Why do Authors massively underestimate the importance of their Book Cover?

It’s quite interesting that most authors will spend hours and hours writing out a perfect Book Description, which no one reads (yes, Seth Godin is right – Book Blurbs don’t matter at all)

And At The Same Time

Those same authors will pick out a cover at random, or take 10 minutes on Photoshop to make their cover

Your Book Cover is the Single Most Important determinant of Book Sales – It is absolutely criminal to treat it as a footnote

We’ve seen a variety of reasons and listing them in this post should help you if you’re making the mistake of underestimating the critical importance of your Book Cover

Reasons Authors massively underestimate the Importance of their Book Cover

  1. At the point of deciding whether or not to go to your book page, the Reader sees primarily ONE THING – Your Book Cover. Nothing else – just your book cover. Authors seem to ignore this reality or perhaps they are completely unaware of it
  2. Authors deal in words, and tend to undervalue other aspects
  3. It is painful to think that 2 to 5 years of your skill is put into a book, and yet its success depends not on your own writing skill, but on the cover design skills of the cover designer who designed your book cover
    1. People will argue that only a well written book can succeed. However, we would counter by saying that if the cover is not well done, no one will ever visit the book page – so the quality of writing is meaningless
  4. Most Authors are not design savvy. They don’t understand what cover design is, why it is important, and what role it plays in selling their book
  5. Most authors do not realize that design is a critical aspect. That design of the product is part of the product. It is not an afterthought
  6. Authors listen a lot to other authors. Since most authors underestimate the importance of covers, it creates a vicious cycle of authors ignoring the book cover, and reinforcing each others’ neglect of book cover design
  7. Book Covers cost money. It is far easier to assume covers do not matter, than it is to make room in your budget for a good quality book cover
  8. Book Covers are so in your face, that they become easy to forget. Ever spend ten minutes searching for your keys and then realize they were right in front of you the whole time?
    1. That’s what covers are like – people are searching for ‘how to sell’ and ‘how to make money’ and the single biggest factor is right there in front of them
    2. It is easy to miss because it is so painfully in your face
    3. You keep seeing your cover, and over time you stop seeing the obvious areas for improvement. You fall in love with your flawed book cover, and then it becomes impossible to improve it
  9. If you mess up in other areas, you get a book review telling you where you messed up. Spelling Mistakes, Confusing storyline, Wrong Genre – some reader will leave a review and point it out
    1. No reader will leave a review saying – It was the most drab and boring cover on the page so I never clicked on it. Never arrived at the book page. Never bought it. Never read it
  10. Books usually have lots of areas to improve in. You have book covers, for which you are getting no feedback. You have other areas like editing, writing, categorization – for which you are getting feedback. Authors tend to focus on what readers are telling them. No one is mentioning ‘Your Book Cover is not good for sales’ because those people are just skipping the book completely. So Book Covers never get prioritized

Fundamentally, a Book Cover is the #1 Most Important Driver of Book Sales. Yet, most authors treat it as if it does not matter

 

2 thoughts on “Why do Authors massively underestimate the importance of their Book Cover?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *