A/B-Testing Book Covers

 

Here you have two covers of the same novel, my Hollywood love story called Hollywood Ass.

Despite positive reviews and feedback, it hasn’t really taken off in sales, the way The Wake-Up Call did, so I decided to put my online marketing cap on (an indie author is really like a  one marketing man band) and A/B-test two different book covers.

Since Amazon doesn’t allow you to see traffic to your book page or any kind of conversion figures, everything boils down to sales and setting up short links to bit.ly – but I hope I can still see a positive or negative pattern and be able to compare the two.

The funny thing is that as an independent author, one of the perks is that you don’t have to compromise with your publisher’s wishes. You are your publisher, marketing machine, agent etc. But you’re obviously still a slave to sales. Because if nobody is downloading/reading your book, what’s the point of it?

So you fiddle around with different things like book covers, descriptions, blurbs, reviews. You buy media space on different sites and networks. You stay active on Goodreads, you take an outrageously attractive author photo, and you hope to see your numbers spike.

We have to use the weapons given to us. That’s the name of the game.

And the weapon I’m using right now is A/B-testing book covers. But while I wait for the results I would love if you could comment on this blog on which one you prefer. Book cover 1 (original to the left) or 2?

Thanks for your help and have a nice weekend.