Aspiring authors, get this through your head. Cover art serves one purpose, and one purpose only, to get potential customers interested long enough to pick up the book to read the back cover blurb. In the internet age that means the thumb nail image needs to be interesting enough to click on. That’s what covers are for.
Larry Correia
Aspiring authors, get this through your head
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It’s like writing ad copy. For ad copy, the headline draws you in to read the first sentence which needs to hook you to read the first paragraph and so on.
For books, the cover hooks you to read the description, which needs to draw you into the first page which has to hook you to keep reading the first chapter and so on to the end.
Some of the best articles I’ve read detailing ‘good’ cover art are centered around the fact that it is your billboard to draw a reader to pick up your book. It should draw the eye and shout genre and theme and that’s it, it’s not a miniature display of every tiny point of your story.
Yep. Covers are ads.
Absolutely! Secondarily the synopsis and tertiary the first page.