Is it Cover or the Content that Sells the Book

[DrDln]

I see lot of emphases on covers. That reminds me the old saying: "Don't judge book by the cover."

I don't mean to undermine the importance of cover. But I still believe in old saying that content is more important.

What does the other authors and readers think?

[carld]

A cover may get my attention, but it's content that sells the book. Ideally a good book should have a good cover, but I'll buy an interesting book with a mediocre cover, but I rarely if ever buy a book just based on the cover.

This cover got my attention, but if the story hadn't interested me it would have gone back on the shelf.

[James_Wilde]

Originally Posted by DrDln

I see lot of emphases on covers. That reminds me the old saying: "Don't judge book by the cover."

I don't mean to undermine the importance of cover. But I still believe in old saying that content is more important.

What does the other authors and readers think?

It's got to be the cover that sells the book, maybe with the help of a dip in the first chapter. How many people stand in a bookstore till they've read the book and then buy it and take it home?

On the other hand, the content of that book may very well affect the outcome of future sales of other books by the same author. Personally, I only allow an author one bad book before they lose all their credibility.

[Frida Fantastic]

It's both.

Covers are like packaging. Would you buy juice if its packaged like laundry detergent? If might be the best juice in the world, but if it looks a little too much like "liquid Tide", do you think many people are going to try that sample, even if there's a person in the grocery handing free cups of it?

I *might* try it if a friend tells me "Hey. That isn't laundry detergent, just close your eyes and drink it." Then I'll drink it because I trust my friend. But if there isn't strong word of mouth going around, then bad packaging will definitely hurt.

Again, there might be terrible juice that is beautifully packaged and recognizably is juice. After sampling it, I ultimately still would not buy it because well... it's bad. At that point, if I really want juice, I could sample the one that looks like laundry detergent, but if there's a billion different kinds of juice out there with free samples available, what's the likelihood of me trying out the one that looks like laundry detergent?

It shows time and time again that the most successful self-published books are the ones that look the most professional and *don't* look self-published. (http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/ See #8).

I like indie books. I've been buying indie and reading indie and reviewing indie. I'm reviewing books that I would have skipped over if I was just browsing (because they have bad covers that don't show their genre/content), but since the author submitted it to my book blog, I actually got into it after I sampled it, and I'm reviewing it.

But see here, this is what I don't understand. If an author spends a lot of time writing a book in order to sell it, then why spend the time working on a bad cover? A good cover doesn't have to be expensive, it just needs decent design sense. A thumbs up from a graphic designer friend. Or maybe even just a 2-hour job by someone found in deviantart or on a message board, if they don't have to draw original art. Self-published authors aren't competing against other indies, they're competing against traditionally published authors, so they can't look inferior in anyway. A good cover can only help indie authors get an edge. It's not good cover or good content, the reader expects good content first, but the reader isn't as likely to get to the content if the cover isn't good.

[Frida Fantastic]

On a related note, indie author Lindsay Buroker has written a great blog post on what makes a good website: http://www.lindsayburoker.com/book-m...ur-book-sales/ Indie books are a business, and part of business is marketing, having an online platform, and managing an online brand. Many authors are great writers but aren't great graphic designers/website designers/etc. I understand that, there's not many polymaths around. What I don't understand is this deep desire for many indie authors to go completely DIY when they're not the best person to do it.

Let's say an indie author, let's call her Karen, has spent a year and a half writing a book. She is only willing to spend $200 on it. She decides to make her own cover (despite having no experiences making book covers before), and edit her own book, and spent the rest of the $200 on a few print copies. She puts her book on Amazon and Smashwords.

The cover is mediocre, she's missed a couple of grammatical errors in the beginning so a lot of the folks that downloaded a sample turned away, and neither ebooks or print copies are moving much at all. She feels like she just wasted $200 dollars.

What do I think she should have done instead?

For editing, she could strike up a friendship with other writers or her fan base to do edits. Even if none of them are professional, the more *honest* editors you have, the more they can catch errors. If she's got a sizeable support network to do free editing, then she could go this road. She could then spend $100 on a good cover she hired a graphic designer to do (who she found on a message board like this one). She could spent the other $100 to buy a handful of print copies, just in case there's people who won't buy ebooks. She can buy more print copies once her books start moving.

I don't think authors need to spend as much as J. A. Konrath does on his covers, but it's just a part of business. Readers aren't purposely trying to be shallow, they have limited time and they get attracted to products that look like a good product. They try it. If it's bad, they don't buy. If it's good, they buy. If they constantly pass over the product, how will they try it?

[mr ploppy]

Without a cover that looks interesting enough at postage stamp size nobody will even look at the content. For people who've never heard of you the process is this:

Cover --> blurb --> first sentence --> first chapter --> buy book

You lose buyers at every stage, but they will never reach the last stage if they don't even make it to the first one.

[Andrew Ashling]

I agree with bashfulbanshee, for the most part.
In my own experience, the sales of my first book, A Dish Served Cold, increased markedly after I had changed the cover.

[jbcohen]

Since I read primarily electronic books I don't get to see the cover and will quickly bypass it if its in the file. This question is better explored via a poll.

[crich70]

I agree with bashfulbanshee. Both go towards catching my interest. First of all the cover which includes both the cover image and the blurb and also the thickness of the book (with pbooks). If a book is too thin for the price that is being asked I'll give it a pass even if I like the cover image and blurb. I mean think about it, would you pay $9.99 for a book that was 100 pages or less? If I'm going to be purchasing a book that averages $10.00 a copy I want to know that there is enough story there to entertain me for a while. There are rare exceptions such as the Beetle the Bard book from J.K. Rowling, but those exceptions are just that exceptions. Also if I can look through the book (literally with the pbook or through a sample with an ebook) and find a lot of errors I'm less likely to buy then either. Worst case scenario I buy a book that I thought looked good and it turns out to be bad. If that's the case I'm not likely to buy another from that author. I also don't like it when the story is stopped for countless pages for exposition. I still haven't gone back to finish The Valley of Horses by Jean Auel because the story went off on a tangent describing the setting. Haven't read the other books that came after either for that matter. Of course along with a books cover there is choosing the right Title as well. Even if you have the right cover image if the Title is wrong or vice versa an author could lose me.

[Frida Fantastic]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Without a cover that looks interesting enough at postage stamp size nobody will even look at the content. For people who've never heard of you the process is this:

Cover --> blurb --> first sentence --> first chapter --> buy book

You lose buyers at every stage, but they will never reach the last stage if they don't even make it to the first one.

Agreed. I think a cover needs to convey the following information:
genre (fiction/non-fiction, sub-genre)
professionalism
distinctiveness... how is it different from the other books being offered in the same sub-genre? What makes this book stand out?

From experience, I know that good covers don't necessarily have good books, and bad covers don't necessarily have bad books. But a good cover shows that the author put some more care in another part of the business aspect of book selling and is taking it seriously, not just as a quick-get-rich-scheme. There's a lot of books out there that IMHO should not be sold because they're unfinished products, and an indie author should do her best to get her books recognized as "wheat" over the flood of chaff we have on the internet.

[typhoon5ht]

I hope the content, but I'll take what I can get.

[G J Lau]

I think the job of the cover is two-fold. First, it should stand out from the crowd with a distinctive combination of design and color and second, and most important, clearly convey the title. A good title can get someone to look further. Won't do any good if you can't easily pick it out from the background design.

Like a postage stamp, the cover should catch the eye with a splash of color or a bold design, but the key thing to me is to be able to read the title no matter how small it is.

[Worldwalker]

Bashfulbanshee has covered just about everything I might want to say, and Mr. Ploppy really summarized it. If I'm just browsing, rather than seeking a specific author or title, the cover will catch my eye and get me to look at the content. The content will sell the book. There are far more books than I have time to consider, let alone explore, so a decent cover can be the deciding factor between this book and that one.

The website thing is something I can really speak to, because that's what I do -- website design. As a result, I don't just notice, as anyone does, that a website I'm visiting is annoying; I know why it's annoying.

Jakob Nielsen, the usability guru, said it best: "Users spend most of their time on other websites." I can't emphasize that enough.

Over and over again, I see websites -- often by "creative" people of one type or another -- that don't take that into consideration. They put their navigation in unconventional places, so users have to go find it. They use unconventional types of navigation, so users have to learn to use it. They, in short, promise (by default) the user one thing -- a website that they can use just like they use every other website -- and then yank the rug out from under them and say, in effect, "I'm so special that you're going to have to discard your normal way of doing things and do them my way instead." The typical user's response is along the line of "Just who do you think you are, anyway?" followed by a quick click of the "back" button.

I do not want to figure out how to use your website.

I do not want to read everything about your company, your relationships, or your dog.

I do not want to "be part of a community"; I just want to buy a freakin' book.

I want to know what books you've written. I want to know where I can buy them. And, being who I am, I want to know if they're DRM-locked or not (if they are, wasting my time by hiding that fact and sending me to a sales site for a book I'm not going to buy won't make me buy your book anyway; it will make me think you're a jerk). If I want to find out about your thoughts, opinions, or life story, make that a link if you must -- but don't force me to read through it to find out about your book. No, it won't make me want your book all the more; it will make me go to the website for the next author on my list and drop you off it completely, because there are more writers selling books I want to read than there is time to read them, so there's no reason for me to struggle to get yours when there are so many alternatives.

I guess that can all be summed up in "Get over yourself!" I don't want to jump through hoops -- I just want to buy a book. Who, what, where, when, why, how ... important words, those. Answer them and you'll have a sale. Ignore them and I'll go elsewhere, because there are so many elsewheres to go to, and so little time.

[S Livingston]

The content is much more important than the cover in the long run. If a book is great it doesn't matter what the cover is at all. Unfortunately the reader doesn't know how great the content is until they have read the book so the cover does play a part in attracting attention in the first place.

[Frida Fantastic]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

I do not want to "be part of a community"; I just want to buy a freakin' book.

Totally true. There's many off-putting sites where the authors really push you to join their facebook group, goodreads group, newsletter, etc. before you had the chance to read what their book is about. What should be accessible first is the books available, not the community around it. I like easy access to a reliable retail space e.g. Amazon or Smashwords immediately before I look at anything else.

For the most part, the books sell the community, not the other way around. The community sells the book to other related communities, but that should be the community's job, not the author's job. Defeats the purpose of a community if the author has to *force* people to join instead of it being a natural extension of their audience.