Understanding the Importance of a Good Book Cover

Imagine your first book gets published – you have an ideal reader, an amazing hook, and you have invested loads of time and energy into getting your book designed and edited. Finally, you take the plunge and launch your book!

There are also some sales – but your book somehow fades away. You run ads – but no one wants to click on them. You call different stores, but no one wants to have your book on their shelves. You get the idea – your book isn’t selling.

book cover

Perhaps – at this point – you are wondering if you should have paid more attention to your book cover and even hired the best romance book cover designers to attract potential readers and buyers – you are correct. A good book cover is of the utmost importance when publishing a book that sells.

The thing is that your book cover may not be as good as it needs to be. Bad book covers happen for a lot of reasons – which might include the following seven reasons:

  1. You lacked the financial resources to hire a professional book cover designer, to begin with.
  2. You thought you could save some money by hiring an amateur service to create your book cover.
  3. Perhaps – the book cover looked good enough to your untrained eyes.
  4. You designed the book cover yourself – and to you, it looked perfect.
  5. You asked your friends or family to design the book cover for you.
  6. You put yourself on the cover – despite being a newbie writer and not so well-known.
  7. The cover was all right – but it didn’t blend in with the genre.

A bad book cover isn’t something that you should feel bad about, as you can always take action to fix it. Now, you might wonder how you can be certain that the book cover is the reason that is keeping the book from selling. The truth is that you cannot know it for certain.

Nonetheless, here are some tell-tale signs that your book cover is keeping your sales back:

Good Concept but No Sales

You have a good concept and theme – so your target audience is genuinely interested and excited about reading your book. However, your book isn’t getting the sales that should ideally happen as soon as you launch it.

No Clicks on Ads

Another tell-tale sign that the problem is your book cover and not the book itself is that you might run Amazon ads but not get any clicks. This is a serious indicator that your cover or book title is not appealing to your target audience.

Vague Reviews

You might get told by certain outlets, such as media reviewers, that they like your concept, but they won’t show your book cover.

Professional Analysis

You might have consulted with professionals, and they might have suggested you change the cover or design of the book. It is better to take the advice of a professional before publishing to ensure a good book cover.

The Importance of a Good Book Cover

As a newbie author, you must remember how important your book cover is. After all the hard work that you put into writing a book, you must pay close attention to the book cover.

More often than not, the book cover is the reader’s first impression of your boo – so you want to make it a good one. That said, if the cover isn’t eye-catching – people will scroll right past it. Also, if the cover appears unprofessional – you are guaranteed to lose sales – which is the last thing you want to happen.

If you are self-publishing, make sure to plan the best book cover possible. You have to consider several variables:

  • Who is your genre?
  • Who is your target audience?
  • What message or theme are you trying to convey?

As you are trying to attract a certain kind of reader who would genuinely enjoy reading your entire book, you must do the homework while coming up with the best book cover for your book.

So, be honest with yourself while designing the cover – what is your book really about, and who will it appeal to? You might as well check the cover pages of other books of the same genre to better understand what a successful cover looks like.

The Benefits of Hiring a Professional Cover Designer

Book covers are crucial as these are the visages of the book – and one has to be meticulously mindful while creating a book cover that suits the genre and appeals to the ideal readers. Usually, people have a strong visual memory – the cover is the first look of a book.

This aspect perfectly explains why a good book cover is crucial – it draws in the ideal reader, wakes them up, and gives them an idea about the book. As a newbie author, you might want to hire a professional book cover designer as they are more likely to be honest about the content of your book.

Ideally, the cover should reveal more or less than it should about the book. The professional designer will meet with you a couple of times to discuss the book and exchange ideas. After the initial briefing, the professional cover designer will conduct a research process for the book.

In the case of a translated book, the professional cover designer might discuss their ideas with the translator or editor. After the research, the sketches are made, and one of them is selected by the author or the publishing house – and this pretty much completes the book cover process.

The Takeaway

The thing about a great book cover is that it stands out and also fits its genre. An ideal book cover also appeals to the ideal readers and appears well done. Besides, the cover is the first touch point where the ideal reader cannot resist but pick it up and see what the book is all about.

Rest assured, bad covers happen, and when you know that you have a great concept and write a great book, but it isn’t selling as you were expecting it to – despite all efforts to appeal to the ideal reader, a new book cover could really make all the difference in your results.

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