Book Covers
Instead of watching the Saturday a.m. cartoon, Johnny Test, I'm watching a book cover test. That is, I'm testing the impact of a professionally designed cover against my own graphic fumblings. Behold the power of 3-D in the image to the right. Yes, it's the same new eBook that just debuted in December, but now it has a new cover by graphic artist, Bonnie Boots. She's starting a service for authors. Read all about it at WriteSideOut, or on the website she's designed for this new enterprise, Book Cover Catalog. This (reduced) image is just one of several Bonnie offers to publishers in an attractive package.I polled some other professionals in the tree book business about the influence of covers on the purchasing public. No one had any hard data from research, but everyone brimmed over with anecdotal evidence ranging from my own example in a post to the fact that salesmen visit bookstores and libraries armed with covers. The publishers seemed to agree that a good cover can't help bad writing, and a bad cover doesn't sell good writing. The Internet myth is that eBooks sell better if advertising displays 3-D cover images, rather than the flat, 2-D ones like Amazon uses. [book covers]
7 Comments:
Well, you can see the impact of book covers when you sit and watch people at a bookstore. And there are some data and facts out there somewhere, I just don't have my hands readily reaching it. Covers are important. A good cover can stop a shopper in their tracks and cause them to touch the book. I don't know about 3D.
I may never have purchased a book because of it's cover (even though I have some artists in high enough regard I am tempted to)
However, a good cover may well keep the book in my hand longer and have me read the content a little more intensly.
I think covers have a lot of impact. Some even become trademarks like the shopaholic series. You just from miles away that this another shopaholic book - no?
The cover looks awesome. Let us know if it made an impact :)
Booksellers also think covers are important. I remember when my first travel book came out, every time we went for a signing the booksellers raved about the cover, how great it looked on an endcap, and they often did wonderful displays. They look for good covers to make eye-catching appeal, so a good cover can gain you attention from the staff which can then lead to more handselling.
Congratulations on your book and the new cover.
Thanks for all your comments. For e-books advertised online, the theory is that even a thumbnail of a "3-D" type of image will sell a book more effectively.
A funny book cover experience occurred at this month's book club meeting: we discussed Malcom Gladwell's "Blink". It gave us lots to talk about, and everyone enjoyed this read. Just before we left, I held up the book and asked, "Would any of you have even picked up this book based on it's cover?" A chorus of "No!" erupted. I had to agree. I wanted to read it based on what I'd read about it, but if I saw it in a book store, I wouldn't have touched it.
...the theory is that even a thumbnail of a "3-D" type of image will sell a book more effectively.
But why?
I think perhaps the 3-D image arouses pleasant connotations of hardbound books that the viewer has experienced in real life. When we examine a tree book, we see it in depth as well as feel it. (Personally, I smell 'em, too.) Admittedly it is an inaccurate illusion to portray an eBooks as if it were hard copy, but what are you going to do--it's so hard to draw bits 'n' bytes.
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