Day 862 – Why You Need a Professional Cover for Your Novel

I think I’ve mentioned here that I’ve been looking into self-pubbing as a possibility for my book. I’m not convinced this is the way to go, but if nothing else, I find it fascinating to do a bit of research into self-publishing and get myself ready in case it happens. A lot of it I’m familiar with through the stuff I do in my day job. Some of it is brand new, like all the layout and coding involved with formatting for various ereaders.

One thing that I’m not sure authors understand enough is how important the cover is. It’s one of the top things (after writing a good book) that bloggers blogging about self-publishing talk about. Yet there are many, many examples of bad, bad covers, like in the image above. Some are definitely worse than others, and I’m not going to call any out in particular. Some obviously had a lot of work put into them, even if the results don’t match the effort. Honestly, if you could only pick one book seeing nothing but the cover, which would you choose, any of the above, or this one:

The point is, people do judge a book by its cover. Quite literally. If you are self-publishing, you want to give yourself the best chance possible to have someone pick up and read your book. For many, the cover is the first contact they’ll have with your book. If you don’t hook them then — or at least pique their interest a bit — you’ve lost a big chance at a sale. Even if you have just written the best novel since The Great Gatsby.

You can see book covers in more detail on the Lousy Book Covers Tumblr blog.

Another productive day on the writing front, I’m happy to say. Got some solid work in again in Part 3 — just a few more pages until the end. Then, uncharted territory as I start writing Part 4. With half a month left to go, I’m feeling fine.

~Graham