The next person who tells me, “Don’t judge a book by its cover!” is in danger of a fat lip.
Usually, the people telling me so are the authors of books on this site, or friends of the authors. (Which means that they’re contacting me by email or comments, so they’re not really in much fat-lip danger. But still.) This despite the fact that this site is all about judging covers, not books. If there’s anything more to their objection than this one truism of folk wisdom (oddly, they never tell me further that I should look before I leap, or that a stitch in time saves nine), it is usually a sentiment or sentiments that something on this page will dispel. And yes, I’m making this page because I’m tired of typing variations on these reponses each time.
1) But you WANT people to judge your book by its cover. Once upon a time, all books looked like this:
Why don’t they anymore? Because people realized that using that space to market the book made sense — people won’t discover that they like a book if they don’t open it (or read the back-cover material, another innovation), and they won’t bother to open it unless something draws their interest.
Would anyone complain about “judging a book by its cover” if people told them the cover was awesome? Of course not. They want the book to be judged by its cover if the cover engages the reader positively. It’s kind of hard to hold a position that says, “Please judge my book by its cover, unless you don’t like the cover.”
2) I may not judge the book by the cover, but I’ll definitely judge the publisher by the cover. And that’s not a good thing for self-publishers. I mean, if a traditional publisher saddles a book with a godawful cover, the writer can legitimately claim, “I had nothing to do with it! They didn’t ask me! They didn’t follow my suggestions! They’re a bunch of braindead boobies!” All of which is quite apart from the quality of the book itself.
However, if the author is also the publisher, then there’s only one braindead boobie to blame. If the person responsible for a bad cover shows no awareness of deficiencies in the cover, how is the reader supposed to assume that the same lack of awareness does not hold through for the book itself? I’m not saying that a self-publisher has to be a great designer or artist; far from it. The self-publisher needs to be realistic about his/her own competence, and recognize when outside contractors are necessary. Because an amateurish self-published cover tells the reader that the author doesn’t have the faculty to tell when something isn’t ready for prime time.
3) The cover is on the front of the book. Not on the last page. Occasionally I’ll hear the defense, “If you read the book, you’d understand the cover!” That would be terrific if the cover were the last thing I saw, instead of the first. The cover is my first impression. The cover’s purpose is to make me want to read the book, and making me wonder, “What in God’s green earth is that mess?” is not the same thing. You are not personally going to be able to stand beside the book or pop up like Clippy on the Amazon page, make excuses for the cover, and tell potential readers that if they read the book, they’ll appreciate the cover. That’s exactly backwards. The cover doesn’t just need to speak for itself, it needs to speak for the book behind it. That’s its one job.
4) Nepotism is no excuse. Your kid/roommate/grandpa did the cover? That’s sweet. Unfortunately, I don’t know your kid. I don’t have warm personal feelings for your roommate. I’ve never met your grandpa. I have no overwhelming need to bolster their self-esteem by treating their cover as a credit to your novel if it isn’t. You have to decide: Is it more important to do favors for family members (and by “do favors” I mean “accept work from them only because of their relationship to you and not because of its quality”), or to present your book in the best possible light to potential readers? If you decide in favor of the first option, that’s your prerogative. But be aware that, by publishing your book on Amazon or Smashwords or someplace where those potential readers aren’t influenced by that same personal relationship, you’re exposing their substandard work to an audience which doesn’t absolve them of being less-than-professional in a professional arena because they are something to somebody.
Bottom Line: Your cover is your best opportunity to make a good first impression. You can either put your efforts toward making that first impression the best it can be (and self-pubbers these days can switch out a cover with very little effort), or you can whine and say, “The commenters at LousyBookCovers.com are mean!” Only one of those reactions can lead to a fruitful career, unfortunately.
* LIKE-LIKE-LIKE-LIKE-LIKE *
Ditto! 😉
Should the cover necessarily be related to any part of the story or plot, or at the very least feature one of the characters? As a (starving) author, I need to know these things. To quote the Bard, “Damn it, Jim! I’m an author, not Renaiscence painter.”
Not necessarily, although that often works. What’s really necessary — and it’s more nebulous — is that the cover should convey to the reader how the reader would react emotionally to the book. Is it suspenseful? Lusty? Politically driven? Lighthearted? Or to put it another way, your book cover should be attractive to the kind of reader who would enjoy the book.
“. . .the cover should convey to the reader how the reader would react emotionally to the book.”
This is the best description I’ve read of a book cover’s function. Now the hard part is discovering what that means visually.
Epic tales are told by the creative not the cynics or critics.
Look for my name on Amazon. Epic enough?
What books have you authored…”Keep it Simple Stupid” or perhaps, “The Only Mistake I Ever Made is When I Thought I Made a Mistake”…?
Please, Tom. Displaying your intentional ignorance so proudly in public causes others to be embarrassed by the lack of self-awareness which keeps you from being appropriately embarrassed for yourself. You can take your morally superior scold-a-thon elsewhere now, thanks.
I doubt you tell any particularly epic tales yourself, Tom.
Lol 😂 rofl
The cover has to convey a LOT, quickly, to a reader skimming a hundred covers a minute.
If you’re looking for military SF, if had better look like military SF – or you’re not even going to read the blurb if there are better-designed military SF covers on your screen.
Just like everything these days, the cover is in competition with others of its ilk, and gets a fraction of a second at first glance.
And it is going to show up on most screens at a tiny size – so it had better deliver with that limitation: if you can’t read the title or figure out the images, it can’t grab that part of your brain.
More than all of that, a cover says ‘amateur’ – or ‘professional’ – very, very quickly.
Alicia
PS Which is why I’m throwing effort, and possibly money, at it when I publish this fall.
The cover should say, “Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”
Its strange I stubmled across this site a few days ago and have been perusing the covers ever since. I find something strangely appealing about all the covers on this site. There is a haunting cocktail of optimism and ineptitude that permiates them all.
I even feel compelled to order a couple of the books featured with the more bizzare covers.
I think “a haunting cocktail for optimism and ineptitude” will be my new subtitle.
Ha, I’m glad to have contributed in some small way!!
There is a difference between trolling, and offering constructive criticism. Learn it.
There’s a difference between seeking constructive criticism before publication and getting defensive afterward. Learn it.
Epic tales are told by the creative not the cynics or critics.
How many times can I “like” this? Lol. Well said, my friend, well said!!
So, Tom, with all your knowledge about EPIC LIT, how well do you think Homer drew or sculpted?
If the person can’t draw, then they shouldn’t make their own cover. If you know someone with great artistic talent then they could ask them and get a good cover, you could probably commission someone on craigslist to craft your cover. A cover is the first impression, it’s meant to catch the eye and make you read the back cover or the first page, if you like what it’s about then you buy it and read it and maybe look for more books by that author.
I once saw a book, I think it was called the chemist, it had a gray cover with some black design that I guess was smoke, but walking by that caught my eye since it was surrounded by brighter covers, so I picked it up didn’t like the premise and put it down. The book wasn’t up my alley, but the cover did it’s job, it made me pick the book up, from there on out it was the job of the blurb and/or the authors writing to engage me.
This post is absolutely fantastic! Am now signed up on facebook. Keep up the good criticism
I was a judge for a major novel competition for ten years, and I soon learned that the cover had absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the contents. In fact, the more the author falls in love with marketing, the crappier the novel. It’s about writing. I like a good cover as much as the next author, but I’d rather offer something provocative than a pretty cliche.
“…this site is all about judging covers, not books”
I think we all understand that a good book can be found within a lousy cover, but that’s not the point. The point is that there is a level of quality book consumers expect from the cover in order to motivate them to actually open it and discover what’s inside.
Effort is very important to me, and to a lot of people. I usually don’t fault people for falling short or even failing as long as they put forth an honest effort. Most of the covers appearing here are laughably short on effort, from font choice to color grading, but if you can paste together images you can color grade them to match. Yes, there are plenty of readers who don’t care if the cover is cut-and-paste or art from a refrigerator, but I believe the majority still require that level of effort on the cover before they delve into the story. To them, that lack of effort outside likely indicates the same lack of effort inside.
Frankly, my first covers were pretty bad, but even then it was obvious to most people I had put a lot of effort into them and I believe that was my saving grace, allowing me to learn new tricks and create better versions before completely alienating my potential fan base. They still aren’t close to what a proper artist could have done, but I don’t believe any of my current covers would ever be considered lousy.
This post is from 3 years ago, but…I simply can’t resist.
Yup, that is absolutely right–IF the reader can actually see/find the book and get to the interior. In an Amazon world, in which there are Eight Million published books on their site, the idea that some sh***y cover is going to be a by-blow of a great interior, and that great book will somehow rise to the surface, like cream, is ridiculous.
A cover is clickbait, nothing more–but nothing less, either. In the world of publishing, if you don’t have a clickbait cover, you will not lure the reader to your book or sales page; they won’t pick it up and read the back/interior or the LookInside and that sale is LOST. The quality of your interior is completely wasted.
I thought as you did, in 2010. I learned that I was completely and totally WRONG, because humans DO buy based on covers–if for no other reason than covers incite them to pick up the book in a bookstore or click on it, in a search. Without that, the book has no chance of being found, seen, tried, bought and read and again, the quality of the interior is utterly wasted. I have factual proof of this, from a number of my customers who insisted on crappy or mediocre covers–and how those negatively affected their sales–and how that all changed once they actually invested in a decent cover. That is proof.
It’s all well and good if you’re a judge–you’re GIVEN the books you’re meant to read. You’re not choosing them.
That’s not the same as what happens with free-range readers.
Would just like to add that, yes, while an interesting cover that succinctly conveys the message is great, I also miss books that provide decent descriptions on the back (or heck, even the inside sleeve covers although I find it annoying to look around so hard for just a synopsis). When I’m checking to see whether I’ll buy a book, I DO NOT want to read a handful of critical raves on the back (“Ahead of it’s time; true to the spirit of sci fi author XXXX…”) This tells me nothing about the plot or whether I want to invest upwards of a couple days time reading it.
On the note of covers, how do you feel about these?
https://atticsecrets1979.wordpress.com/2016/02/18/the-iconic-v-c-andrews-book-covers/
Referred to by the fandom as the traditional “stepback” covers, they have a group shot (gothic style) of the main characters. Sadly, they’ve recently been replaced with just glossy model stock images. I really think that they added to the mystery and allure of these stories, though.
FWIW, they got away with a lot on those covers simply because VC was trade-published. I liked them, but that’s primarily because they’d been established as her stock-in-trade, cover-wise.
I think there’s bad cover and bad cover. Some ugly covers can do the job well enough, like in some kind of “so bad it’s good” way. I’ve seen a few bad covers on this site that still had some kind of charm to them. Others were lazy charmless and really made me judge the book by its cover. I guess more lighthearted novels can get away with an ugly cover.
The comments on this post are old, but as true as ever. So much about books has become advertising in recent times. Can you imagine Amazon with a bunch of blank hardback covers instead of filled with generic genre fiction and and generic covers? People would have to actually read the books. It is a world with little time.
On my browser, the image is not displaying.
FWIW, it’s an old-school blue-cloth cover. 🙂
Well said.
This is cracking me up! I just had this discussion with a marketing team last night. The cover matters. Judging a book by it’s cover is about the only way most of us find new books to read that haven’t come from someone we are familiar with whether it’s an author we’ve read before or a recommendation from someone we know. I have few people whose judgement I trust on what’s a good book or not. From those people, I’ll never look at the cover. Same with an author I have read and liked. Their next release, I won’t care about the cover.
But if I’m to buy a book from someone I am not familiar with? That cover better wow me. I’m in the midst of cover design right now and so far I have two really bad submittals. I’m hoping this new designer brings more to the table than a perfect entry for this website!