The Cover is Everything

[ImogenRose]

Interesting!

[J. Dean]

As I said on another site about this... I agree with that statement, but grudgingly. Because if everything were to be judged by covers, I never would have read THE CATCHER IN THE RYE.

[dadioflex]

Edit.

[Steven Lake]

Yeah, cover is everything. Take a look at an example from my writing.



This is my original cover for The Oort Perimeter that I did myself. This is also the same cover the limited edition has. FYI, I couldn't hardly give away my book when it had this cover.



This is the one my publisher did. It pops a whole lot more than my attempt at a cover did. Now when I go out to book shows and other events, people just about maul each other to get the book. ^_^ So yeah, same book, two different covers, two entirely different results. It's yet more proof of how covers sell.

[J. Dean]

Oh, I'm not denying that attractive covers draw readers, but in one sense it's a bit unfair to, if I may use the cliche, "judge a book by its cover". I've seen great covers with terrible stories, and vice versa.

[Joebill]

I tend to pick a page at random and read it, then make a choice based on that. Of course, that isn't an ebook.

[NickSpalding]

Hmmmm.....I shall leave my cover as is for the time being, but may well take another look at it if the book doesn't sell well.

Great thread...

[DaringNovelist]

Originally Posted by Joebill

I tend to pick a page at random and read it, then make a choice based on that. Of course, that isn't an ebook.

But what makes you pick up the book in the first place? You don't just pick up every single book in the store and check a page, do you? Something has to get your interest in the first place.

Camille

[DaringNovelist]

Originally Posted by NickSpalding

Hmmmm.....I shall leave my cover as is for the time being, but may well take another look at it if the book doesn't sell well.

Great thread...

Nick: the only problem I see with your book is that you have to click on the cover to see the title. On a thumbnail, you can't see much at all. (When your book appears in a list on Amazon, the cover is often 100 pixels by 150 pixels.)

Camille

[neilmarr]

Right you are, Camille. Cover art for thumbnail projection in online retail stores often requires a completely different approach. Over the past year or so, with a new design and technical director, my own wee house has tended toward the minimalist. Seems to work well and we're in process of re-covering some existing titles in our catalogue as well as applying this to new releases. Cheers. Neil

[Joebill]

Originally Posted by DaringNovelist

But what makes you pick up the book in the first place? You don't just pick up every single book in the store and check a page, do you? Something has to get your interest in the first place.

Camille

The author name, the blurb on the cover. Sometimes I'll pick up a book with an unfamiliar author name on it. Read a random page, and decide from there.

I try to ignore covers because there have been a number of books with covers that had nothing to do with the story. Particularly in sf books.

[lmpreston]

People do purchase a book by the cover. When you go into the bookstore and see thousands of books there, you reach out and touch the ones that stand out.

[LeeGoldberg]

Originally Posted by LeeGoldberg

This is shaping up to be my biggest Kindle month ever. As of 7 pm tonight, I have earned $810 in royalties this month. If sales continue at this rate, and that's a big if, I could reach about $1400 by the end of April. But I will certainly top the nearly $1000 I earned in March. And all of this on books that were out-of-print, gathering dust on a shelf.

I was right. I earned $1416 (you can see my complete royalty statement here). April was, by far, my best Kindle month since I began this experiment eleven months ago. Last month, I sold 1360 books...this month I sold 1798, an increase of 438 books and $400 in royalties.

I credit the surge this month to three things:

1. My bet with Joe Konrath, which resulted in new covers and titles for my Vigilante novels. It was a bet I was thrilled to lose.

2. raising the price of THREE WAYS TO DIE from .99 cents to 1.99.

3. adding a Kindle edition of my out-0f-print book THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE to my available titles.

Sales of the VIGILANTE books (now known, thanks to Joe, as The Jury Series) shot up enormously. For example, the previously titled .357 VIGILANTE #4: KILLSTORM sold 14 copies last month. This month, by rebranding the book GUILTY, I sold 125 copies. I now have someone re-reading the manuscripts of all four books, correcting the conversion errors that have bedeviled me since I posted them a few months ago.



Last month, THREE WAYS TO DIE sold 201 priced at 99 cents and earned $70. This month, I sold 169 and earned $103. Fewer sales, but higher royalties. I can live with that. .

THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE, priced at $2.99, quickly became my second best-selling title, if not in volume (234 copies sold) certainly in profits ($245). Those sales reassure me that my bestselling title, THE WALK, will do fine when, in late June, I raise the price from $1.99 to $2.99 to take advantage of Amazon's new royalty formula, which will give me a 70% royalty instead of the 35% I get now. By the way, this month THE WALK sold 629 copies, earning me $440 (last month I sold 575 copies). A new high.

Changing the cover and title of BEYOND THE BEYOND boosted sales a bit. Last month, under the BEYOND title, I sold 73 copies. This month, rebranded as DEAD SPACE, I sold 92.

I can't wait to see how things shake out in July once my royalty doubles. Will my earning, if not my volume of sales, go up? Or will it level off? Or will the bubble burst and sales slowly begin to deteriorate? I don't know, but no matter what happens, I am already a winner. As I keep saying, this is all found money on out-of-print books that were packed away in my garage or in a dark corner of my hard-drive.

[susanne]

This is very interesting. But I write in different genres and each of my cover reflect that. For example, 'Villa Caramel', is a wacky romantic comedy with farce-like elements. 'Swedish for Beginners - a novel', is a contemporary novel with a much more serious story. I think their covers reflect the stories in the books;

[Dusty Bottoms]

With free tools (inkscape) a repeating pattern that modifies only colour, title and blurb, you can achieve a heck of a lot on a shoestring. Colour branding is almost essential when you're compiling a matching set of covers and you don't have a lot of money to spare. Here's some I've been working on (incomplete, but they'll give you an idea what is possible without breaking the bank on software and the like)

The first image becomes a template for the rest and this saves you heaps of time in the future when all you have to do is go in and change colour, blurb and title. The originals are also produced in vector formats that expand and contract to any size without degradation.