Let’s play a game. Look at this cover.
Upon looking at this cover, can you tell me:
- What genre is the book?
- What is the age category?
- What is the book about?
It’s very difficult to do, isn’t it? That’s because this is a bad cover.
I personally really like this cover. It feels right for the book and, to me, it portrays one of the narrative elements that permeate the story. It’s clean, it’s very strongly branded to match the rest of the series, and it stands out from other books in the same genre and for the same age category.
But this cover does not sell books.
But why is it bad?
Those questions I just asked? A cover should be able to answer all of those immediately.
The cover of a book is essentially packaging. It’s something that is intended to catch the eye of a consumer when they are browsing for their next read and tell them immediately that this is the kind of book they will like.
Look at the books that are similar to yours and follow the same art style and patterns that those popular books are using for your cover. Are books like yours using hand-drawn covers? Shirtless men and calligraphy fonts? Typography with solid colour backgrounds? Take that look and feel and apply it to the cover for your book.
But my cover stands out! It’s unique!
It also doesn’t look like anything readers are expecting. People tend to be much more risk-averse than we give them credit for. If the packaging looks like something they already like, they are more comfortable taking a chance on it.
It should absolutely be branded uniquely to your style so that readers can tell that it is your work, but the cover should look like the other books in the genre and category that are already selling well.
Can it still work?
There are two ways that I’ve seen to make this work:
- Don’t use the cover as part of the marketing strategy and sell the book entirely on the content of the narrative.
- Have a cover that looks so beautiful that people will make the purchase based on the artwork regardless of the content.1
The important thing about the cover is that it is intended to entice an audience to stop and find out more. If your cover isn’t doing that, then you are not likely to get a lot of readers unless they are actively looking for your books in particular.
- This appears to work primarily with printed books [↩]