Why Book Covers Are so Important. – Fenella Miller

Why Book Covers Are so Important.

It could be said that a book cover is no longer as important as it used to be because more than 50% of book sales are electronic and the reader doesn’t actually have a book in their hands. I still buy hardback books to put on my bookshelves and consider them part of the interior design of my room. A bad cover will not only upset the author, it will substantially reduce sales.

Traditionally published writers are lucky if they have much input into their cover design. Publishers have a team of designers and marketers will come up with an idea which is then shown to the author. Even if they didn’t like the cover, I know of cases where this has still been used as the marketers say it will produce more sales.

The saying, “you can’t tell a book by its cover” is somewhat misleading. I’m sure that anyone faced with a row of designs without the lettering could still pick out the genre. A chick-lit book is likely to be a pastel shade with easily recognised cartoon like figures skipping across the cover. A thriller is often dark with a silhouette of some sort; an empty road is often used. A historical cover should have the figures dressed appropriately so the era will be immediately obvious, although this is often not the case.

Faced with a book with a semi naked, muscle-bound man, and a woman with a revealing brightly coloured dress, one would naturally assume it was a “bodice ripper”. (I dislike that term but I think it explains what I mean.) I wouldn’t even consider buying it as this is not the sort of book I like to read. If the content is in fact a tame, non-explicit Regency romance, then the buyer will feel cheated and the author thoroughly annoyed.

Initially the criticism of indie published books was that the covers were amateur. I have first experience of this problem because when I started putting up my long backlist on Amazon I did my own covers. I bought the photographs and then added the lettering – they were not dreadful –but they were quite obviously not professional. I decided to employ a wonderful designer, Jane Dixon-Smith, and had all my book covers redesigned and overnight my sales doubled. These are e-books – and this proves that a professionally designed cover is just as important for nonphysical books as it is for paper books.

To return to that saying, “you can’t tell a book by its cover”, I would say that a book with an amateur and unprofessional cover is often the same inside. Whatever format the book is produced in the cover is the first thing a potential reader sees – therefore having a good cover is essential.