Quote:
Originally Posted by Dutchbook
I haven't looked at the cover of a book before deciding to buy it/read it in years. Granted, I get my kicks from reading technical books and history books, instead of storyline literature.
Case in point, the cover of what i'm currently reading: https://ozon-st.cdn.ngenix.net/multi...1007171774.jpg
And of my favorite book:
https://www.securepages.nl/kadeboeken/plaatjes/6574.jpg
But when I do, I just google the title, read a summary and the reviews on Goodreads (and more importantly, check what kind of people those reviewers are).
However:
What is a complete turn-off for me are "catchy" titles, designed to lure the customer towards it. I automatically reckon it is pretentious, superficial, unresearched bla-bla, and quickly scan the bookshelf to something else.  |
Well, that's as may be, and I do think that there's a core of readers who are very much like you--I'm not big on covers, myself. But I can't overlook the evidence of what I've seen and witnessed with my own eyes. There are no two ways about it--in genre fiction, sharp covers sell, period.
I've told this story here on the Writer's Corner, before. I have a client who is also trade-pubbed. By a big publisher. We've done his backlist, into ebooks. He's a mystery writer, and his backlist books, and his current ones, for that matter, are series, in which while there are new mysteries in each (whodunits), there are the same characters and a larger story arc for the personal relationships of the protagonist, right?
There are 6 of these, up on his Kindle bookshelf. All for sale, all went up around the same point in time, a number of years ago. Now, you'd think that you'd expect that his first book would sell, let's say, X copies. Then, maybe not everybody loved the first one, you get some drop off, and those that did would go on to buy books 2-3-4-5-6, right? In approximately the same numbers? Some number of X-Y? Consistently?
Well...
hell no, they don't. They practically
leap over Book 2's dead body to get to Book 3. And they do it again, from Book 4 to book 6. It's not that they're playing hopscotch, but if you look at the series, Book 2 has a dark, not wildly attractive cover. But Book 3 has an AWESOME cover. Book 5? Back to not great; book 6? Fabulous.
I've seen his sales figures with my own eyes. They're utterly irrational
unless you figure in the covers. And he's not the only author that's reported this type of thing to me. Repeatedly.
Offered solely FWIW.
ETA: I think that authors resist the idea that covers impact sales, and are
heavily resistant to the idea that their babies, their wonderful offspring, aren't the sole arbiters of the destiny of the book; that the outcome of their labors can be so severely affected by something over which they have limited control.
Hitch