How to Give Your Book Cover a Better First Impression

Have you ever met someone for the first time who was so unimpressive that you walked away thinking, Wow, that was their best foot forward? I have. You’d think people would care about first impressions, especially when it counts. Well, I have news for you; your book cover is your first impression, and it really, really counts. Your book cover is a reader’s first impression of your work and will represent the quality of the interior, whether you like it or not. Unfortunately, most readers will choose to read your book based on how attractive or striking your cover looks.

Is that superficial? I don’t think so.

It’s my opinion that if an author spends little time or energy on their cover, they have likely spent too little time in other areas of the book as well, including plotting and editing. Is that always the case? No, it is not. I have seen several books come through The Kindle Book Review that have drab book covers or scream “Self-pubbed.” But then after investigating, I’ve discovered that the authors have received many great reviews. Unfortunately, the vast majority of books with poorly designed covers are not selling well. I can think of one in particular that not only has a poor book cover but is also priced at $4.99. This book has over forty excellent reviews, but guess how many books the author is selling? Not many. At the time of this writing, the book is ranked in the three-hundred-thousand range in the Kindle Store.

What a shame. I really think the author could sell more books if the cover and price were fixed.

I really hope your book is doing better than that. Your book cover will help sales or prevent them. Make it great, or pay someone to do it for you. Otherwise, you’re telling readers that your story is just as lousy as your cover, even if that isn’t the case.

Sometimes I’ll suggest to an author that they might have better luck selling their book if they invested in a professional cover. Unfortunately, the replies have been they would if they had the money or the cover has an emotional attachment or special meaning. Whatever. I published my books to sell them, not to watch them collect dust.

Here are a few suggestions that can help you improve your book cover(s) and improve your first impression:

• Keep it simple. Do not overdo it. Look at the best-selling indie book Hunter by Robert Bidinotto. This design is so simple it’s mind-boggling. There are three colors: a black-and-white image and gold font. Robert’s cover is simple and clean. Other examples of effective book covers are The List by J. A. Konrath, Run by Blake Crouch, and The Walk by Lee Goldberg. All three of these covers are simple and title-focused. There are no long subtitles, and the titles themselves are kept at a minimum of one or two words. Keep it simple, like the pros.

• Use complementary colors. The best color matches are those that are on opposite sides of the color wheel. Equally strong colors, like dark red and dark blue, tend to create a vibrating sensation with your eyes, making it difficult or unpleasant to look at. Stick with contrasting colors like white on black, white on red, yellow on blue, etc. Unless you’re a pro designer, I DO NOT recommend using the same colors in your font as in the background. Believe it or not, I’ve seen green fonts on top of trees in the cover art. Talk about amateur. Listen, if you’re not creative with covers, do whatever it takes to get a GREAT cover. Trade your editing skills or web-design skills with a cover artist or writer. Good covers sell.

• Use larger or bolder fonts that will show up in a tiny thumbnail. Not all covers need to have the look of a thriller, but you have to design your book cover according to how it’s going to look on other book pages. Unless you’re drawing readers to your book page via a direct link through your marketing efforts, you will probably sell more books by grabbing a reader’s attention from another book page. How? Do you remember the “Customers who bought this book, also bought …” section? Those books are only ¾” x ½” on my computer screen. That’s a small cover! This is why the thumbnail is a true litmus test for your cover. Shrink it down to about one inch and decide if you still like what you see. The covers I mentioned earlier all look great as thumbnails.

• Tell the truth. If your book is a drama, do not mislead your readers by creating a cover that makes it appear to be an on-the-edge-of-your-seat thriller.

• Brand yourself. Do not make the title or your name small. The time for humility is past. You are a published author. You need to put your name out there and make it big. Hiding your identity by writing your name in a small font and placing it in an obscure corner will not garnish the attention you need as an author. No room for modesty here. You are not selling the title of your book; you are selling yourself. Be proud of what you’ve done.

• Create a layout and design that fits your genre and try to be consistent with the titles you publish in the future.

Here are a few of my latest cover designs ~>

The point of cover design is to draw a reader to the pages inside. It’s not about personal attachment. It’s not even about whether you like your cover or not. Cover art is about selling books.

A good ebook design is about convincing a reader to take the next step: clicking on your cover, which will lead them to your book page. If a reader clicks on your cover, they’ll give you a few more seconds to pitch your story. You won’t have much time to convince them to buy it, but at least your book cover got them there.

This post is an excerpt from my book, THE INDIE AUTHOR'S GUIDE TO THE UNIVERSE. If you want more information on how you can sell more books, GET THIS BOOK!

Jeff Bennington is the best-selling author of Reunion, Twisted Vengeance, and The Indie Author's Guide to the Universe. 

 

Layer Your Book Marketing Efforts for Better Results

Welcome back to The Writing Bomb. I'm posting another excerpt from The Indie Author's Guide to the Universe, and I hope you find my marketing strategy helpful. The following information helped propel me to the Amazon Top 100 in December 2011. I hope it works for you as well. 

My Favorite Marketing Strategy

One of my favorite strategies in my marketing plan is layering. Layering is the process of adding promotions in sequence. In other words, before you pay money to Kindle Nation Daily, schedule a giveaway, immediately followed by a two or three day blog hop, followed by a killer blog post at your blog, followed by a two day KDP Select giveaway. Then, wrap up your marketing blitz with a paid promotion from Digit Book Today, The Kindle Book Review, or Kindle Nation Daily, after you’ve invested some time in a series of free promotions.

Be sure to keep all of these events well publicized through Twitter and Facebook.

As I mentioned earlier, marketing isn’t about a single promotion and it isn’t always about money. Good promotion is about getting your book cover as much face time as possible. Stacking your promotions will help elevate your book into the public eye. 

When I think of layering, I imagine a video game character, like Mario, jumping on a gear that propels him upward, only to land on another gear that shoots him to another gear, and so on. The idea is that each gear lifts him higher with each spin of the cogs, getting him closer to that giant mushroom in the sky. You may or may not want a bucket of golden mushrooms, but you do want to get closer to readers and that's what layering has the potential of accomplishing.

The reason I like this strategy is because it works, and because it can make your paid promotions more effective. Layering your promotions is better than spending money on an ad, hoping that a single marketing tool will bring an onslaught of sales. Sites like Kindle Nation Daily have a pretty good track record, but just think how much more effective that ad could be if you raised your Amazon ranking from 80,000 to 25,000 the day before your ad went live. An ad with KND will do a better job if you work hard at getting your sales up before the ad starts. 

It’s not just important to sell more books. It’s important that you get your book on category bestseller lists where there are more eyes watching. These lists will lead you to the readers looking for your genre and your price point. 

Do whatever it takes to get there, because once you're there, the attention can hold you up for an extended period of time, even after the ad has expired. If you don't hit a category list, you'll drop out of sight much faster.

Don’t depend on others to work their marketing magic with your book. You have to do your part. And the more you can do prior to a paid promotion, the greater chance you’ll have of selling!

In the weeks prior to hitting the Amazon top 100, I paid for a featured ad with The 99 Cent Networks Twelve Day's of Christmas promo that ran from December 12th to December 24th. During the course of that promotion, I wrote a couple killer blog posts here at The Writing Bomb. I also placed Reunion on The Kindle Book Review’s marquee banner during the month of December. Finally, I scheduled my first two free book promotion days with Amazon’s KDP Select. The result, thanks to Lady Luck, was the #55 spot in Amazon’s paid best-seller list. I spent $50 for each of my books to be entered in the IBC promo, but the rest was free. I used every aspect of my platform, layering each step with tweets and Facebook notifications. It cost me a few bucks, and a few hours of my time, but the pay off far exceeded the expense.

Are you sequencing your marketing? Or are you trudging through individual promotions, separated by large blocks of time? The next time you schedule a paid promotion, try layering a sequence of free promotions and see what happens. Your book is hungry for mushrooms. It's time you shoot it into the sky where it belongs.

~ Jeff Bennington is the Amazon bestselling author of Reunion, Twisted Vengeance and Creepy