7:01 You Can Sell a Book by Its Cover

It's an old maxim that you can't judge a book by its cover, but this maxim does not hold true in the real world of commercial bookselling. People do judge a book by its cover—not only readers but also major decision makers. I’ve meet with chain store buyers, wholesale buyers, and even television producers, and I’ve watched them as they pick up a new book to make a decision. Within two to three seconds, they’ve already made their decision. You can see it in their eyes. And all they’ve done is look at the title, look at the cover, and size up the packaging. That’s it.

Julienne Bennett, publisher of Wildcat Canyon Press, once showed me a copy of a book they were about to publish called Girlfriends. She said they hoped to sell 60,000 in the first year. I took a few moments to look at the cover of the book and just hold the book. Then I told her that they would sell 200,000 in the first year. Why? Because the title and cover were just right for their audience, which was women who buy books for their friends. And, as important, the book felt so good in my hands. It was the total packaging that sold the book. Within a year, Girlfriends made it to the bestseller lists with 300,000 copies in print. As of August, 1997, it had been on the bestseller list for seven months, with 700,000 copies in print.

Below are just a few more reasons why you should place major attention on the cover design of your books:

• The cover or jacket is used by your sales representatives and distributors to sell your book to bookstore buyers. Often the cover is the only thing the buyers ever see—the only thing that either makes or breaks the sale. At Falken-Verlag, a German trade publisher, cover designs originate with the marketing and sales department. No book is sent out whose cover has not been approved by the sales representatives.
• The cover is featured in your advertisements, catalogs, and reviews. If it is well-done, it will increase your sales. If it is boring or unconvincing, it will detract from your sales. Bryce Willett, sales manager of Ulysses Press, a travel books publisher, reports that “We’ve seen an increase in sales since we’ve redesigned our covers.”
• In marginal buying situations, the first impression that the book creates is the only impression it creates.
• For bookstores, the cover is important for a number of reasons:
  1) It must fit into the atmosphere the bookstore is trying to create.

• 2) It must fit into and yet stand out from other titles in the same subject.

• 3) It must attract the casual browser.

• The cover is often the only advertising a book buyer sees. It is the ultimate in point-of-purchase ads. It either works, or it does not. According to the Wall Street Journal, the average bookstore browser spends only 8 seconds on the front cover—and then only if the reader is attracted enough to the book to pick it up in the first place. Judith Clinton of Tor Books once observed, “We believe that the cover is a point-of-purchase advertisement of major importance in the marketing of the book.”
• Book covers are also important for advance sales at exhibits or with key wholesale, chain store, and book club buyers. Again, it is often the only part of the book that they see first hand before the book is produced. And many of these buyers must make their purchase commitments months in advance of any book's publication date.

• At the 1983 ABA Convention, Alan Gadney of Festival Publications took many large orders for three computer books based solely on the sample covers he had produced. The sales could not have come from the contents of the books, because Alan hadn't written the books yet!

• While he liked the book’s concept, the B. Dalton buyer originally rejected The Owner's Manual published by Wonder Child Press because it didn't have a full-color cover. After the cover was redesigned by a professional, B. Dalton immediately placed an order for 4,000 copies.

• To many buyers and reviewers, the cover design reflects the attention the publisher has put into the book (and will continue to put into the book by way of continued promotions). Hence, your books will get far more reviewer notice if you focus more on designing an effective cover.
• For some kinds of books, a well-illustrated cover increases the value of the book. For example, in the science fiction and fantasy fields, the cover illustration is often the number one criteria by which book collectors in that genre judge a book. Indeed, the annual Hugo awards granted by the fans has separate categories for both fan artist and professional artist. And the art shows at the various SF conventions are often better attended than the seminars and speeches.
• Design is crucial, of course, with non-books such as diaries, Crown's Anything books, and personalized recipe books like Nancy Edwards's With Love from My Kitchen. In such cases, the design is the book.
• Cover design, when standardized for a series, can help readers to identify other books in the series. Witness the standardized covers for the bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul and Dummies series.

• Vintage Contemporaries, Penquin, and NAL Plume all have uniform cover formats for their series of literary novels. The books in these series tend to be displayed together in the bookstores, often face out. The uniform design of these groupings helps readers to recognize the books as a series. When they buy one and like it, they come back for more.

Book Cover Critique: $100.00, includes 10-minute phone call I've watched key book wholesalers, chain store buyers, and producers of major TV shows pick up a book and make an instant decision on the book WITHOUT opening the book. How important is your book cover? Without a good one, your book won't sell. If you'd like feedback on your cover from an expert, then call John Kremer at 800-796-6130. I'll help you to pass that First-Look Test. All for only $100.00. Each critique includes a 10-minute feedback session via telephone. Email: JohnKremer@bookmarket.com. “That $100.00 was the best investment I've made on this book.” — Sandra Lewis, publisher, My Health Record

 

7:02 Elements of Good Cover Design

The basic rule of cover design is that the cover should match the contents of the book. That means that the style, format, and message of the cover should be compatible with and support the style, format, and message of the book itself. An effective cover design should have at least some of the following elements:

Use a standard format.

The book should look like a book, and especially like other books with similar contents. If you want to attract the attention of buyers of a specific genre, your books must look like other books within the genre. Just as all oatmeal boxes look alike, so must all romance novels that hope to sell to repeat buyers. In the case of romance novels, this means a cover with a feminine typeface combined with an illustration of a man and woman caught in a wild embrace.

Follow trends.

Lately, the covers of romance novels have featured more flesh on the man than the woman—a sign that publishers have finally figured out who the buyers are. For hardcover romances where the publisher is trying to break the writer out to a wider general audience, the covers tend toward fancy type and flowers—a genteel approach that seems to work.

At the same time, the book must look different.

It must be able to stand out in the crowd. That is one reason Zebra Books printed holograms on the covers of its romance novels. It hoped to distinguish its line of novels so the books stood out on the paperback racks and thereby attracted more attention from potential buyers. Similarly, Bantam put an embossed silver foil dustjacket on Leona Blair's novel Privilege so it would stand out from the other hardcovers on the shelves.

Be bold and simple.

The front cover of a book should be bold and simple, more like a billboard (which it is) than a full-page display ad. The cover should be uncluttered, easy to read (with highly readable type), and simple enough that the casual browser can catch the title and name of the author without searching for either.

Put the most important element at the top.

Generally speaking, the title of the book should be featured at the top of the cover. It's the first thing the reader should see. If, however, the author is well-known and more important than the title, then feature the author's name in bold type at the top of the cover.

Feature sales information.

Besides the author and title, feature any other information that could be useful in selling the book. Touchstone, for instance, took advantage of the controversy surrounding the movie, The Last Temptation of Christ, to bring out a new edition of the book by Nikos Kazantzakis featuring the artwork from the film's lobby card.

Choose a correct typeface.

The typography of the front cover should match the style of the book. For example, a simple typeface is more appropriate for a serious book while a fancy script typeface might be more appropriate for a romance novel. Novelty books, on the other hand, might use a casual typeface such as Hobo. Typefaces come in all sorts of styles from simple to complex, feminine to masculine, romantic to businesslike, strong and bold to light and airy. Be sure that your graphic designer selects a typeface that matches the style and subject of the book.

Use illustration where appropriate.

Fiction should have an illustrative element on the cover while nonfiction can do without any graphic elements. Indeed, serious nonfiction books may be better served by a simple bold headline and little else. Again, the design of the cover depends on the style and subject of the book as well as the intended audience.

Get their attention.

To support the line of Topaz romances, all covers feature the Topaz Man, currently a Mr. Universe. Besides attracting female readers to the line, the Topaz Man acts as a spokesman for the entire line, drawing crowds at author events and garnering media attention.

Full-color covers are a requirement.

Full-color covers also encourage impulse sales for almost any book. Many smaller publishers report that switching from one- or two-color covers to full-color covers has had a significant impact on their sales.

Not that all covers need to be full-color.

Javan has successfully self-published a series of poetry gift titles with a simple cover design: just the title and the author's name printed in italics, brown ink on a light brown antique cover. Booksellers reportedly like the cover just as it is.

Odd colors can sometimes work.

For example, Rhodes and Easton’s Deer Camp Dictionary in its fluorescent-orange cover sells well in sporting goods shops, gas stations, and other places where hunters congregate.

Add a fifth or sixth color.

You can’t accurately duplicate saturated colors or very light colors using the four-color process.

Avoid lots of white or black.

Also avoid vast expanses of dark colors. Such colors tend to show fingerprints and other scuffs more vividly. As one bookseller noted, “It’s very hard to sell a book with fingerprints on the cover.”

Maintain continuity in series.

If you are publishing a series, there should be some continuity in the cover design so that bookstore browsers can readily see the connection. For example, Wei-chuan's Cooking uses the same format for all four covers of their line of Chinese cookbooks.

The two complimentary titles from Advocacy Press, Choices and Challenges, both had similar cover designs though one was feminine in style and the other masculine—matching the audience for each book.

Try different sizes of books.

101 Productions was the first publisher to use an 8" x 8" format for trade cookbooks, a format that allows for more flexibility in the layout of pages while enabling the book to lie open more easily without breaking the spine. In the past fifteen years, 101 has sold more than four million copies of their cookbooks.

Since Running Press launched their line of Miniature Editions in 1989, they have sold more than 19 million copies. The trim size of these Editions is 2¾'' x 3¼''. The collection of more than one hundred titles are normally displayed in a 24-pocked spinner rack.

Random House has recently published a line of petite hardcover romance novels known as keepers priced at $10.00 each. Their initial print run for the first books in the series was 200,000 copies.

Highlight awards.

If the book has received any awards or great reviews, feature those on the cover. As Joan Vogel, Vice President of Sales at Chronicle Books, recently noted, awards give the book “a seal of approval and it’s a way to catch the eye of the consumer.”

Add novelties.

Here are a few gimmicks which have been used recently to attract attention to books. For a book on healing stones, Random House attached a real stone to the cover. Abbeville Press used a cover made of artificial grass to market a miniature golf guide. For the novel Red Snow, Dutton added a plastic jacket with fake snow trapped behind the plastic. Or why not add a Post-It sticky note to your cover; such notes have worked well on magazines that wanted to stand out from the crowd at a newsstand.

Go with the season.

If one of your books happens to have a publication date of mid-March, you might want to give it a green cover. More than one bookseller has been known to display a window full of green books for St. Patrick's Day. Customers reportedly love it. When I published Turntable Illusions in the fall of 1992, I designed it with a red and green color, Christmas colors, to fit in with the holiday season.

Coat the cover.

Besides being your major point-of-purchase advertising for the book, the cover must also protect the book. If it is a paperback book, have the cover varnished, film laminated, or coated with a UV plastic. If it is hardcover, use a jacket (which also allows for more promotional copy than a cover by itself).

Choose lay-flat film lamination over UV coating for paperbacks, because UV coating doesn’t protect as well. You might want to experiment with a matte film lamination, such as the one used on Girlfriends.

Do two or more covers for the same title.

For the paperback version of the political novel Primary Colors, Warner Books used three covers, one for each of the three primary colors: red, blue, and yellow.

For the covers of Stephen King’s Desperation and Richard Bachman’s The Regulators, Viking commissioned one work of art that would only be seen as one if the two books were placed side by side—which, of course, was the way Viking hoped bookstores would display the books, thus highlighting the connection between the two books.

For their slightly questionable book, How to Shit in the Woods, Ten Speed Press designed two covers. The first featured a full color illustration of a guy with his jeans around his ankles, a shovel in one hand and a roll of toilet paper in the other. The second cover, a soft yellow background engraved with a pattern of green maple leaves, was discreetly titled How to S--- in the Woods. The book went on to be a year-end bestseller, with the first cover outselling the more discreet second cover by a margin of ten to one.

Test your covers.

Whenever possible, test your covers with consumers and booksellers. Scribner sent two versions of a cover for Faye Smith’s Flight of the Blackbird to 25 African American booksellers. The cover with a portrait of a family beat out a cover with a blackbird in flight.

When Open Horizons published the Fifth Edition of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books, we tested two different cover designs by featuring both on our web site (http://www.bookmarket.com/1001new.html) and asking visitors to vote on which one they liked best. More than 200 people voted 9 to 1 in favor of the cover we were NOT planning to use. Well, we had to change our minds. We're no fools. The cover on the fifth edition has gotten great reviews from everyone who has seen it — thanks to the voters!

 

Authors — Don't insist on your own cover design for your books. Rely on the judgment of your publishers. They are far more likely to be in tune with the trends of the marketplace—and certainly know better what they can sell. This does not mean that you can't give them suggestions; just don't be married to your own ideas.