Do you judge a book by its cover?

[Frederick]

Sometimes... have to admit... Nice cover will attract me when browsing thru the books when I don't have much time to spare. When I'm not that superficial I dig into the book readiing some chapter randomly, and often it proves to be an interesting book even if the cover is... ahem... ugly :)
However, marketing is here for the reason cause average user will judge it by the cover.

[Robert]

I don't judge a book by it's cover.
When viewing books on line I use the mini book cover to see the listing rather than the text title usually found on the right side of screen.

[Richard]

Clearly, people do. The only impression we have of a book is the title, the cover, and the blurb. The title seldom tells you much about the book, and it takes a click and some actual work to read the blurb. I bet the average reader rejects ten books by looking at their covers, for every one where they bother to read the blurb. The cover indicates the genre, hooks the reader with starships/pretty ladies/men without shirts or whatever the author felt would work.
A professional-looking cover also indicates that the author was willing to pay $500-$1000 to a designer, hinting that they may have also shelled out a similar sum to an editor, making the book more likely to be enjoyable (or at least, less likely to be annoying).

[Anthony Deeney]

Richard wrote: "Clearly, people do. The only impression we have of a book is the title, the cover, and the blurb. The title seldom tells you much about the book, and it takes a click and some actual work to read t..."

Absolutely, we do! We shouldn't, but we cannot help it. Even the postage stamp sized icons present crude form and colour that if well designed, will catch the eye.

[Martin]

As an Indie author, I believe paying for a good editor and good illustrator is a good investment.

[Richard]

Have you seen evidence for that in your sales, Martin? Or is it a leap of faith.

[[deleted user]]

Martin wrote: "As an Indie author, I believe paying for a good editor and good illustrator is a good investment."

It may have been a good investment for you, but the need for either one will depend on the individual and varying talents. A writer with artistic abilities may be able to produce a cover that's closer to his vision than a hired artist could. The same goes with editing.

[Martin]

An author should never be his own final editor. Just sayin...

[[deleted user]]

I'm sure that works for you, but others may differ. I do believe that a good cover is necessary. You shouldn't use something generic and bland to sell your book. Whether you make it yourself, or hire someone to do it, it has to be eye-catching enough to attract attention among the thousands of others available to the reader, and at the very least not scream "amateur!" I made this mistake with my first novel, and had to change the cover several times before I got it right. On the other hand, unless I bought a cut-rate cover from a professional, I would only now, more than a year later, have recovered the cost. And that's just for one book.

[P.R.]

Ken wrote: "I'm sure that works for you, but others may differ. I do believe that a good cover is necessary. You shouldn't use something generic and bland to sell your book. Whether you make it yourself, or hi..."

This exactly pinpoints the dilemma for the new author!

[Micah]

Yes. To some degree.

I.e., if the cover is obviously a self-made cover, then I'm unlikely to look any closer at the book.

OTOH if the cover looks professional but is still bad, I usually won't rule it out based on that.

I've seen plenty of book covers that I think are really horrible, but which are obviously professionally done. Publishers stick authors with them all the time. Most of my favorite books had pretty lousy book covers. But they were all done by pros.

I've also seen homemade covers that look absolutely professional (not necessarly "good" but at least not amateurish).

What marks the difference? That's really hard to quantify, but it boils down to the ability to create a cohesive image. In one second of looking at a cover you should be able recognize the book title, the author's name, and get a visual clue as to what type of book it is (either the book's mood or its genre or both). In that one glance nothing should slap you in the face as being out of place or strikingly different from any of the other book cover elements.

Lingering over the cover for a few more seconds you should not be distracted by the fonts or image used. The eye should be drawn into the cover organically: title, author, image. In that order. And after you've absorbed all that, you should feel that this image represents something beyond its individual components.

Amateurish covers don't give that impression. The images seem arbitrary, the fonts seem slapped on, the elements of the image don't gel into a whole experience but rather feel applied on top each other.

[[deleted user]]

Micah wrote: "The eye should be drawn into the cover organically: title, author, image. In that order..."

Unless you're Stephen King. In which case: author, image, and...uh...title, if it matters to King fans.

[Micah]

Ken wrote: "...Unless you're Stephen King..."

I kinda figured Stephen wasn't going to be coming here looking for that kind of advice. ];P

[[deleted user]]

Micah wrote: "Ken wrote: "...Unless you're Stephen King..."

I kinda figured Stephen wasn't going to be coming here looking for that kind of advice. ];P"

Could be he's looking for advice on how to double his humongous sales. So, you just never know...

[Melissa]

Covers catch my attention, yeah, but they're never the deciding factor as to whether or not I'll read the book. Covers are meant to draw us in, after all. Not just catch our attention but also, as was said in another comment, give us a tiny flash of insight into the book. For example, I'm not a romance fan, so if I see a cover with two half-naked people being all sensual, I'm going to skip it. I am a fantasy reader, so if I see a cover with dragons, wizards, people in armor, I'm going to check it out. All the more so if it has dragons since I love dragons.

But at the end of the day, the blurb and a few sample pages are what decide it for me. The cover just... turns my head in the book's general direction, I guess you can say.

[Pam]

The cover is the initial thing that draws my attention. After that, the blurb and sample pages have to be good too. But an 'amateurish'/messy cover tends to put me off as it indicates that the text probably hasn't had the attention and work it requires.

[J.M.]

A good cover that captures some of the elements of the story is something that I will admit draw me in as a potential reader. From there it comes down to the blurb and thee first couple of pages to determine if I will buy. As an indie author I decided to invest in a good cover that was custom tailored to my book and I think it helps the book stand out in the self-publishing marketplace.

[Elizabeth]

I managed to get my professionally designed cover into the last 30 of the SPFBO 2016 cover competition (chosen by the Elitist book review bloggers)

It hasn't resulted in noticeably increased sales, but that's probably because the book isn't in the grimdark subgenre of fantasy - and I've judged it as being suitable for readers from 11 years upwards.

Nevertheless, it encourages me to continue with the same designer for the next book in the series.

[Eugene]

Covers not only draw in readers, but also define the book. I read Jumper by Steve Gould:
I'm embarrassed to say I had a real hard time taking the book seriously. Visual images are powerful, and this cover screamed "kiddie book" at me. It reminded me of those old "boys stories" printed on cheap semi-gloss newsprint, overly-produced stories for boys with bad hairdos who say, "Whoa, Gee, look at that!" It was just absolutely the wrong mood.

Compare that with, say, The Book of Atrix Wolfe by Patricia McKillip
, and you get an immediate mood of a visually deep, soft-focus fantasy, which is what the book is.

[Mat]

I usually read a book because someone has recommended it to me, so the cover is usually irrelevant - it's already got the stamp of approval from a friend, good cover or bad, so I'm going to give it a go. But when searching among the sea of unknown books out there, the cover is absolutely relevant - something needs to catch my eye in order to make me delve further. Same with browsing through a CD shop (yes, I still buy CDs - I may be the only one), it won't matter how good the music is if the cover doesn't poke me in the eye.

I don't think you HAAAAVE to have a professional designer if you can do it yourself. I made my cover myself - all I wanted was for it to kinda stand out, and kinda represent the themes of the book. The book is about vatmeat (meat grown in vats as opposed to carved off animal corpses) and love (specifically infidelity and obsession), so I came up with this:



I can't think of what a "professional designer" could've made that would've been more suitable (for my own personal tastes). Not saying that to toot my own horn, but to say professional designers aren't necessarily a requirement. But suitable, striking artwork definitely is!

[Mat]

Ha - I realised that I basically just said "the cover doesn't matter because word of mouth is more important" and then said "the cover matters a lot because no-one will look at it unless the cover stands out". Um. So it matters, and it doesn't. Um. Not very useful. Eep!

[Eugene]

Mat wrote: I can't think of what a "professional designer" could've made that would've been more suitable

If you're interested in impressions:
GOOD: Title is clear. Font is well chosen. I like the color and open space.
PROBLEM: Is this a novel or a book about the food industry? From the subtitle, I would guess the latter. This cover could really use the tag "A novel by..."
OTHER: The bottom portion immediately suggested restaurant tablecloth, with is good, but there's a perspective problem. It looks as if the meat is supposed to be on the table, but the tabletop angle doesn't line up with meat angle. The dripping juices don't change direction as they drip over the edge. So instead it comes off looking as if the meat is floating in front of the table, which undoes the integration of the image. The table and the meat have no relationship to each other.

I'm not a graphic designer, either. So to divorce my amateur analysis from my reader impressions, the thing that bothered me was the dripping grease and the table edge. The rest of the above is my attempt to figure out why. This is the sort of issue we amateurs tend to be prone to, and why we are told to get "real artists" to do our covers.

Is the dripping grease going to turn off readers? Probably very few, if any. Sales driven by word of mouth are probably less affected by minor cover issues. But, if we want to break out of that market, or if we just want our stories to get the presentation they deserve, it's worth it. Anything you add to your story needs to be good, or it detracts from the story.

In case I'm coming across as a superior know-it-all, let me confess that out of 4 self-pubs I've done, I've only "hired" one artist, and that was a high school student working for copies. The other three I just did my best...

[Mat]

Eugene wrote: "It looks as if the meat is supposed to be on the table, but the tabletop angle doesn't line up with meat angle. The dripping juices don't change direction as they drip over the edge. So instead it comes off looking as if the meat is floating in front of the table"

Thanks for the feedback! I don't really see it like you do, but it's nice to know what other people see! To me, it all looks perfectly lined up! And the drips don't "change direction" because we're looking at it head-on - it's the nature of perspective that when you're head on with a right angle, it looks continuous (close one eye and try it, you'll see what I mean - of course, if it was in 3D, it'd look different with both eyes). But thanks for your input, it's very interesting what works for some people and what doesn't.

And good point about the "is it a novel or a food book" stuff! I did consider putting "a novel by" or words to that effect, but it's always been a personal peeve with me that novelists feel they need to put "a novel" on their books when it's only found in the "fiction" section of the bookstore/online/etc, to me it's always indicated a certain egoistic self-aggrandisement: "Oh I say, I've written a Novel! A Novel, you hear me? By me! Huzzah!" (I'm pretty sure that's just my own personal issue though, ha!) So I was reluctant to do that. I'm fairly confident that, as the book is only located under the "Literature and Fiction" section of Amazon, and it's got a detailed blurb describing it as a novel accompanying it, there will be minimal confusion. I might be wrong, of course: there's no telling what people out there might get confused about!

I appreciate your feedback, thanks heaps for your comments and your time.

[Richard]

Hi Mat. For me, it's not a perspective issue, it's a fluid flow issue. On the near-horizontal table, the flow would be broad, perhaps meandering a little. As it went over the edge it would speed up and narrow, with perhaps a thinned or missing segment at the point where it turns the corner. We need those CSI guys for this....

[Eugene]

Mat wrote: "it's always been a personal peeve with me that novelists feel they need to put "a novel" on their books"

Probably most of the time its the publisher who does it, but... The tag does often appear to little purpose. It appears on Ray Bradbury's From the Dust Returned (at least certain editions), in an apparent attempt to force the collection of short stories to become a novel, which of course it doesn't because it isn't.

I've used it once, actually with my current project, because the title I feel compelled to use, Calico Dragovic and Other Freaks of Nature, could be taken to mean it is a collection of short stories. You are right, in your case, about book placement making the point for Beef.

[Richard]

I always include "A Novel" on the title page, but not on the cover. Actually, "A novel, illustrated by the author." I have one semi-fictional work set in the same universe as my novels, and I like to distinguish them from that. I don't think it's worthwhile on the cover though. People mostly see it in postage-stamp size in Amazon, so it wouldn't be legible.