Covers are vital
“Yes, of course they are,” I hear you cry. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
I’m being Captain Obvious yet again, but when you’re faced with a table full of new titles in a bookshop, what catches your eye first? Probably a good cover design. It could be something quirky or something that just embodies exactly what you’re after.
The next phase is when you pick the book up, flip it over and read the jacket blurb. In short, design, colour scheme and the blurb text itself could all make the difference between someone actually buying your book or not. You’ve a spent months, years even, spilling blood, sweat and tears to write your novel and in the end that decision by the potential reader to commit to the purchase can be down to what might appear to be very superficial things — and things that may well be largely out of your hands.
They are not out of your hands, of course, if you’ve published the book yourself. This is good and bad. Rather than trusting to your publisher’s art department, you can choose your own artist — but how do you know who’s right for the job? If you’re designing your own cover, you may save money but how good are you on Canva? Then there’s that whole thing when you’re paralysed by choice (as I often am) and just can’t make up your mind. Everything suddenly looks equally suitable.
The picture accompanying this blog post is just one of the various initial sketches that the brilliant Pierre Bamin has produced for the new novel. All of them would have been great but this is the one I’ve chosen (possibly because it’s the closest to my original version). Is it the right one? How will I ever know? That answer is that I won’t.
In the world of film, there are extensive and almost endless focus groups which allow producers to test different versions of everything. It helps to narrow things down to what is most popular and works best for the paying punters. If that sounds crassly commercial, it is — of course it is. I wish I could do the same. If I could ask my target audience what cover they like best, it would be so much easier. I’m not helped by the fact that with this book I’m not even sure exactly who my target audience is. It’s meant to be a fun, holiday-read rom-com. That suggests more of a female audience, perhaps. But it starts off with a male narrator. It’s quite possible that women and men will dislike this novel in equal measure! I mention this now because…yes, knowing your audience must influence your choice of cover. If you know your market, then at least you can look at the kind of designs that have worked for other writers in the same field.
But the truth is that when it comes down to matters of taste, no-one really knows. William Goldman said much the same about the film industry. However authoritative and confident a producer or script reader may be, they don’t really know. We may know after the event or we may know when we really DON’T like something but making that confident choice from an almost infinite array of possibilities is just too damned hard!
I’m lucky because in the end I know I’ll be leaving all the tough stuff to my friend Pierre. I hope you can find someone as talented and reliable.
Happy writing!