Your book cover is your first marketing tool

[Please note, this post, like every post at The Self-Publishing Coach, was written by a human – me! – Alexandra Amor.]

It can sometimes be tricky for us as authors to accept the fact that our art also needs to be marketable. But hear me when I say:

Your book is your art. Publishing and marketing that book is a business.

Now, if you don’t want to sell any books, that’s totally fine. You don’t have to think of the necessary elements that go into packaging and selling your book.

But if you do want to sell some books, then you’ll need to embrace the idea that art and commerce coexist in your book.

Book cover design is a marketing tool

Your book’s cover is the first impression a potential reader will have of your book. That cover has, at most, a few seconds to communicate to the reader two essential things:

1. This is a professional book.
2. This book fits into the genre of books that the reader likes.

Let’s explore each of these separately and in more depth.

1. This is a professional book

Readers these days are sophisticated. They know what they are looking for and they know that their options for entertainment are nearly limitless. If they see a cover and can immediately tell that it was made by the author (who doesn’t have any design experience) they will keep scrolling.

The next time you are looking for a book to read or a movie to watch notice how quickly you make decisions about the options you’re being shown. It’s a good exercise to notice your own behaviour and then apply that to your potential readers.

The other, more subtle, message that a well-designed book cover conveys is that the writing within the book is also professional. If the cover was slapped together with little respect for the reader, then that will immediately, though probably subconsciously, make the reader assume the writing has been treated with the same disregard. Why should a reader stop and take time to investigate a book that doesn’t respect them?

2. This book fits into the genre of books that the reader likes

Typically, when a reader goes browsing at an online retailer or library site, looking for their next read, they already know what they’re looking for.

Again, think about your own behaviour when you’re looking for a book to read. Do you walk into a bookstore and start at the front of the store and browse the entire store shelf by shelf? Probably not. You might spend a little bit of time looking at the best-sellers table at the front of the store, but then you likely move on to the section of the store that shelves your preferred type of books. The genre you prefer to read in.

If you’re a fan of horror novels, you’re not going to spend a lot of time looking at the books in the romance section or the gardening section. You’re going to narrow your search based on your reading preferences.

Then, when you’re in that section of the store, likely without even realizing it, your brain is looking for books that meet your expectations. What you want, again, probably without consciously thinking about it, is a book that is similar to ones you’ve already read but also different.

That’s the sweet spot a book cover aims for

Similar yet different.

Your reader isn’t looking for something spectacularly unique. They’re looking for something familiar. As humans, we like what we know, and book covers are a perfect example of this.

Going back to the horror example, if a reader is a fan of that genre, and they see a cover with a lot of pink on it and an image of tulips blooming in a field, their eye is going to keep moving onto the next book on the shelf. That reader’s brain knows, without even slowing down, “This pink book is not what I’m looking for.”

Take your emotions out of it

When we are new authors the natural impulse is to want a book cover to be a) pretty and b) reflect a scene or a theme from our book.

Surprisingly these things aren’t what matters.

What matters is your potential readers expectations. What are they looking for in a book cover? How can your cover reassure the reader that your book is what they’re looking for? Your cover needs to get the reader to slow down long enough just to read the book’s description.

That’s it. That’s the one goal of a book cover. Get the reader to take the next step toward your book by slowing down enough to read the description.

Your book is your art. Your book cover does an entirely different job.