McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Does having a professionally done cover ever help *sell* a book?

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Willowhugger:
Just curious.

:-)

Josh:
What do you mean by professionally done? You mean aside from drawing the cover art yourself? Most publishing houses have either in-house designers or freelance designers who work on the cover art. And yes, good cover art helps sell a book. Absolutely. Why? Because, aside from the title (and unless you have amazing name recognition as an author), it's pretty much the only thing that tends to draw a book buyer's eye to the shelf in the first place and makes them realize the book exists at all. Sure, people read the blurbs and description, but just stroll through a bookstore and see what books grab your attention more. Those with well-designed, intriguing covers tend to be the most noticeable and make you want to pick them up and see what they are about. Anyone can say, "Don't judge a book by it's cover," but that is often times exactly what people do. Good cover art will never hurt your book sales. And the more people who are drawn to the book by the cover, the more likely it is someone will buy it.


www.jrvogt.com

blgarver:
I started reading Dresden Files because of the cover of Proven Guilty.

Velkyn_Faer:
Yeah, a pleasing cover won't hurt a bit. As Josh said, people do judge books by their covers, and an ugly cover has sometimes turned me away from a book, I'm sorry to say.

Josh:
This is why, speaking as someone who works within publishing, you often see different covers for different versions of the book. In otherwords, if a book doesn't do so great in hardcover, they may totally redesign the paperback issue, not only to be cheaper, but to have better, or at least different cover art in the hope of redeeming sales for the hardcover. Plus, some artwork becomes iconic to the series (such as the Dresden figure, of course) and this often gives the publishers the chance to go back, reissue old books under new covers, and thus loyal fans will flock to the stores and buy the book solely to have cover art that matches for the entire series. Not that this is a bad thing for the author, because they then get more money and are able to spend more time writing.


www.jrvogt.com

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