it, unless it is something on the scale of the Bible, the cover is ultimately going to shape their opinion of your work before they even pick it up. Want them to pick it up? Then be sure the cover is relevant and interesting. Why? Because people really do judge a book by its cover. No matter how much we try to deny it.
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