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. 

 

Is There Such a Thing as a Best Day to Promote Your Ebooks

I've been fortunate to meet some really cool people in the ebook industry in the last year or so. Many have been extremely generous, helpful, motivating, and all around kind. One of those folks is Anthony Wessel from digitalbooktoday.com 

Anthony spent several years working in the book industry, overseeing multiple book stores. Part of his job was to study sales trends. He's been an invaluable resource and friend. Today I'm going to serve up some information he shared with me in a phone conversation, and in a comment on my previous post. 

A question we often hear is, "When is the best time to promote?" The easy answer is ALWAYS. The sarcastic answer is, "When you feel like it." But in Anthony's experience, there are basic sales trends that can indicate peak selling days and seasons. The most obvious time to expect a greater return on your marketing efforts is Christmas. But is that the only holiday to consider? No way. There is a year full of opportunity for indie authors.

Look at your Calender. Watch for every holiday. Have you noticed how every few weeks your local grocery and retail stores switch from one holiday to the next? Well, as marketers, authors should take these peak "promotional days" into consideration. It's worked for retail, so it should work for book sales, right? The way Anthony puts it is, there is always a promotion gong on. And isn't the the concept behind KDP Select; offering a "free" promotion, or "price leader" on a regular basis.

So how do you target your promotions? In my opinion, you have a window of oportunity that varies with each holiday.

Personally, I think there's a lag time for ebook sales; "lag" being the day(s) following a holiday. This lag, I believe is the time period between the actual holiday and the days and week that follow when new Kindle owners begin playing with their gadgets and actually start buying books. I saw this after my first KDP free day on Dec 24th. My sales increased on Christmas Day and continued to rise for the next few days, not slowing down after the first of the year.

For a rundown of the holidays that remain in 2012, look at the list below. Mark your calender and plan your promotions accordingly. You should also consider how your book is unique to the holiday. For example, if you write books that take place in Mexico, you might throw some extra promotion the first week of May in celebration of Cinco de Mayo. Olay!

April:

April 15 ~ Tax Day

April 22 ~ Earth Day

May:

May 5    ~ Cinco de Mayo

May 13  ~ Mother's Day

May 28  ~ Memorial Day

June:

June 14 ~ Flag Day

June 17 ~ Father's Day

July:

Independence Day

August:

Back to School Deals

September:

Sept. 3   ~ Labor Day

Sept. 11 ~ Patriot Day

October:

Oct. 8   ~ Columbus Day

Oct. 31 ~ Halloween

November:

Nov. 6   ~ Election Day

Nov. 11 ~ Veteran's Day

Nov. 22 ~ Thanksgiving

December:

Dec. 24 ~ Christmas Eve

Dec 25  ~ Christmas

Dec. 31 ~ New Year's Eve

Jan. 1    ~ New Year's Day

Obviously there are other holidays between January and April. Planning ahead for these events takes some serious forethought because many promotional sites like The Kindle Book Review, KindleNationDaily.com, digitalbooktoday.com, WorldLiteraryCafe.com fill up a month in advance so you can't promote effectively if you wait until the last minute.

Hopefully, looking at the big picture might help you navigate your marketing plan. What's that? You do have a plan right? Anyway, Happy promoting. And welcome to the new world of today's author, where we do it all, writing, selling, accounting, analyzing, and marketing.

Speaking of promotion, if you'd like to enter your book in The Kindle Book Review's Best Indie Books of 2012 Contest, go here ~> CONTEST. We are awarding cash, promotion packages, and giving away a Kindle Fire loaded with tons of the best Indie Books! Everyone wins; authors and readers.

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

When Do Writers NEED Readers?

Question: When do writers need readers?

Are you laughing yet? I don't mean laughing like I said something funny, but laughing as in what kind of idiot would ask such a stupid question? The answer is obvious… ALWAYS.

Okay, so that was a silly question. But what I really want to know is, if the answer is so simple, why is it so hard for writers to find what they need the most? Why is it so complicated to get the masses to read our work? The answer to that question is simple; usually because no one knows who we are. If you don't believe me you should read the chapter "Why No One is Buying Your Book" in The Indie Author's Guide to the Universe. I hear the author knows his sh**.

Anyway, I've come up with a great way for all of you self-pubbed…. eh hem… I mean Indie Authors (with caps) to get noticed. And so far it's working. My new method is bringing in one new reader for every new author. That doesn't sound like much, but in the context of my method it is absolutely brilliant.

I love that word ~> Brilliant. Brilliant sounds so distinguished; especially when it rolls off the tongue of one of my UK pals. Anyway, I digress. Squirrel!

So what's the new method? What's the new marketing wiz kid come up with this time? Well, I'd tell you but I'd have to kill your neighbor. Why your neighbor? Because you'd be a suspect, and not me. And then you'd go to prison, because I'd fix it so all the evidence would point to you because I didn't really want to kill your neighbor in the first place. I just want to keep my marketing secrets private, not go to jail. Geesh.

Actually, I'm not like that. Actually, I'd only write about killing your neighbor, but I'd still tell you everything. LOL!

Okay, all jokes aside, I want you to know what I've come up with and why it's working. So now that I have your attention, I'm going to be serious for as long as I can stand.

The Marketing Blitz that I've constructed isn't new, but I'm using it in a new way. The tool is the writing contest I've initiated at The Kindle Book Review…. The Best Indie Books of 2012.

Here are a few ways this contest is going to help you sell your books:

• I've made it easy to be recognized. The contest is designed to weed out any books that miss the mark ~ poor editing, poor writing and story telling, etc. But it is also designed to recognize all of the books that make it through our initial screeners. Those who clear the screeners are entered as a "Semi-Finalist". So you can see how this can benefit you; your book gets screened, given a quality stamp, and you do not have to win. You can use the "Kindle Book Review's Best Books of 2012 Semi-finalist" title on your book page, giving you instant credibility. And in truth, if you make it past the screeners, you have accomplished a level of professionalism that your audience is looking for because our reviewers are avid readers and quite discerning.

•  We are Giving away Books. Freebies always grab reader's attention. Currently, we've received as many "reader submissions" to win the kindle and join our mailing list as we have author submissions. This is an excellent trend! This tells me that these folks are interested in indie books and viewing the books advertised on our site. Some have commented already that they are eager to find new authors. And that's what we all want. Isn't it?

• Most writing contests are strictly aimed at authors. This contest is aimed at both writers and readers. So not only can you follow the contest to see who advances, but so can readers. If you don't think our new mailing list followers aren't interested in who the best indie authors are, you are sadly mistaken. Kindle and Nook readers love buying books that are well written, and at indie authors prices (99¢-$4.99). And why shouldn't they when they can get equal pleasure from a quality indie author who sells for less.

• If you win, or at least make it to the finals, you will have some serious leverage working in your favor. Think of the glory. Think of the tweets! I can see it now... "Your Book Title ~ Winner of The Best Indie Books of 2012 - Your Genre!" Can you see the crowds swarming to your Amazon page? Okay. Slap, slap, slap. Wake up! It doesn't work like that, stupid. However, accolades and awards do help sell books.

So if I haven't convinced you yet, listen to this. We have made it easy to submit. We have made the process very simple. You'll need a Kindle formatted book. But if you don't have one, we've even provided a link to a site that can format your .doc file for free. We really tried to make this as simple and painless as possible. Never mind the fact that you could win a hundred bucks AND free advertising! We're also giving away a Kindle Fire, loaded with some of the best indie books out there. 

I truly hope you take advantage of this cross-promotional opportunity.

One more thing. PLEASE OH PLEASE, help us promote this contest with tweets, blog posts, facebook "likes" and shares. This contest is as "grassroots" as it can be and it will, in the end, help promote all indie and small press authors. So on behalf of all your fellow brothers and sisters in the indie author movement, and those registered in the contest, we thank you.

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

eBook Marketing Gem Recovered in Email

Hey Writers and Publishers, Do I have a special treat for you today. Cutting straight to the chase, here's a copy of an email I recently sent to one of my clients seeking advice in making his next step towards marketing his book. I'm cutting and pasting, so excuse the raw nature of this post… oh, and grab paper and pencil, you may want to take some notes. I'm addressing this to "Author X" for confidentiality purposes.

Before I begin, please commit to sharing this after you've read it. It has some good stuff. Here ya go...

Hi Author X,

Here's the deal: Everything I tell you is subject to change. The book promotion business is changing rapidly and I'm very serious about that. KDP Select has been working wonders for newer and seasoned authors, but its effectiveness and results are changing with each new author who joins.

With that said, I'll give you the best advice I can give.

1) GENERAL INFO: To begin with, the best marketing is usually free and KDP Select is the prime choice at the moment. As we previously discussed, I'd recommend scheduling a "Free" promo with them asap. Fridays have been my best day for one day promotions. You will find that you'll give thousands of copies of your book away, but doing so will come back in additional reviews and exposure. After the free day, your sales will pick up, potentially matching your ranking in the free store, but not guaranteed. 

2) LATEST TRENDS: I am currently giving my books away in three day increments, rotating each book in the 3 day cycle, but you might want to do a 2 day promtion after your initial one day promo. My one day promotions have not been as effective, but I'm in experimental mode to see if giving away a different book every 3 days increases overall traffic with a consistent stream of book buyers instead of the "Big Bang" that often comes with the KDP Select "after shock". 

3) SCHEDULING: I'd suggest laying out a calender and plotting your coming free days. You have 90 days and 5 free days goes quickly with one title. And as my dad would say, don't blow your wad all at once. Spread out these precious promotional days. With one title in the select program, you will burn through them and quickly become addicted to the treasures they bring… especially with a cover like yours, which is sure to stir up interest. With this in mind, if your one day promo does well, you might consider using your other 4 days individually; if not, stiick with two promotions.

4) TWEETING: Once you have plotted your promotional days, begin the layering process. One of your promos will revolve around your KND Sponsorship, but you can't pay for that kind of promotion every day. Not worth it. So here are a few additional ideas to fill the gaps…

 ~ Join The worldliterarycafe.com "Tweet Teams". You will have to register for this site, but the tweet teams is very much worth it. When you enter the site, you'll find several boxes on the right side. Look for the one that says "Tweet Teams". Click on the box and follow the tweeting instructions to a "T". The tweeting format they suggest is very effective. Only thing is, you have to reciprocate the RT's. 

*** Suggestion: I pay my 16-year old son $20 a week to do this for me every day. He saves me a lot of time. All I do is post my tweets and he RT's all the other tweets for me. I also pay my 14-year old son to "Share" all of my Triberr posts. Again saves me a lot of time. If you have someone who can do that for you, I'd use them. If not, I'm sure my son would do it. 

***When it comes to promoting your books prior to the "free" day(s), I suggest contacting Anthony Wessel at digitalbooktoday.com Tell him I sent you. He will add your book to his squidoo page that features a top 100 free ebooks. He does this every day and gets a ton of traffic. 

***Another trick I use is tweeting several folks who feature free books. I do this the day before or day of my free day. Here are the twitter handles for those folks: @DigitalBkToday @kindleebooks @Kindlestuff @KindleEbooksUK @KindleBookKing @KindleFreeBook @free_kindle @FreeReadFeed @4FreeKindleBook @FreeKindleStuff @KindleUpdates

Here's the link to that post: http://digitalbooktoday.com/maximize-your-kdp-select-free-days/ 

I highly suggest you read this post. It is full of GREAT information.

5) NEWS FLASH: Tell everyone in your circle when you have a free day. Give your book away like crazy on those days ONLY. When you give, give big. Any other day, you should get paid. So before you start your free day this Friday, you should tell your Facebook friends, write a blog post, schedule tweets etc. And yes, you should do this every time you run a free promotion. Do this knowing that the more successful your free days are, the more successful your follow up days will be.

6) DEFINITION OF SUCCESS: A successful free day is 5-10,000 downloads. A successful 2 day freebie is 10-15,000 downloads (FREE). A successful post free day is the top 500 ranking or better. Hitting the top 100 is huge. That will mean anywhere from 500-1500+ sales per day.

7) TWEETADDER: If you are not using TweetAdder.com I STRONGLY suggest you do. Tweetadder will grow your twitter following like nobody's business. I paid $74 for this (one time) and I have grown my twitter followers by 50% in the last 2 weeks… and they are all targeted followers. Go to this site and watch one of their videos on what tweetadder can do. It is amazing. I am having conversations with NEW READERS almost every day thanks to this KILLER program. You can basically run your twitter account on auto pilot, except for your personal interaction. This tools definitely drives sales. You can actually pull followers from other authors in your genre.

8) HOOTSUITE: This is my homebase for ALL of my social media. This is a must have tool. Hootsuite.com cost $5 a month (first is free to try) and this is where I schedule ALL my tweets. One tweet can go to all my twitter accounts and facebook accounts, simultaneously. Hootsuite and tweetadder make a perfect international marketing tool that I can no longer live without. I count tweetadder and hootsuite as free promotion because tweetadder is a one time fee, but sooo worth it, and hootsuite is only $5 a month, big deal.

9) CROSS PROMOTION: Start promoting other authors in your genre. You'll be amazed at how many return the favor. Doing so will drive their readers to your books. This is especially easy to do, on auto pilot with tweetadder.

10) PAID PROMOTION: When you schedule your free days for the next 90 days. Build a few paid promotions around that. Here's what I suggest for April (assuming you have one paid promotion that month). 

~ Pay $50 for your a featured month ad spot with the 99-cent-network.com. They host 99¢-$3.99 books. Pay $15 for a 99-cent-network news spot. This will make your book a featured book in their weekly (Fri) newsletter. This will be your "background" or static ad.

~Spend $25 at kindlenationdaily.com for a "FREE" day promotion.

~ Schedule a Social Media Buzz with digitalbooktoday.com, worldliterarycafe.com, and thekindlebookreview.blogspot.com. Plan ahead. All three of these sites fill up these spots very quickly. They cost $35 for worldliterarycafe and $40 for digitalboktoday and  thekindlebookreview.blogspot.com. However, running all three spots on the day AFTER your free day is proving very effective because all three of us use Triberr as one of our tweeting tools. These 3 promos, when scheduled close together, make for a huge social media shout; much better than a static ad. Please re-read the chapter in The Indie Author's Guide to the Universe "The Ultimate Promotion".

11) MONTH OF APRIL: So here's what April could potentially look like for you… You schedule one or two "free" days on the 26th and or 27th. You have a KND Sponsorship scheduled for April 28th. You also schedule a "Social Media Buzz" on or around the 28th. This will strengthen your sales on the "day after free" and increase your shot into the TOP 100 paid. That is the goal. That is the only reason to promote heavily like this. It may or may not work. The more quality reviews you have by then, the better off you'll be. Reviews are huge. We'll talk more about that later. But what about the rest of the month you ask? The rest of the month is pure preparation for your "big show" on the 28th. This is where the actual work comes into play.

~ You must start soliciting reviews through March and April. Tweet free giveaways to readers who read in your genre, and hand your book to kindle readers until you get 10 reviews. That is the requirement at both kindlebookreview and digitalbooktoday. You must have several good reviews for your KDP promo to blast off. Watch the top freebies. Most have great reviews with either lots of good reviews or a few great reviews. The indies who make it to the top 100 paid (See Cheryl Kaye Tardif) have masses of great reviews that they've accumulated over several months. You have very few. 

~ Start running tweetadder and hootsuite immediately. Build your twitter audience so you have more people who will respond to your forthcoming promotions. Use this time to really bulk up your platform and social media. 

~ Start retweeting the above mentioned twitter sites that promote freebies. Let them get to know you and appreciate your Retweets and mentions. I know that just sounds silly, but it is a game that works. Schedule daily retweets of some of the bigger indie authors in your genre. Don't know who they are? Go to Amazon's top 100 categories. Look up their amazon author pages, follow them on twitter and start promoting their books. You'll be amazed how willing they are to return the favor when you need them to tweet for you (April 26-28). Generosity really is a means to sales, believe it or not.

~ Schedule a Contest on your blog. Giveaway a digital copy of ALL your books to one lucky commenter. It doesn't matter what you write about, just get readers talking about your book(s). Build excitement. I'm doing this with my "every third day giveaway". I'm getting more feedback, more twitter mentions and more activity on my facebook wall. Also, blog more if needed.

~ Don't forget, through this you will post tweets every day at worldliterarycafe tweet teams. 

*** If you do all of this, April will be a very busy month for you and you will have started generating buzz that may have a significant impact on your April 28 promotion. Do what you can in March, and consider scheduling another free day in early April (Fri). 

If this is not what you expected, I wouldn't be surprised. Authors like Scott Nicholson and myself are using almost 100% free promotions. This obviously works better when you have a whole list of books that you can rotate in and out of the free store. But this will happen for you in time as you transfer your other titles into the KDP Select stream, so to speak. 

I know you will have questions. Biggest thing is to start twetadder and hootsuite. I'm serious about that. If you miss this, your social media will suffer and this will all be more difficult and a steeper climb. Keep in mind, this will become your second job, potentially filling every free minute you have.

If you want to learn more, get a copy of The Indie Author's Guide to the Universe in Kindle and/or Print.

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

A New Way to Sell eBooks.

There's a new way to sell ebooks and it's very strange.

I've talked about giving your book away to get reviews in The Indie Author's Guide to the Universe. I've talked about the KDP Select program and how "freebies"are a great way to promote your book. But I think I'm going to pull all those ideas together and declare that giving your book away is now the new way to sell your book.

See? Strange. I told you.

If you're an avid reader and you've taken advantage of the many free books on Amazon, you've seen the "what". The books you get for free are "what" is happening in the book market. But if you're giving your book away, you're seeing the "why". The "why" is the reason you're giving your book away. The why is a free marketing plan, developed by Amazon, that has leveled the playing field, giving virtually unknown authors like myself a platform, a free commercial, a billboard if you will, in front of Amazon's world-wide audience.

REMINDER: You may have noticed in my previous post that I lowered the prices on all my books to 99¢ through today. This is part of my marketing plan as noted in my "Floatation Pricing Strategy" discussed in The Indie Author's Guide to the Universe. I won't divulge the details now for obvious reasons, but I will tell you my marketing plan.

I'm going to "sell my books for free" for the next 90 days. 

Huh? Yep, you heard right.

If you follow The Writing Bomb, you'll want to share my updates with your reader peeps because I'm going to be giving away one of my titles on Amazon every third day or so. These books are absolutely free and you do not need a kindle to read them because Amazon has free kindle aps for phones, computers, and practically any hand-held device.

Back to the experiment ~> I'll let you know on occasion which titles I'm giving away, but the best thing to do is follow my blog by email so you don't miss any "freebie" notifications and updates.

I'm also going to document some of the results of my "selling for free" experiment along the way, too. So if you are interested in my giveaway plan, you will not want to miss what's coming.


Today, I'm giving away my best work yet… TWISTED VENGEANCE. It's free today only (March 9th). Twisted Vengeance is a supernatural suspense about Detective Rick Burns' tortured past, his encounter with a powerful supernatural entity, his loose grip on the love of his life, and a creepy boy that holds the key to unlocking his past (yeah, it's all that). I have 17 reviews and a 4.5-star rating. It's free and I'd love if you could tell your peeps about it.

So far this month, I've sold 362 of my assorted titles and rented 58 books. These numbers do not include my sales in the UK and Italy (Yes, I've sold 4 in Italy). Of these sales, I've only sold 18 copies of Twisted Vengeance because it is my latest title and still gaining traction. These sales are ALL organic, meaning that they were not sold because of a "Free Promotion".

So will you get a copy of Twisted Vengeance? Like it? Share it? Read it and review it? Let's make a deal, you read for free and I'll keep on writing.

Thanks for joining me on the ride. Watch for my next post where I discuss the "author's new drug".

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