‘DO YOU JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER?’

If I had a pound for every time someone's asked that question on social media over the last couple of years, I'd be living in a four storey Georgian townhouse in Knightsbridge, and drawing up the guest list for my next dinner party on my super yacht (moored somewhere hot in the Mediterranean, of course). To say it's a perennial old chestnut would be understating it.

While ‘never judge a book by its cover’ might be good advice when applied to people, when applied to books it’s nonsense. Because that’s precisely what a book cover does. It invites potential readers to judge whether or not they might be interested in what’s inside. And whether or not they’d be willing to part with their hard-earned cash to read it.

But a good book cover is not necessarily an easy thing to find. There’s so much it has to convey, all in just one glance at the book shelf or thumbnail online. Tone, genre, setting. Who will this book appeal to? 

I’m a hybrid author - meaning that as well as being traditionally published by a big publishing house who take care of everything including the cover, I’ve also got a couple of self published books out there (which is probably the subject of another post!). As a self published writer, I have total control over my cover design, even more so in my case as I design them myself. In a previous life I was a video and photo editor, which has left me (in the words of Liam Neeson) with a very particular set of skills, including an eye for composition and some mad Photoshop skills.

But it’s not an easy thing to do, as evidenced by some of the myriad self published, self-designed books on Amazon. I LOVE that Amazon has given everyone the opportunity to publish their work - the DIY/garage band ethos appeals to the old punk rocker in me - but seriously people, look at your covers next to others in your genre (trad and self published), and judge honestly whether or not they stack up against them. Because if they don’t, you are really limiting your audience. The story inside could be incredible, but a poor cover will make potential readers think the inside will be just as low in quality. If you can’t do it yourself, there are plenty of cover designers out there who can help you (myself included), and they shouldn’t charge you a fortune. 

I recently relaunched my debut novel, Dead in Venice, with a new cover. The story is a mash up of murder mystery and romance, so that’s what I was aiming for with the cover design. The setting, Venice, is the perfect romantic backdrop, but by playing with the colours I was able to give it a slightly more sinister feel. I think it echoes the tone and genre of the story inside. Will it entice new readers? I hope so. It’s certainly eye-catching and an attractive picture in its own right. Time will tell!

One thing that does seem to attract and annoy readers in equal measure is the rise of what I call the ‘woman-in-a-red-coat’ type of cover. Ever noticed that there are a LOT of books out there with very similar covers? There are an inordinate amount of WWII novels featuring the back view of a woman, very often wearing a red coat to stand out from the background. Or travel romcoms, with the back view (again) of another woman in a sun dress, usually clasping a hat to the back of her head as she gazes out at the vista in front of her - usually a beautiful Greek island, an Italian coastal village, or maybe the Eiffel Tower. This happens when a really successful novel hits the shelves, and publishers attempt to ride on its coat tails. You can’t blame them; if books are in the same genre, and are aiming for the same market, why not try the same strategy the bestseller used? This might sound cynical - and it is a bit - but at the same time it’s telling readers, ‘if you liked THAT, you’ll like THIS’. And if that’s true, that’s a win for the reader; it makes picking your next read so much easier. At the same time, there needs to be something different, a little extra, that distinguishes one book from another; I’ve seen a few where the covers are so similar that without looking closely at them you’d think they were the same book.

So the next time someone asks you if you ever judge a book by its cover, tell them YES! We all do. Whether we’re judging them fairly or not is impossible to tell - unless you actually read it…