Judge a book by its cover?

Well, do you? I think for sure you can tell the really bad ones. If the cover looks totally home-made by someone with no sense of design or colour, horrible fonts and amateur photos (or worse, a painting or drawing with little artistic merit) the book is probably going to be about that good too. Anyone who has written a halfway decent story won’t fling it onto the market with a cover that repels prospective readers.

Successful indie authors are rigorous quality controllers.  It’s their book, their baby, and everything must be RIGHT. You wouldn’t believe the effort that goes in behind the scenes.  My particular passion is finding the right people for the cover. I can spend literally days, and far too many dollars, on the commercial photo sites – preferably in the early stages of creating a book – so I can then write about exactly those people.  I’ve traditionally published friends who’ve had to accept (at pretty short notice sometimes) covers with blondes instead or brunettes, historical garments from the wrong era, models they really don’t like and can’t picture in their story…