Lion Around - Cover illustration for Jeremy Turner's Animal Tales

Potential readers do judge a book by its cover. It is a cliche — but true. If you want to sell books, you must have a quality book cover illustration or layout for it.

It’s that simple.

Today, I discovered a blogger who summed up this truth very concisely:

EVERYONE judges a book by its cover… Everyone.  Anyone who says they don’t is LYING to you.  When was the last time you looked at a book with a really bad cover and immediately bought it because you couldn’t wait to dig in? That’s right – NEVER.  Humans are visual creatures, people.  We need to be dazzled.  We need to be stimulated to be interested.  We like the sparkly things!  Putting a bad cover on a good book will absolutely ruin its chances of ever being successful.   Books don’t have the luxury of winning you over with their personality first.  It’s all about looks. — J. M. Gregoire

(You can read Gregoire’s whole article here: An Open Letter to Indie Authors.)

I suspect I may be attracted to a nice book cover more than many readers — after all I earn my living now in large part by illustrating book covers. However I don’t think I’m too different.

I have purchased books with great covers that proved so-so; I’ve never bought a great book with a so-so cover. The only exception is with big name authors I was familiar with — and even then the version of the book with a better cover wins out.

When a publisher (whether a large press or self-publishing author) doesn’t think enough of their book to give it a quality cover, that sends a message. Most of us have learned that more often than not, a cheap-looking cover is wrapped around a book no one thinks will sell well, and which may be poorly written and edited to boot.

Book cover quality is the new “gatekeeper.” It helps us decide at a glance whether the book has potential merit or not.

If you want to sell your book, be sure it has a quality cover. Otherwise your ship will sink before it leaves of the harbor.

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Duncan Long is a book illustrator who’s created cover artwork for HarperCollins, Amazing Stories, Pocket Books, ILEX, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Moonstone Books, and many indie presses and self-publishing authors. See more of his cover illustrations at Duncan Long’s Gallery of Book Cover Artwork