Here at the Wise Ink blog, we’ve talked in length about how the biggest problem with self publishing is the stigma. Although public perception of indies is improving every year, there’s still an idea out there that self-published books are poorly constructed.
A new blog has given us an idea why.
Kindle Cover Disasters is making its way around the internet. The Verge, The Guardian, and The Telegraph have all published articles about the blog, where bored citizens of the internet can go to laugh at beautifully awful ebook cover designs.
Although any press is good press, and thousands of people seeing your cover could be a huge boon for your book, this might not be the best marketing scheme.*
Turns out people really do judge books by their covers. A shoddy cover design makes people assume that the writing, editing, and proofreading were shoddily done as well. No matter how good your book is, a Kindle Cover Disaster could be a death sentence for your masterpiece.
Although KCD posts the worst of the worst, there are thousands of ebooks with unappealing but not-quite-laughable covers whose sales are hurt just as badly. If you want to compete with traditionally-published books, you need an eye-catching, aesthetically appealing cover. Lucky for you, we’ve already put together a list of five steps to get there.
Unless you have some serious graphic design know-how, we highly recommend using a professional designer. Although finishing a book—a herculean task in itself—may have left you feeling like you can do anything, we at the Wise Ink blog encourage you to stick to what you’re good at (writing, hopefully) and letting your book get a cover worthy of its greatness.
What do you think—should you judge a book by its cover? Do you have a favorite or least-favorite book cover? Sound off in the comments!
*or is it? What if you wrote a terrible book with a terrible premise and a terrible cover?** It could become a cult classic, like The Room!
**please don’t actually do this
Oh yes, some of those are very interesting. I played with a cover for several days and realized that while I can edit photos in Ps, I haven’t a clue how to do a good cover. So I hired a cover artist. I can attest, it’s worth the money.
Oh, one question. Do you know if there’s a preference between glossy POD covers versus matte? Or, can you steer me in the right direction to find this out on my own? Thank you!
It depends on your book—its tone, genre, etc. Matte is a little friendlier, gentler, & nicer. Glossy is really good for details, bright colors, and making things look more 3-d. The prices should be the same, so it mostly just depends on what kind of vibe you want your book to have!
<3 this post. Cover design is so important! If you cut corners on your cover readers have no way of knowing if you cut corners elsewhere and with so many great books out there readers don't have to "give it a shot anyway."
At the same time, I see many professionally designed covers that have such a cliched look to them I can’t but wonder if the writing/story/characters aren’t tediously predictable as well. And this leads me to wonder if the book marketing industry hasn’t fallen into Hollywood’s safety rut of why risk something new until the clones start making audiences and readers begin to gag. If so, is the answer, then, for movie makers, novelists and cover designers to develop a keen sense of trend whilst doing the clone thing and waiting for the precise moment to leap in with something new? Damned if I ever intentionally produce a clone, but I do sometimes wonder.
I’ve seen those covers and have a few favorites myself. I run a
book cover business so I have seen the best and the worst in Indie publishing. I cannot emphasize enough the damage you do with a shoddy cover. It’s your window to the reader if you make them cringe on impact how can you possibly recover, even if your book is amazing. thanks for a great post I’m sharing to all my networks!