Are you Covered for Success?

Do you judge a book by its cover? Answer truthfully.

It’s a trick question; we all do. Whether the book sits on a library shelf, a bookstore display shelf, or the digital shelf. It’s the cover that grabs our attention, that compels us to examine it further, that makes us wonder what point in the story it’s illustrating.  

Is it a problem that we lean so heavily on a book’s wrapper?

The book cover contains valuable information such as the title and the author’s name. Both placed strategically so not to hide pertinent components of the graphical design. The back of the book blurb could hook you into its pages.

However, a bad book design might keep you from reading a fantastic story.

At a single glance, the overall design should tell us the genre. Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi, Young Adult, and the list goes on. It should clue you in on its audience.

If you’re a self-published author, the right cover is one of the most important marketing decisions you’ll make. If you get it wrong, you could lose sales when your target audience bypasses your novel for one that appears to appeal to their appetite.

At January’s HoCo Chapter meeting of the Maryland Writer’s Association one of our panelists, L. R. Trovillion had the best visual representation of how important the cover is to the book. I asked if I could use her demonstration in this week’s blog. She said ‘yes’.

Please play along. I’m trying something different for this blog. I want to spread it out over the next five days. Every couple of days I’ll add a new cover. There are three covers all together. After each reveal, I will ask the same set of questions.

Cover #1:

Based on only the cover, what’s the genre?

Who’s the target audience?

Stay tuned for the next cover reveal of False Gods!!!