Book Covers

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Did people that do use that book discovery method also browse album covers (back when you could browse music by album cover) to find new music to listen to?

It might be a bit shallow but I did purchase It's A Beatiful Days eponymous first album based on the album cover. I was a few years younger then...

[Pulpmeister]

Back in post #21 I said "Not", but later I remembered the one instance where I bought a book on the strength of its cover. I had seen Dick Francis books about for ages, but as I wasn't the slightest bit interested in horses or horse racing I ignored them. (I once outraged a horse-loving niece by explaining that horses were just a handy way of keeping dog meat fresh until needed...)

Anyway, one day there was this paperback:



Well, as a photographer ever since I was old enough to push the button, and who has owned and used everything from a box brownie to a 4 inch x 5 inch studio camera, and now run a Nikon SLR digital, I took a punt on a book with a camera lens on the cover.

It was a good book, too, and I have read every Dick Francis up to his last. I still have the same paperback.

[BenG]

I usually won't buy a book based on the cover but it definitely will make me look twice at at book or possibly put it back.
Back when fantasy and science fiction were all on the same shelves and often written by the same authors you could tell what sort of book it was by the cover, whether it was fantasy, SF, humor, space opera, aliens, etc. Even just the style of the art told you something about the book.

[issybird]

I won't buy a book because of its cover, but I will not buy a book because of its cover, either because it's a signifier of a genre I dislike or because it attests to shoddy production values, which I extrapolate to include editing and proofing.

I'm not a consumer of indies, but if I were, a crummy cover would be a deal breaker as indicative of an author who couldn't be bothered to make the requisite effort at any stage.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Apache

Covers have never influenced me into picking up a book. Title and author are the first things that key me into delving deeper into a book. After that it is the info blurb that used to be in the back and inside the front jacket.
Apache

If I am looking at a book that has a title I've never heard of and an author I've never heard of, the first thing I see is the cover. If the cover is lousy or screams genre that I won't like, I go no further. Thing is, there are plenty of books I will enjoy. So why take a risk on a book that I may not like. There has to be some criteria on how to pick a book and the cover is one way to do it. If the cover is good, I will read the summary and decide from there. Price is another thing. I can see the cover and then the price and then not go any further if it's too expensive.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by issybird

I'm not a consumer of indies, but if I were, a crummy cover would be a deal breaker as indicative of an author who couldn't be bothered to make the requisite effort at any stage.

That's fair in some ways. But in other ways... not really. It's hard for me to believe that a big-name traditional publisher puts any more effort than an indie author does into their cover art (and nowadays, the tradpub author likely puts exactly zero effort into their covers).

What it boils down to for me, is that trad-pub simply has more money to throw at cover art than the the indie author does. Effort be damned. And while visible genre indicators are certainly fair game for filtering, it's difficult for me to punish an author for what might be considered a "bad" cover--tradpub or indie. Not when considering that the first had no say, and the latter had no money (or no visual-art skills, if they chose to do it themselves--for love, or money savings).

Either way ... still seems like ignoring covers is the better option for my personal new-book-discovery practices. Buying a book I don't like at all is always a possibility. Even with the shiniest, most lovely--and very likely utterly unrelated--baubles adorning them. And I'm not willing to judge an indie author's effort on a cover by tradpub-money's results. Especially not when both (money and effort spent) are equally un-indicative of the writing chops contained therein.

I'm not trying to convince anyone that ignoring covers is "better," by the way. I'm just trying to convince perhaps a few that correlating bad cover-art to shoddy writing (or great art to better writing) when looking for new books (e or p) is probably not as "default" (much less reasonable) a behavior as they believed it to be.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I'm not trying to convince anyone that ignoring covers is "better," by the way. I'm just trying to convince perhaps a couple that correlating bad cover-art to shoddy writing (or great art to better writing) when looking for new books (e or p) is probably not as "default" a behavior as they believed it to be.

Eh. Echoing Jon, there are a lot of books out there and even a lot of books I'd like. Some filters are going to be coarse. If eliminating books on the basis of lousy covers results in missing out on the occasional nugget, so be it. I can't read everything I'd like to read anyway, and for me, at least, it's a worthwhile screen. I have a low tolerance for indies anyway, as I've said, and avoiding those huge early eye-rolls at incompetent writing and the time wasted between cracking a book and hitting "Delete" is well worth it.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by issybird

Eh. Echoing Jon, there are a lot of books out there and even a lot of books I'd like. Some filters are going to be coarse. If eliminating books on the basis of lousy covers results in missing out on the occasional nugget, so be it. I can't read everything I'd like to read anyway, and for me, at least, it's a worthwhile screen. I have a low tolerance for indies anyway, as I've said, and avoiding those huge early eye-rolls at incompetent writing and the time wasted between cracking a book and hitting "Delete" is well worth it.

Agreed. Though indie vs tradpub really has no bearing on my general feelings on the subject of cover art. That's just where the conversation happened to go last. They both have scads of examples of bad writing dressed up in lovely clothes as well as wonderful nuggets wearing dirty loincloths, in my opinion.

[Fbone]

I look at covers to get a general idea of genre especially when the author mischaracterizes the tags.

Also, if the cover is cheap looking, I won't purchase the book. Why would the author who spends weeks or months writing their "baby" then take 27 milliseconds to produce a terrible cover? Spend the $100 for professional cover art.

[pwalker8]

I wanted to see what people were saying before jumping back in on this topic.

I look at cover art differently depending on if it's a traditional publisher or an indie. Mostly, I reference SF&F since that is the genre I read the most. I tend to ignore cover art with non fiction. In SF&F, one can tell a lot about what sort of book it is based on cover art. In general, cover art is chosen by the publisher, not the author. The publisher is trying to get the look and feel of the book across to potential readers. Thus, you had the barbarian warrior with the bulging muscles in the Conan knock offs, urban fantasy/romance tends to have a romance style cover, 80's style traditional fantasy typically had a medieval warrior. Space opera might have a space battle, or guy with a blaster on the cover. Usually you would have a scantily clad girl on the cover because the golden age of SF is 14 and 14 year old guys like looking at scantily clad girls.

When the 90's urban fantasies came out (pre-romance) you might have a fay in a run down section of town. Baen's urban fantasies might have an elf and a sport's car. Either way, if you paid attention to the cover art, you had a pretty good idea at least of what sub-genre the book was.

The caveat that I would throw out is I'm mostly talking about books that hit the major book stores (B. Daltons up through B&N) where I live from the mid 70's through the early 2000's. The same book could have many different covers since each publisher might chose a different cover and when a book was re-published, the publisher might not have the rights to the cover art any more.

I agree that you couldn't necessarily tell if the book was well written from the cover art, but it would tell you a lot about what sort of book it was. Important to a genre reader, not so important to a non genre reader.

Indies are a different matter. When I scan the catalogue on Amazon (something I rarely do anymore), I don't bother with books where it's obvious that the author used some sort of generic cover, i.e. Magna characters, or a picture of someone dressed in a costume. I might miss some nuggets, but the point is to avoid wadding through the muck. If an author puts the effort into getting a quality cover, odds are they at least know a little about writing books. So cover art is a filter. I do find that most of my new books are recommendations, though the cover art can make a big difference if it's Amazon's recommendation rather than a recommendation I read here. An example is the cover of Stiger's Tigers by Marc Alan Edelheit. Basically Roman legion set in a fantasy setting. That cover tells you a lot about the book. That's what a good cover does.

[NickyWithNook]

The book cover gives me an indication of what the author sees the book as - romance, thriller, cozy mystery, chick lit, historical fiction, etc., and that's a good starting point for me. They all have their own styles of covers and it gives me an indication of what kind of book it is. It does not tell me how good of a book it is, although I am skeptical of whether much time and effort was put into a book when the cover looks like the Time Ninja cover I saw earlier in the thread.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

If an author puts the effort into getting a quality cover, odds are they at least know a little about writing books.

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.

[leebase]

It doesn't matter if I KNOW not to judge a book by it's cover....the cover and the title are the first impression of have of a book. It does affect my interest level if I know nothing else about the book.

[DiapDealer]

By the way ... it's OK to say, "because I prefer good cover art,' and letting it go at that. That's fine. But trying to invent non-existent connections between the quality of cover art and a writer's ability (regardless of how they're published) or effort, is where all arguments fall completely flat. It's OK to BE biased in that regard. It's another to pretend that bias is somehow justified by "facts." I have tons of biases about reading/writing I'd never dream of trying to logically defend. There's no point.

[Hitch]

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