It depends.
Are you interested in selling books? If so, then where will they sell? Bookstores won’t stock books that don’t have a good spine and a commercially viable cover. And on-line stores like Amazon use thumbnails of the cover to help sell books because good ones work.
Without a good cover, your readers won’t look at your book long enough to get hooked. There have been a few exceptions, as with any rule, but not many. And who wants to make it any harder for your book to succeed in this world?
So packaging matters, even when you’re selling words. Allot enough resources to guarantee a good cover if you want good sales.
Now for the hard part: what makes a good cover? I have a few thoughts, which may be all wrong, so please feel free to contradict or argue with me in the comments:
Spine: Should be clearly legible from a distance of 3 to 4 feet, by your target audience. (For example, if they’re boomers, their eyes may no longer be good, so make it even larger font, and less ornamental.) If it’s popular non-fiction or fiction, consider including a thumbnail image.
Front cover: Look at the books on the store shelf where you want yours to appear. What do the successful ones have in common? Your design should have a similar design sensibility (color schemes, type of art or lack of same, font type, overall “feel” . . .), and similar amounts of information.
Back cover: The copy here (or on the jacket flaps) is critical. You have a very few sentences to tell the reader why they’ll be glad they bought your book and not the others that meet their needs. You may want to use blurbs (do other books on the shelf?) or summaries of benefits (not features) or plot synopses. Whatever you say, make it count!
Really, I’m not the person to ask, so I’m opening it up to all of you. What grabs you and makes you pull down a book (other than a known author or branded series)?
Covers in a familiar style are a quick visual clue that this is another book by an author whom I’ve already read.
As I grow older, my list of known favorites grows as well. At the same time, my free time for reading is shrinking. Thus I find myself taking far fewer chances on unknown authors. However, I definitely do judge a book by the cover. I find myself drawn to covers with lots of detail, rather than ones that are more abstract or are painted with broad strokes. I’m not so grabbed by “beautiful people” covers, but rather by ones that paint an interesting scene telling their own story.
As an e-book publisher, I still consider covers very important. In fact, they may be MORE important. It seems that customers who can’t pick up a physical book to browse through still depend heavily on covers to grab their attention. The main difference is that the customer’s first exposure to those covers are at about 200 pixels wide. That means a lot of detail is lost. Due to my own prejudices, I still call for detailed, painted covers when possible. However, in recognition of the medium, the cover’s subject is limited to a single focal point and large enough to be identifiable even when displayed as a thumbnail.
Good points!
As a message to all publishers. Please don’t use raw Poser dolls in cover art. It makes me assume either a distinct lack of skilsl or a distinct lack of taste
Poser is to figure art what RealDolls are to girlfriends….
I have to agree. I struggle with the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” because I always do! Like with Preston, I like detail. I like pictures that tell a story–very eye-catching for me.