Never Judge a Book by the Book Cover, Yeah Right!

At some stage during your life you’ve no doubt been in a situation where you would have liked to have gone back to re-make that all important first impression when meeting someone. As we all know the laws of life don’t permit it, you’re only given one chance to make that first impression, so you need to make it count, right?

This couldn’t be truer when it comes to luring potential new readers to your book, sitting on the shelf accompanied by hundreds or thousands of other books, be it online or at a bricks-n-mortar store.

The last thing you need is to have your book overlooked by potential readers, you want to draw them in and buy. This means apart from the quality of your written story, the book cover design is a key aspect and is where the promotion for your book begins.

The one and only ‘first impression’ is made from seeing your cover design, so it needs to say ‘pick me up now!’

One of the main problems I see in book covers created today is they haven’t considered what the target readership sees as ‘attractive’ according to their taste. Like young adult books with bland olive greens and browns, instead of appealing, selectively dramatic colours. Poorly composed clip art and royalty free imagery on mature fiction novels that scream ‘amateur’.

Avoid such examples and create a book cover template that draws your reader in by shouting…

Look no further; pick me up for a closer look now!

How do you do this?

Well, any respected book cover artist or designer will help you achieve this. As with illustrating, typesetting, writing or even playing guitar, producing a good cover design is an art in itself.

Try to avoid paying $150 bucks for a cliche’ cover that has identifiable royalty-free clip art slapped on the front. They look just that and younger audiences in particular have shorter attention spans and savvy quality radars. You have one chance to grab them.

Save up some extra coin, invest in your first impression, INVEST in your book cover. Have a professional work with you because when it comes to crafting covers I believe you need to have the mindset of this:

Your book cover needs to confidently sit beside your biggest competitors and hold its own!

It’s worth keeping this in mind when you’re looking at creating the cover for your next masterpiece, or looking to release an updated edition of your already published book. Don’t do yourself a disservice by having your thirteen year old nephew design it, because the goal is to have more people buy your book in today’s competitive marketplace.

Position yourself and your book to make an impact and deliver that crucial one and only first impression.

Anthony
Helping authors create music for the eyes