The one thing that matters most about your book cover

You can’t judge a book by it’s cover, right?

Wrong.

Potential readers of your book will judge your book by it’s cover. But, perhaps surprisingly, they’re not judging what you think they are.

What’s in it for me?

Let’s face it, we’re all a little self-absorbed at times. We all want to know ‘what’s in it for me’. Perhaps especially when we’re online searching for our next great read.

And if you’re an independent author, let’s face another truth, most of your sales are going to happen online. That’s where readers are most likely to find your book(s). Amazon and the other retailers work as a search engine as much as they work as a store. We fail to remember this, or ignore this fact, at our peril.

All of our lives are full to overflowing with stimulation. We are all constantly bombarded with ads and images and buzzing devices wanting our attention. I make a concerted effort to leave my phone alone. It is often across the room from where I am and I never have it near me when I’m writing, reading or watching TV or a movie.

Even so, I often climb into bed at night feeling like I’ve been drinking from several firehoses worth of information flow all day.

Your potential reader feels the same

We all experience some version of stimulation overwhelm. And when a potential reader of your book is scrolling through an online retailer they bring that stimulation saturation feeling with them.

Given this current state of our readers’ nervous systems, you’ve got about 1 second to ensure your potential reader that your book is the type of book they’re looking for.

Most independent authors like yourself write genre fiction, meaning your work falls into a specific genre. For example, cozy mystery or science fiction or romance.

When your reader is scrolling for their next great read, they need to immediately know that your book belongs to the genre they’re searching in. If they don’t get that message within a nanosecond they will keep scrolling.

This means that when you’re having your book cover designed you need to know 2 very important things:

1. The genre your book falls into
2. What the covers of that genre look like

The most important thing about your book’s cover is this:

It needs to look like the other covers in your genre.

Here’s an illustration about why this matters:

Both these books are part of the mystery genre. But you can see they give very different vibes.

If I’m a cozy mystery reader, I’m not going to be even slightly interested in the book on the right.

Conversely, if I like serial killer mysteries, the book on the left will be totally unappealing to me.

Your book cover is the first sales pitch for your book

We all like to imagine that our potential readers will have oodles of time and patience when it comes to choosing books and that they will carefully read the book’s description and then maybe read the reviews to see if the book would be a good fit for them.

They may do that. But only if your cover screams that it is the kind of book they are looking for. If it doesn’t they won’t even spend 2 seconds considering it. They’ll just keep scrolling, because after all, there area a bazillion other books out there that could be the one that will scratch their itch.

Before you talk to a cover designer….

Do your research. Find out what the books in your genre look like. This does not mean you need to copy their designs, it means you need to figure out the cover tropes in your genre.

• Does your genre/sub-genre typically use illustrations or photographs?
• What are the fonts like?
• What are the colours like? i.e., deep and dark or bright and colourful
• Are there people on the covers or do they focus on landscapes or buildings?

Attractiveness is less important than pin-point accuracy

Your book cover can’t just be pretty well-executed. It needs to send a very strong message to the reader. “This is what you’re looking for.”

It needs to fulfill one simple purpose: to get the reader to stop scrolling.