What Sells A Book?

This question has caused casual conversations to become heated debates and online flame wars. The fact is, people pick up a book for a variety of reasons: they've heard about it from a friend or the media, they are familiar with the author and many people believe because the cover entices them to do so. A book cover yields most of its power at the starting gate, after that, the book's success is riding on the quality or consumer demand for the product (no, I'm not going to argue that all best sellers are well written, or that all commercial failures are poorly written. Sometimes demand is just there or not there).

But do people buy books based on the cover design? Possibly. hobbyists collect book covers in some genres, particularly romance and science fiction. The cover artists themselves become as well-known as the authors and often, the two are tied in the collector's mind.

For most books, the cover is its handshake that greets the world.  Both large, traditional publishing houses and self-publishers alike are dependent on the cover, initially. For traditional publishers, such as Simon and Schuster, books by well-known authors are no problem to place, but others must be sold to bookstores the same way any independent publisher sells them.  In an article I wrote in 2002 for Independent Publisher I interviewed Jeremy Butcher, Art Director for Simon and Schuster in the UK  and he said, "We try to print the covers six months before pub date. The reps will carry these with them or at least a full-sized visual, along with an information sheet." Obviously, at this stage,  the cover is important, particularly for unknown authors.

An attractive cover may also find premium display space in an independent bookstore. At least one of my authors has told me a local bookstore carried her book just because the store owner liked the cover.

But after the initial "hello" is over,  a cover design cannot work alone to sell a book. Check out the New York Times' Best Sellers' List. How many of those books would you have purchased based on an emotional reaction to the cover? If you say one, you get a cookie (talk to me after the article).

There are many elements that come into play when you're selling a book. A book needs a good marketing plan, which includes a great title. The most beautiful illustration on earth will not lend credibility to The Investor's Hand Book, by John Doe, B.A. Why? Well, first of all, the title is too common. What makes it different from all the other investor's hand books out there? Now, you can use the cover image to illustrate the difference, but you're going to have to work closely and communicate this with your cover designer and that's not going to help you win sales for people who are reading a text-only list of available books, with no visual. The second thing is, a B.A. is not a professional credential for this sort of book. In this day and age, a PhD is not that significant. Too many well-qualified people have written books. There's a lot of competition out there, and while your mother might think you're special, the average consumer needs to be convinced of that fact. What you need to put alongside the name is the fact that the author worked for 35 years on Wall Street, or perhaps the fact the author made his first million by age 20: you need a hook.

Good covers and great titles aside though, the fact is that far more people are influenced by recommendations and an author's reputation. A recent article in The Idependent, discussed this.

What I found to be most interesting in that survey, published March 3, 2005 by World Book Day, was that 25% of readers claimed to buy books based on friends' recommendations (that figure rose to one-third in the under-35 demographic); 26% bought books based on author familiarity; 6% bought a book because they saw it advertised and only 7% cited cover design. The cover design statistic has not changed much since a 1998 Penguin survey.

So, big engine publishing companies are not behind the huge commercial successes, as they are often accused. They're not picking and choosing which books to throw gobs of money at and which books to let drift into oblivion. John Bond, the managing director of HarperCollins literary division was quoted in The Independent article, "Publishers often stand accused of becoming ever more sophisticated and cynical in their pursuit of creating instant author brands, when ultimately it is as likely to be good old-fashioned personal recommendation that really sells."

The article goes on to explain that there has been a long list of books with low first print-runs (meaning less investment from the publisher) that have gone on to become huge commercial successes, simply by word-of-mouth. Included in this list was Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, with more than 2 million sales to date; Eats Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss, with just under 1 million in sales and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, with more than 1 million in sales.

So what's the answer? Write a good book. Package it well.

Comments

[SJ]

When I'm browsing book store aisles with nothing particular in mind, I tend to scan for (1) familiar authors' names and (2) attractive covers. If I've read and like an author, an unfortunate cover isn't going to deter me from buying his/her new book. When I'm picking up and looking at books by relative unknowns, however, the cover constitutes my first impression of the book. As unfair as it is, I've been known to decide that "something with such an unattractive cover probably wouldn't be any good."

Bottom line, a number of factors contribute to book-buying decisions and the cover is one of them.

[Donnaj]

I am studying topography. What are your thoughts on typefonts for novels.

[Donnaj]

I am studying topography. What are your thoughts on typefonts for novels.