Should you judge a book by its cover?

Consider these two sayings:

'Never judge a book by its cover'

'You only get one chance to make a first impression'

Both make sense, in isolation, but when put next to each other, there seems to be a slight conflict. If your book cover fails to impress, it may get overlooked, and regardless of how good the content is, may not get read by as many people as it deserves. 

In an earlier post I discussed the marketing concept AIDA - Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. A book cover needs to help you achieve the first two elements. If the cover doesn't grab a potential readers attention, and create  interest, it has essentially failed to do its job. The front cover of a book has three key components - a title, an illustration, and the author's name. Now unless your name is JK Rowling, Dan Brown, etc., it probably won't have a huge amount of impact on the buying decision. That leaves the title and the illustration to do the lion's share of the work. Putting the illustration to one side for the moment, let's consider the title. Assume you have just written a book and titled it 'Wanted!'. This could suggest a number of themes and genres. It could be erotica where one woman is wanted by many men. Alternatively a romantic theme, about a woman who only ever wanted to be loved. What about a thriller, where a dangerous fugitive is wanted by the authorities? To help the potential reader better understand the title, a well crafted illustration is required. So if you are on the look out for an entertaining thriller, and the book 'Wanted!' is about an armed and dangerous criminal being hunted by the police, an illustration depicting this theme will be needed to grab your attention. Below are two possible book covers for the same story. Which one is likely to grab your attention?

The book buying process goes something along the following lines. See a cover and title you like (Attention), pick it up (Interest), and read the blurb on the back cover. You like what you read (Desire). You then look at the price, and when you realise the benefit of reading it outweighs the cost, take it to the check-out (Action). What you don't know, until you've read it, is whether or not you think it's a good story. But that is now too late, you've already judged the book by its cover. . . and as authors, that is very important, because your thriller of the year could have been easily overlooked if the cover just didn't deliver.

Is your name on this database?

There are many free sites on the Internet where you can place your details, but one particular site is growing exceptionally quickly - namely AUTHORSdB. I mentioned them in an earlier blog, but think they are worth giving a further shout out. Not only are they building a database of authors at a remarkable rate, but they also offer some exciting benefits for those same authors, such as:

• A blogger of the week - with free banner advert
• Featured author - with free banner advert
• Author of the week - again, with a free banner advert
• Regularly sending out personalised tweets about their top 25 rated authors

As an author you can also add book reviews, a book synopsis, social network links (including Goodreads), book trailers, book covers, Amazon links, and links to blogs/websites. AUTHORSdB also provide a variety of 'badges' you can download to promote yourself with. Here's an example:

AUTHORSdB is growing by the day, and as an author I suggest you get your details on their database. It's free, so really there is nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

Marketing Tips for Authors - AIDA Part 2 of 2

In Part 1 of this series of articles I discussed the benefits of adopting AIDA as part of a marketing approach. Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. With the 140 character limit imposed by Twitter, it is virtually impossible to successfully incorporate all of this in one tweet. In fact, to try and do it is actually, in my opinion, an incorrect use of Twitter. I believe, from an author’s point of view, and it is this angle I am writing from, Twitter should be used for two things. Developing relationships and creating awareness. In this regard only Attention and Interest are applicable to Twitter.

I have seen so many tweets where people are trying to encourage people to buy their book there and then. 'Download my novel from Amazon today for 99 cents'. That's fine so long as other messages are included within tweets, and the pricing message is related to a special offer or price. Use of reviews to promote your books work well. Buyers are more likely to be encouraged by other readers, than a 'buy now' message. Messages like this are from people who don't understand the buying process. We all have a set of scales in our head - one side says 'Costs' and the other says 'Benefits'. It is only when the costs outweigh the benefits, are we likely to buy something. Consider for a moment some of the genres you personally don't like. Even if a book in that genre was offered FREE, as a Kindle download, the chances are you wouldn't download it. The 'cost' now becomes the precious space it would take up on your Kindle, and the time to download it. There is no benefit to be gained, and because the cost now outweighs the benefit, a purchase isn't made. So why would anyone consider buying an unknown book from Amazon, just because it is only 99 cents?

On the opposite side of the coin, if one of my favourite authors, let's take Michael Cordy, as an example, tweeted me to say he has just published a new book and he provided the link, I'd go straight to Amazon and order it. As an author he provides a 'product/brand' which I have a loyalty to, in the same way we all have loyalties to brands, products, authors etc. However, if you hadn't heard of Michael Cordy, and you received the same tweet, the chances are you'd ignore it. So apart from direct contact with a known customer, Twitter should only be used for grabbing attention and creating interest. The 'Desire' and 'Action' needs to be created via your website, because here you are not limited to a word/character count. Use Twitter to get people to your site and create the desire to read your book within the site. Have your link to Amazon (and all the other online shops) next to your book details, together with any special offers you may have for your book(s). I was once told many years ago by a very successful marketing guru - 'If you want to get into my pocket, first you must get into my mind.' In later posts I'll share some tips about websites which I've used in marketing training programmes, and I'll also look at the benefits of using Google Analytics. In the meantime, why not think of some tweets you could use to encourage people to look at your book on your website.