How important are covers in terms of selling a book?
A book cover has less than 8 seconds to catch a reader’s attention. Maybe store placement also matters, but book covers are extremely important to sell both: printed and ebooks.
Three aspects of a book make the greatest first impression on potential readers.
- Cover
- Title
- Opening sentences
If the cover art does its job well, it will portray the tone and genre of the book accurately—and help it stand out from its competition on the bookshelf.
Practical considerations:
Key elements must be present in your book’s cover for it to be properly distributed
- ISBN number
- EAN bar code,
- Title
- Author name
- Publisher logo
- Blurbs
- Select a working title and a subtitle.
- Use ‘sans serif’ font for display headers.
- It is important for your book cover design to inform readers of your book’s subject.
- NEVER USE WHITE as background color. Your book would be almost invisible on Amazon’s website (and many others) especially at their thumbnail size book images. Color sets the mood and background colors should match the topic. Purple doesn’t fit on a business book and pink not on a DIY book.
Covers are a marketing tool.
They target major buyers as much as end-readers. It’s a fact that buyers for the chain stores will order more copies of a book they find visually appealing, so their opinion counts, even to the extent that publishers will entirely change a book’s cover if an influential buyer doesn’t like it.
An interesting and compelling cover often means an interesting and compelling read.
You only have 8 seconds to capture your audience and generate interest in your published book. Don’t waste your time. Create that “BUY NOW” emotion.
.
.
