Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
There's no need to be sorry. You're not telling me anything that I don't already know. You're not even addressing any of my points. I KNOW covers are vitally important to selling books. I'm not an idiot. I KNOW the vast majority of readers out there are probably heavily influenced by them in some way or another. I don't live under a rock for cripes sake. The only things I've claimed are:
1) covers don't have much of an impact on me--never really have (and yes, I AM the final authority on that no matter whether anyone chooses to believe me or not).
2) covers offer zero insight into how well an author writes.
3) dismissing the writing skills of authors based on the artwork adorning their work alone is not logical.
That's it. No one, myself included, has argued that great covers won't help sell more books. Why would they? Some of us have merely claimed that we're much less influenced by them than others, and that the "effort" of an author that chooses their own cover art cannot (CANNOT) be objectively compared to the effort of an author who's had to make no effort regarding the same. Not "cannot be compared." But "cannot be objectively" compared.
There's a world of difference between talking about "how things are" and trying to defend the notion that "how things are" makes perfect logical sense.
|
The way I look at it is that there are only so many books I can read. So when I'm looking at a book by an author I don't know and have not had a recommendation for by someone I may trust enough, then the cover is rather important. If the cover is lousy, I will pass by the book.
However, the cover can be wonderful, but if it screams at me that I may not like it, I'll bypass the book. Maybe it's romance or sparkly vampires, The cover can be great, but the genre has to be good for me to look further into the book. Though a lot of romance books have boring formulaic covers.
I have bought some really good books (written by a then unknown author) because of the cover. if the covers had been poor, I would never have read the books.
So yes, covers do matter. Even when we say the cover doesn't matter, it does matter even if you don't consciously think so.