{"id":6105,"date":"2009-07-14T00:20:52","date_gmt":"2009-07-14T05:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2009\/07\/14\/what_is_the_purpose_of_a_book_cover_a_di\/"},"modified":"2009-07-14T00:20:52","modified_gmt":"2009-07-14T05:20:52","slug":"what_is_the_purpose_of_a_book_cover_a_di","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2009\/07\/14\/what_is_the_purpose_of_a_book_cover_a_di\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is The Purpose Of A Book Cover? A Discussion"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Alexander<\/a><\/div>\n
\"Seth<\/a><\/div>\n

This post is in response to Alexander Field<\/strong> and his blog post over at The Mystery & The Magic<\/a><\/strong>, which in turn is in response to Seth Godin’s blog post<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The whole discussion is about “What is a book cover’s purpose?”<\/strong> So here we go.<\/p>\n

Alex,<\/p>\n

I agree with Jared, who commented on your blog, that for online books the reviews are very important<\/strong>. But if the cover of the book just stinks, I doubt I’d even look at the reviews. <\/p>\n

BAD COVER = LOW QUALITY EDITING<\/strong><\/center><\/p>\n

Keep in mind, though, that the small size of the covers on Amazon is in direct relationship to the bandwidth<\/strong> that we currently have on the internet. <\/p>\n

As speeds increase, we can expect that cover to get larger<\/strong> and more important until…<\/p>\n

…maybe ten years from now, the speed will increase until every single professional book on Amazon will begin with its own high-res flash animation \/ book trailer<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

The download will be so fast you will begin to expect it on every book<\/strong>. If a book doesn’t have something like that, the publisher will have trouble selling it:<\/p>\n

BAD BOOK TRAILER = LOW QUALITY EDITING<\/strong><\/center><\/p>\n

My point: What we think of as “The Cover” today will change.<\/strong><\/p>\n

BUT… that Amazon book trailer should be based on the same themes presented in the cover<\/strong> of the book … the two will be in sync. <\/p>\n

SO… the cover will still be important<\/strong> thematically, it will just be a smaller part of what I would call the “First Impression”.<\/p>\n

And the Amazon reviews are part of that.<\/em><\/p>\n

As to the purpose of a book cover?<\/strong> The purpose will always be, like you said, Alex, to sell books. What publisher doesn’t want to sell books?<\/p>\n

If, as Seth Godin says<\/strong>, this also “Tee[s] up the reader so the book has maximum impact” all the better, especially for future sales<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Anyway, there is my two cents on the topic. Everyone: visit Alex’s<\/a> and Seth’s<\/a> blog and chime in!<\/p>\n

And here’s a question for my blog readers.<\/strong> I have created the cover for book 2 of the Merlin Spiral, and this is neither a professional image, nor is it necessarily what a publisher would choose, but here’s my question:<\/p>\n

Is this too scary of a cover? Do I need to tone this down?<\/p>\n

What do you think? Would you buy a book with a cover like this?<\/p>\n

\"Merlin's<\/center><\/p>\n

Note: I have updated this image after the comments came back that it gave the impression that my book was a horror novel. Thanks for the help, everyone! <\/p>\n

Any comments on the new image are welcome!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Views: 97<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\nThis post is in response to Alexander Field and his blog post over at The Mystery & The Magic, which…\n<\/div>\n
Continue reading “What Is The Purpose Of A Book Cover? A Discussion”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,15,41,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-merlin-spiral","category-2-merlins-shadow","category-blog-reading","category-marketing-ideas","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Alex6.jpg?fit=220%2C217","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p67v0M-1At","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}