Judging a book by its cover
Sept 2015
Being a debut novelist thrusts you onto a scarily steep learning curve and one of the many things I’ve learned is that a book cover is also called a jacket and IT IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. It turns out that old adage about judging a book by its cover is true, not least because our brains process images faster than words.
The jacket for my novel, Learning To Speak American, has now been finalized, after much tweaking and discussion and ‘we’re nearly there but not quite.’ Naively, I thought the decision would be based on artistic merit and how nice it looked, but no. The design of a book cover is a business decision based on identifying and appealing to potential readers.
My agent and publishers likened my writing to that of Victoria Hislop and Santa Montefiore so my book cover was designed in a similar style to theirs. The objective was to place my novel in an instantly recognizable category (quality women’s fiction) and allow for the fact that purchasing decisions are made in a matter of seconds.
Research shows a clear connection between great book covers and great book sales so every aspect of my cover was considered in detail: the background colours, the brightness of the main element (a vineyard), the size and style of the font et cetera. And then there was the all important ‘shout line.’ For those of you who don’t know (including me until last week), a shout line is a compelling phrase or sentence that aims to intrigue the reader. My shout line is ‘After the most painful loss of all, can one couple learn to love again?
So how much input did I have? To be fair to my publisher, Twenty7Books, they did send me several versions and patiently responded to my queries in a way that educated me without condescension. Designing a book jacket is more science than art, it would seem, which got me thinking about how self-published authors (without the experience and expertise of a publishing house behind them) make those decisions?
A few years ago I thought about self-publishing, albeit briefly. It is so difficult to get a book deal through traditional channels and you do hear great success stories about self-published authors (E.L James for example). These are the exception rather than the rule of course, but still.
Fortunately my agent did succeed in getting me a two-book deal and with my debut about to be published, it’s hard to imagine how I could have done everything myself. Two rounds of editing, two rounds of copy-editing, proofreading, jacket design and so on. And that’s just the work I know about – I’m sure there was a lot more going on behind the scenes. I know there are people and agencies who provide all these services but having been through the process myself, I can only admire those who go it alone and self-publish. There is so much you have to know in order to make your book a success and getting the right cover is one of the most important decisions of all.