How important is the right cover image?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I've no reason to doubt your findings, Hitch; you've always been a straight-shooter. But I'd be lying if I said they didn't sadden me greatly if true. It implies that the book-buying public at large, are freakin' raccoons rather than readers. Shouldn't surprise me, I guess, but still. If you don't mind, I'm going to go hug a few great books with nondescript covers.

Diap:

It IS depressing. But it's simply the way humans are built--crows. Shiny, pretty things. It works on movie posters. It works on frozen food, amazingly. (I once had a website about frozen food. The overwhelming truth there is, if you stand in the frozen food aisle for a while, and watch people pick dinners, it's almost ALWAYS the best picture on the box. ALWAYS, particularly, no offense, for male buyers.)

We are programmed to look for the best-looking mate. We love symmetry, and consider it beautiful. The bright colors, I can't speak to so much. I'm sure that there is some evolutionary biological reason for that.

We, Diap, expect that people will rise above the simplicity of the primal brain, but we don't in mating--not really, no matter what we tell ourselves--and we don't in many other things. We still have "pack" or "tribe" behavior, my tribe against your tribe (sports, anyone?). Politics?

So, the fact that the human eye is entranced by a pretty thing during an Amazon search...just doesn't surprise me. ;-)

Hitch

[conan50]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Diap:

It IS depressing. But it's simply the way humans are built--crows. Shiny, pretty things. It works on movie posters. It works on frozen food, amazingly. (I once had a website about frozen food. The overwhelming truth there is, if you stand in the frozen food aisle for a while, and watch people pick dinners, it's almost ALWAYS the best picture on the box. ALWAYS, particularly, no offense, for male buyers.)

We are programmed to look for the best-looking mate. We love symmetry, and consider it beautiful. The bright colors, I can't speak to so much. I'm sure that there is some evolutionary biological reason for that.

We, Diap, expect that people will rise above the simplicity of the primal brain, but we don't in mating--not really, no matter what we tell ourselves--and we don't in many other things. We still have "pack" or "tribe" behavior, my tribe against your tribe (sports, anyone?). Politics?

So, the fact that the human eye is entranced by a pretty thing during an Amazon search...just doesn't surprise me. ;-)

Hitch

My concern is that you are describing someone too dumb to read a book lol!
I also need actual readers who will do reviews and recommend books they like. I've yet to have someone say:
"Man, you have to buy this book with the awesome swirly blue cover, the story is crap, but check out that cover!" :-)

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by conan50

My concern is that you are describing someone too dumb to read a book lol!
I also need actual readers who will do reviews and recommend books they like. I've yet to have someone say:
"Man, you have to buy this book with the awesome swirly blue cover, the story is crap, but check out that cover!" :-)

Guys:

YOU'RE depressed? Lemme tell you a little story:

Once upon a time, a lovely kind princess owned an eBook formatting company. The princess worked hard, and so did all her loyal retainers. BUT, the Princess was frustrated, because she was asked the SAME questions, over and over and over. So, she decided to bear down, and do some work. She created HUNDREDS of very clear, precise, FAQ articles.

But to the Princess' sadness, nobody read them! At first, she refused to believe this. No, she said: that can't be right. Surely, all these authors-cum-publishers want to know how to do everything! Surely, clicking an FAQ article is easier than sending me an entire email, asking me the question? But she studied her Royal Webmaster Tool Reports (occasionally and inexplicably showing up in Indonesian, mind you), and lo...the truth could not be denied. The people of her Kingdom (well, her Princess-dom), readeth not the Proclamations on the FAQ.

The Princess comforted herself, telling herself that she shared one thing with many of her first-time clients: she was an extremely UNREAD author!

But, she knew that this had to be addressed, somehow. So, the Princess said to herself, "Self," (she said), "We should put these same FAQ articles in an easily-readable format, so that we can send them to the questioners!! How brilliant is that! We will send one to EVERY questioner, in PDF, and lo--they will self-serve!" No "going" here or there; answers DELIVERED to you, like PIZZA!!

However, after months of labor, effort, toil and sweat, when the Royal Proclamation of the Handbook, as it was come to be known, was completed, and was being sent out to EVERY personage in the Princess-dom, lo...still, the people readeth not. Even with carefully-crafted bookmarks, an interactive TOC, fully-searchable...nada. Zip, zein zilch: the Handbook languished, unread by the People, and the Princess and her retainers fell about in lamentations. For while the Princess loved her people, there was only one Princess, and to answer those 300 or so people per day was a bit hard on the Princess, even with the help of her loyal minions. Especially given that the Princess had spent hundreds of hours--hundreds!!--creating the FAQ and the Handbook. Possibly more than hundreds of hours; possibly even in the thousand-hour category.

The Princess, by now looking a bit bald-ish in spots, from pulling her hair out, had a ridiculous inspiration. Was it possible--possible, she wondered--that the People would read...a COMIC BOOK???? Would they read that, where they had repeatedly failed to read the GINORMOUS FAQ, the Handbook, the READ ME FIRST that the Princess sent out with Every Single Royal quote?

So, the Princess--who, despite being balding, is nothing if not stupidly tenacious--set out to learn how to create comic books. She found an artist she liked, with already-existing, affordable artwork. She learned how to put these images in comic-panels. She learned how to create dialogue bubbles and effects. And, after more hair-pulling, she managed to create a simple, Marvel-is-not-calling-you-anytime-soon 4-page Comic book.

And the Princess, also having learnt much from watching her People and their struggles with sales over the previous 5 years, put no cover on the thing--let the INSIDE shine through, with the bright (BRIGHT!!) colors, etc., and slapped it on the homepage of her Royal Website.

And Lo: the People rejoiced! They downloaded the Royal Comic. Not just a little--a LOT. The same People who NEVER read the instructions, NEVER read the FAQ, NEVER read the READ ME FIRST, didn't read the Quotes and would ask the same questions over and over about which they had already asked, and been directed to the specific articles in the FAQ, (just to get the SAME EXACT canned response in an email--which sent them away happy, mind you), downloaded the Royal comic. By the hundreds. In a span of a few days, mind you.

The (reasonably happier) Princess now spends her days trying to figure out how to put her heretofore myriad instructions about this and that --like how to install Kindle Previewer, how to install/use ADE, etc.--into COMIC BOOK FORMAT.

Here endeth the lesson. Take from it what you will. But seriously: the last 5 years have dramatically changed the Princess' view of the People. And has added to the Princess' view of the Importance of Being Covered.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

I think the princess should send her subjects each a box of crayons to use to write their books.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I think the princess should send her subjects each a box of crayons to use to write their books.

The Princess--who despite being beautiful and stupidly tenacious, is also a bit devious--sneakily embedded LINKS into the Royal Comic, which took her beloved People to those very places they had previously failed to go: the Royal FAQ, the Royal Handbook and the Royal KIDS' book Handbook, as well as the Royal Contact Form.

And lo...the sneaky worked. And the Princess and her Retainers REJOICED.

No Crayons, m'Lord de Wolfie; just simple psychology. The Princess had told her People about bright colors and pictures for YEARS; she simply had to take her OWN advice. (And, in fact, the Princess' entire website is being completely redone, replete with her Royal Seal [logo], to address that VERY FACT, as the Princess' website is just too wordy, too text-dense, and the font is not large enough. It is undergoing MAJOR Cosmetic surgery as we speaketh, M'Lord.)

Hitch

[JSWolf]

I look forward to seeing how you do a website with crayons in bright colors.

I'll be sure and take a look at your newly redesigned website. I'll give you my honest opinion when it's read for public viewing. I have a feeling it will most likely be looking good when it's updated.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I look forward to seeing how you do a website with crayons in bright colors.

I'll be sure and take a look at your newly redesigned website. I'll give you my honest opinion when it's read for public viewing. I have a feeling it will most likely be looking good when it's updated.

Well, m'Lud:

We'll have to see. It is VERY bright. It is VERY graphic, not "text-y." And we're using pricing tables, etc. I don't know if it will work; what I know is that a lot of text, no matter WHAT you do with it (make it big, make it sans serif, make it sing like a little girl...) just is BAD in today's marketplace. And I'm like Texanns; I'm a text-y kinda guy (girl). So, I've left the design to someone ELSE entirely, for a change. I'm simply implementing the FLOWS for the client and the SEO. And we've done an actual logo, too, for a change. Also brightly-colored, somewhat. {sigh}.

The day and age when just doing a good job was enough is gone. Now you have to be Google's best friend, and very, very EASY, too. In terms of EVERYTHING. You have to publish, publish, publish, or be damned, because if you don't pollute the Net with more, more, more, Google won't love ya. It's...like watching an anthill over-populate, in terms of the Net, because every single business out there--EVERY ONE OF THEM--(and this includes authors, mind you!!) has to add more, more more. More new content. More blogs. More tweets. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy of self-indulgent, increasingly meaningless, increasingly worthless, but needed-to-survive, Darwinian, noise.

Hitch

[dickloraine]

A good cover shows, that some effort seems to be made to make a beautiful product. That somebody has thought about, how to present the work.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by dickloraine

A good cover shows, that some effort seems to be made to make a beautiful product. That somebody has thought about, how to present the work.

Yes. I absolutely agree with this. +100. Covers were taken for granted, for years; publishers did them, agonized over them, etc., and we readers never really thought about them. Now we do, because we are forced to, by the quagmire of bad ones. And authors have to/need to/ought give those as much thought as they gave their story, IMHO. For the very reasons you've stated.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

A good cover gets people to look at the blurb for the book. A bad cover gets people to not bother and move on.

[DiapDealer]

I am clearly not people, then. I've long suspected it.

[conan50]

I wonder how many truly beautiful book covers have one and two star reviews that keep people from buying them? If I see a two star review on it the book cover means nothing to me, especially if there are dozens of one and two star reviews. A beautiful cover can get my attention for a moment, but everything else had better fall into place, like a great synopsis, good reviews, good formatting. I think the only way a cover seriously affects my choice is if it is butt-ugly and seems made to turn me away as a reader :-)

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by conan50

I wonder how many truly beautiful book covers have one and two star reviews that keep people from buying them? If I see a two star review on it the book cover means nothing to me, especially if there are dozens of one and two star reviews. A beautiful cover can get my attention for a moment, but everything else had better fall into place, like a great synopsis, good reviews, good formatting. I think the only way a cover seriously affects my choice is if it is butt-ugly and seems made to turn me away as a reader :-)

If you were browsing online and saw a cover that you didn't like from an author you didn't know, would you continue looking at this book by reading the blurb to see if you were interested in it?

[conan50]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If you were browsing online and saw a cover that you didn't like from an author you didn't know, would you continue looking at this book by reading the blurb to see if you were interested in it?

If it had 4 star reviews, and I loved the synopsis--yes, the cover would take the back seat in my decision.
BTW I have bought ebooks that had little more than titles on the cover because I liked the genre and synopsis.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by conan50

I wonder how many truly beautiful book covers have one and two star reviews that keep people from buying them? If I see a two star review on it the book cover means nothing to me, especially if there are dozens of one and two star reviews. A beautiful cover can get my attention for a moment, but everything else had better fall into place, like a great synopsis, good reviews, good formatting. I think the only way a cover seriously affects my choice is if it is butt-ugly and seems made to turn me away as a reader :-)

You two--you and m'Lud Wolfie, Lord High Curmudgeon--are mixing apples and oranges. Nobody here is going to pass up a fabulous description, great blurbs and a terrific first 1300 or so words, just BECAUSE there is a bad book cover. Just like a bad book cover wouldn't kill us off if we saw 50 4-5- star reviews.

BUT, kids, what you are not thinking about is, how does the prospective reader get to the product description page IN THE FIRST PLACE? To see those reviews, stars, blurbs, descriptions and first 10% of the book? By either browsing or searching through...a page of covers. Whether it's a category browse, a best-sellers browse, a "books on sale" browse, or a search for "vampire novels," (gods help us), or WHATEVER, Somehow, someway, those searchers see that thumbnail FIRST. In an ocean of other thumbnails. That's the reality.

Sure, if you've heard about a book at Goodreads, or here, or "around," that won't push you in one direction or another. but if you're simply browsing, conan50, I think you are dismissing the power of the First Impression.

That's MY point.

Hitch