Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
Assumes facts not in evidence. Especially since the so called trad-pubbed writers (who are assumed to know a little bit about writing books) never have to worry about having their cover art selection "efforts" judged. If left up to them, perhaps they would be just as crap at judging "good" artwork as some self-pubbers.
I agree that cover art can make a good filter. Especially if you're looking to include/exclude very specific subgenres (but that's not me). But again, judging one author's "efforts" at choosing cover art against another author's ability as a writer who's never been expected to select cover art is apples and oranges. It's like comparing the results of someone who free-handed Tippy the Turtle, against the results of someone who paid someone to trace him ... and then using that to determine how well they might scuba-dive.  |
Hmmm....maybe. I've told this story about myself here over the years, but here we go again....(I'm boring that way...)
Once upon a time, when I was first getting into this line of work, I remember a cringeworthy moment when I actually laughed at an acquaintance of mine, a professional Book Shepherd (project manager for DIY/self-pubbed authors, pre-Amazon, basically), who told me that a book cover was
everything. Being a voracious lifetime reader, I actually snorted about the idea, saying "oh, so-and-so, that's ridiculous! The content of a book sells the book, not the cover! Who on earth would buy a book based upon a cover?" I was bemused and appalled and outraged and to myself, thought "ye gods, you must be a lousy book shepherd."
Sigh.
Fast forward a very few short years, and I called her to apologize for that moment, because I was utterly, completely, totally, inexcusably WRONG. Wrong, wrong, wrong. If I've learned one freaking thing in this business, it's that book covers--sorry, Doug--are indeed
simply everything. So much so, that if someone injected me with sodium pentothal and asked me, "should I spent money on an edit or a cover," from a pure marketing perspective, hell, I'd say, "the cover," and believe me, my inner reader would be screaming in pain about, but it's simple truth. Covers sell books.
I've seen bad covers sink perfectly good books. I've seen a bad cover sink a book
in a series of books, with the same characters, story arc, etc. Demonstrably and provably, in pure numbers of sales. (Book 1 sells, book 2 sells less, as not everyone loved book 1, Book 3 sells about the same as 2, then book 4 falls off a CLIFF, book 5 picks up where 3 was, etc.--all because Book 4 has a crap cover. Dim, no contrast, nothing about it would make you pick it up. You'd think that people who like the series would simply buy the next in sequence, right?
Wrong.)
I've seen a fantastic cover sell the most mediocre romance-cum-mystery book,
ever. Hell, I picked up and read the cursed thing--because the cover was
so good, I thought, "oh, hey, yeah, this is gonna be good" and it was 99% romance (yick) and 1% "mystery." NOT my cuppa and not even a great romance, either, by the way. But bygod, that sucker sells.
I've seen it over and over and over. It's boggling what a difference it makes. I've seen it with customers of ours, that used Cover Creator to make a cover; after a year, they get tired of it sitting there like a doorstop, spend a few shekels on a cover and yup, it starts selling. I've seen it with authors that decide to rebrand a series. It's not something that you can ignore.
Those of us that are compulsive consumers of books think that it's ridiculous, but it's not. Humans are sight-hounds on two legs and we are moved, in various ways, by what we see--including book covers. I mean...go stand in the frozen food aisle, at the supermarket and watch people buy frozen meals. If it's something that they have not had before, they almost always, always, buy the product
with the best picture on the box. That, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with what's inside, but the Swansons of the world spend a small fortune on food photography for a reason. I mean, if the "cover" didn't matter, why even put a picture of lasagna or whatever on there?
As a reader--not as my professional self, but as a reader--I admit it. If an author doesn't care enough to invest the time and effort or money to put a decent cover on the book, my automatic assumption is that he didn't spend it on the story, either. I don't mean that he has to spend $500 or a thou on a cover--he doesn't. But anyone, pretty much, can investigate and research and at least learn to use something like DIYBookCovers.com, spend a few hours at Pixabay or DepositPhotos.com or Unsplash and find something that's not hideous. There's no good excuse for using Amazon's Cover Creator with their godawful templates, with all the Fiverrs, etc., in the world.
In the year or so that someone spends to craft their story, they
can't manage to save up, say, $5/month, for 10 months or a year, to get a Fiverr to design a cover for them? Or they can't spend a few hours and learn to make their own cover, using WORD, yes, Word, with the DIYBookCover.com tutorials? Can't put in
that much effort? Maybe I'm being harsh, but it's not
necessarily about the money; it's about the care and the effort and the pride in the book.
Even if someone just uses a landscape from Unsplash, they can invest the time and effort to make it look nice. Yes, genre-appropriate and all that would be nice, but "not dreadful" would be good, too.
I simply think that some of you are discounting the import and impact of the cover--and my experience says, that's a mistake. It may not matter to you, individually--but trust me, it matters to the life of the book.
Hitch