Just how important is book cover art, anyway? If you think it’s not, think about your own purchasing decisions for a moment. Have you ever found yourself scanning the wines at your local supermarket for something to serve with a meal or bring to a dinner party? How did you know which bottle(s) to pick up? What wines “spoke” to you?
Since you can’t sample the product, odds are that the label was all you had to go on. Perhaps, knowing your party was an elegant affair, you passed up the bottle with bright, cartoonish art in favor of a simple white label with a flowing font and rich gold accents. You know, something classy for your guests.
Readers choose books in much the same way. Sure, they can and often do read the summary to determine the appropriateness of the book, but since they can’t read them all, how do they decide which summaries to read? You got it – the cover!
The truth is – “looks” do matter. It matters on the wine rack in your local grocery store, and it matters in the virtual world of online bookstores and ebook sellers. Professional book cover art creates a number of advantages for your book in a crowded buying environment:
- Information. Your cover art conveys important clues to the reader about the content of your book. These are clues that will instantly help book buyers decide if your book holds potential interest for them. If the cover resonates with them on some deep level, they’ll investigate further.
- Visibility. You already know your book is high quality, but if no one sees it, all the great content won’t matter. A beautifully crafted cover gets a potential book buyer to slow down for a second or two, which greatly increases the odds the buyer will investigate further. That’s the first and most important step to securing a sale.
- Credibility. Professional cover art immediately sends the message to the reader – whether they’re aware of it or not – that the same care that was put into the cover art was also taken in the writing of the book. The cover can either elevate a book to a new level or do it a tremendous disservice, so it’s vital to take this part of the publishing process seriously.
- Targeting. An important function of your book cover is to appeal to specific readers your content is intended to entertain or inform. It’s not enough to have pretty art; that art must target the right people.
- Marketability. The previous four advantages of a professional book cover all add up to a total package that is, in the end, more marketable and infinitely more likely to sell than either a beautiful cover or compelling content can do on its own.
The best part about creating compelling book cover art is that you don’t need an entire team of marketing gurus to get noticed. One dedicated and knowledgeable book cover artist can make a huge difference in online traffic to your book – and that makes a huge difference in sales. The cost-to-benefit ratio works very much to your advantage.
| FREE CUSTOM COVER ($300 value) WHEN YOU START PUBLISHING |
Any author wants to make the best first impression with his or her cover when it hits the shelf or is posted on the web, and an exclusive custom cover, designed specifically for that book, is probably the single most important element in making that striking first impression.
A custom cover design not only gives authors a far greater chance for an immediately favorable response to their books, it also helps convey a sense of the style, tone and content inside, and that too has an immediate effect on potential buyers.
This option is normally $299 but if you start today it’s FREE! Just enter the promotion code
COVERJAN14 when checking out of your shopping cart while purchasing the popular Diamond package or the full color Pearl publishing package by January 31, 2014.
You’ll also receive the following with your Diamond package:
- Standard Press Release. $99 value included free when you order your Diamond publishing service today.
- Audio Excerpt. $99 value included free with your Diamond order today and a great way to share your voice with your readers, literally!
- E-Book Edition (pdf). $99 value included free with your Diamond publishing service.
- Cover Image. $99 value included free and a great way to enhance your cover.
- Spring Arbor additional distribution. $99 value to complement the Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Ingram availability already included with your Diamond publishing service.
All in all, you’re looking at over $800 of free stuff in January!
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- Free custom cover ($300 value) when you start publishing
| AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT & SUCCESS STORY |
“I have been very pleased with the professional treatment I have received during the publishing process. The representatives from Outskirts Press have been very knowledgeable. I am very impressed with your company. My book looks great, and I am very proud of that.”
Mark Reinsmoen is a Luther College graduate who retired from teaching after 36 years in the classroom. An Army infantry veteran of the Viet Nam War, Mark is an avid cyclist, and he has taken several bicycle trips through Norway, France, and the Western United States.
The early 1960s was a time of innocence and a time of promise as America was holding its breath, preparing itself for major changes that began emerging throughout the country. J-Hawk Nation paints a portrait of those magical years in a small rural Iowa community, as seen through the eyes of a sixteen-year-old boy. The heartfelt, nostalgic anecdotal stories recall milestones familiar to every reader…first love, the search for personal identity, questions that needed to be faced about the high school years and what lay ahead. But the soul of J-Hawk Nation is the extraordinary basketball team that is playing in its school’s final season, and the possibilities and dreams that open up when a sports columnist begins to write about the team and becomes involved in the team’s quest to leave a lasting legacy for the community.
– Mark Reinsmoen, author of J-Hawk Nation
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