There’s that age old saying of ‘don’t judge a book by it’s cover’ but we all do to some degree don’t we? A book’s cover is the fine line to whether I’ll purchase or not, because a lot is said about the book within the cover.
First Impressions Count
The book’s cover is often the first thing you see. Whether you see it online or in person, you’re rarely getting a synopsis of the book before you see the front cover. So, the cover has to inform someone what the book is about, whilst making them interested enough to read the synopsis before purchase. It also has to be eye-catching and be competitive with other books on the bookshelf (or digital store).
Aesthetics
Believe it or not but most of our society is focused on the aesthetics of how things look. We go to expensive brunches for the gram, take photos in the freezing cold in skirts and let our morning coffee get cold because we can’t get the perfect flat lay. This is no exception when it comes to books. You’ve seen the bookstagrams and shelfies and these micro influencers who spend time taking beautifully curated photos of books are extremely important to publishers and authors marketing efforts. If the book doesn’t look good – then it’s going to be a struggle for people to take nice photos of it and bring awareness to it.
Professionalism
I don’t know about you but if I’d spent days, weeks, months and sometimes years writing a book, I wouldn’t want to publish it with a half-done cover. And I’ve seen some awful book covers – usually by self published authors as they don’t have a publisher who will find a proper designer, and they’ve asked a random friend or relative to help them out instead. Unfortunately this leads to unprofessional design work which doesn’t look good. As I said before a cover needs to inform someone what the book is about and show that it’s good enough to pick up. If a book cover looks like it has been made with Word Clipart, I’m gonna assume the inside is just as bad.
Genre specific
Most genre’s have their own ‘look’ for book covers. Often thrillers look pretty interchangeable (with some exceptions of course!). But if you see a book with a dark derelict building at night with stormy weather with the title written in large brightly coloured letters – yep that’s probably a thriller. Same goes for romance which usually has a half naked male on the cover. If I’m looking over books in the supermarket rather than a bookstore, looking at the covers usually lets me know what genre it is, and whether I’ll like it.
So overall I’d say a book cover is pretty important to 1. entice readers to actually give the book a chance and 2. inform the reader what the book will be about, before they read the synopsis.
View Comments (15)
You have really dissected the reasons why book covers are important. I completely agree that a good cover draws you to the book especially in store when your eyes can literally see books everywhere and something needs to jump out and catch your attention.
Glad you agree! 😀
I know it's "don't judge a book by its cover" but I think a book cover is important, and you listed all the important reasons why that is so. Xx
Honestly feel like I'm always judging actual books by their covers haha! xx
I think it does. I know it shouldn't but I feel like a cover often says a lot about the image the author wants to portray for the story and gives it genre identity. And as you said, it looks far more professional too. I agree with all of the points you made here!
Sophie
http://www.glowsteady.co.uk
Glad you agree Sophie! and thanks for reading! x
Yeah they are important
Glad you agree!
100% agree!! Bad book covers make me so sad. I'm sure I've passed over a number of really great books simply because the cover was too much of a mess for me or didn't catch my eye. That being said, I've also picked up a bunch of books simply because I loved the cover and ended up hating the text inside! hah!
Yeah there's always the negative of really good book covers being on poorly written books!
Yes to all of this! The cover is what tells me what genre the book likely is and whether it seems like it'll be my kind of book or not, and that's usually what prompts me to look at the blurb. I don't have time to read every blurb for every book! That's why it's important for the cover to accurately portray the book. But yes, we also just like pretty things. And definitely professionalism. If I see a cover that looks like zero time or effort or money was spent, that's just bad PS, then I'm going to wonder if they put the same amount of time/effort/money into the story.
YES! Always on that last point - I just don't feel like I can trust the author to give me a good story if they don't care enough on the cover?
i agree a lot w this post, im such a sucker for nice covers
I spend so much time in book stores just admiring the covers...
100% agreed on the clipart! I sometimes wonder whether it's just saving the money, or maybe they just genuinely don't... get it, you know? Like how you'd see those 'people of Walmart' pictures and think that someone would genuinely wear that, for example. But I agree, I also can't help thinking the inside would be just as bad when it's that way. I know it's not strictly true, and pretty books can also be really bad... but the odds that an ugly cover will have good contents is smaller than the other way round, I think.