Sell More Books With These Critical Cover Rules

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From Author Marketing Experts:

Almost every author that reaches out to me wants to sell more books, so you’re not alone. But surprisingly, aside from doing no marketing, the number one hurdle is often the book cover design.

Unfortunately this is a much more common problem for indie authors because we’re left to our own devices, we don’t have a publishing house making expert recommendations  to a team of in-house professional designers.

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Your book cover needs to be clear, concise, and easy to read.

Yes, you may have a great review and you may think slapping it on the cover will help you sell more books. But if you can’t incorporate it in an visually appealing way, it will just detract from your book marketing efforts.

Same goes for photographs. I’ve worked with a lot of authors that bring some great personal photographs to the table, but they don’t translate into a powerful book cover.

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This is a great example of a clear, concise, easy to read cover:

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Book marketing in this day and age is about being savvy online, and your book cover is no exception.

So if you want to sell more books you need a book cover that’s been designed for online shopping.

Yes, your original design may look good as a full sized PDF on your computer, but shrink it down to an Amazon-sized thumbnail before making final decisions.

Link to the rest at Author Marketing Experts

3 thoughts on “Sell More Books With These Critical Cover Rules”

  1. The shrink test is incredibly important. Images get murkier as they lose pixels and get resized.

    You should be able to read title & author at thumbnail. If it’s part of a series, there should be a series “line” which may not be legible in thumbnail, but should still be a visual tag for the other books in the series.

    And above all else — it must suggest your genre, or it’s a fail.

  2. I always do the shrink test, more than once. I often have to change things, or tweak them, but sometimes I end up with a cover that may not be perfect in a smaller size, but looks fine at the normal size on a sales page. At some point, it gets to be a matter of ROI versus spending more time and effort on a cover (especially for a short story).

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