Tag: book design

6 Tips to Make You and Your Books Stand Out!

Posted on | by Julie Schoerke

Book Tips Kapow

In the tsunami of books being published, what are some things you can do to really make your book stand out and pop off the shelf?

  1. A book absolutely is judged by its cover! Don’t go cheap. Hire someone who has a great track record of creating book covers. It’s a specialty, and your book deserves to be the “best dressed.” Remember, a cover is just to pull in someone browsing books and get them to read the back cover or pick it up in a shop. It’s not meant to tell the whole story. Intrigue the would-be buyer to lean in closer.
  2. The synopsis or back-cover copy is really important! Don’t allow it to be an afterthought as you’re racing to get it to press. Sometimes it really requires a third-party perspective to write what the heart of the book is . . . as an author, you may be too close to it. Work with someone who has read the book and is involved in the book industry in some way.
  3. Blurbs! Those sentences on the front and back cover of the books by New York Times bestselling authors, literary magazines or celebrities are good to have. People in the industry have mixed feelings about how successful a blurb is in selling a book. But some blurbs can push that would-be reader over the edge to take a chance. A great twist on who to get blurb your book: a bookseller (name and bookstore included) is a really cool blurb to bag!
  4. Releasing your book in November or December to “catch the holiday sales” is a poor idea. Unless your last name is Patterson, Clark or Grisham. If you have control over your publishing date, hold it to the new year. That way the ISBN and copyright dates stay fresh for many months, rather than being “last year’s news” just as people are learning about it. Also, there’s a whole lotta noise about all kinds of things at the end of the year, and you want to have a little oxygen for your book when it comes out.
  5. For the good of your book, make sure you’ve come up with a plan prior to releasing it into the world. Have a website. Have a social media presence. And brand all these as you, not the title of your book—unless you are positive beyond all reason that you will never again in your life write another book. It’s weird to see authors’ profile pictures as a book cover on social media when they have a different book coming out . . . or they forget to update their website. Make it easy on your fans to find you.
  6. And now, the really BIG way to make your book stand out . . . write a GREAT book and edit it within an inch of its life. Most people wouldn’t invite 100 people for dinner without working out the menu and making all the dishes several times to be sure they are the best you can present. Same with a book. Don’t put something out that is half-baked. Many of the authors we work with have at least 4 feet stacks of manuscript pages they whittle through to get an 80,000 word final manuscript.

Cover-to-Cover

Posted on | by Courtney Stevens | 1 Comment on Cover-to-Cover

Book Cover

“According to Hubspot, 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text.”[1] This is brain language for Your Cover Matters. More than your title. Maybe more (initially) than your content. People really do judge books by their covers. At the very least, they often decide to purchase a book based on cover.

So, if you are self-publishing, what can you do to make sure that your book cover is transmitting the “Buy me. Buy me,” message?

Here are 3 tips you might not have considered:

  1. Don’t just think about your target audience. Consider your target generation.

According to Stauss and Howe, who coined the theory on generations[2], here are the current generations in the United States:

  • Greatest Generation – 1930-1946
  • Baby Boomers – 1946-1964
  • Generation X – 1965-1984
  • Generation Y/Millennials – 1982-2004
  • Generation Z- 2004 – Current

If you take time to familiarize yourself and research your target generation prior to designing your cover, you will notice facts about what each generation prizes, things they buy/don’t buy, causes they care about, images they appreciate, etc. Applying this information to your cover might auto-attract your consumer.

  1. Your book cover is your handshake with the consumer.

Consider an image that represents your overall content, but does not feel like an inside joke to your potential reader. i.e. My working title for Faking Normal was once 23. While 23 was a powerful metaphor within the book, it was ultimately one that you had to read the book to understand. Faking Normal was a much broader invitation that made people say, “Faking Normal, I do that everyday. I wonder …” 23 wasn’t an invitation; it was a middle school clique that excluded the consumer. Covers can’t afford to be middle school cliques either. They must invite the consumer into the work from across the room.

  1. Ask yourself “What cover would make me buy my own book?”

I suggest you try this exercise: Go to a bookstore. Imagine you’re going to beach or getting on an airplane and you need to find something to read. Go pick up ten titles based on the covers. Lay them out and snap a photo of them with your phone. (Return or buy the books.) Go home and analyze that photo. What are you attracted to about those books? What made you pick them up? You can’t steal those book covers, but you can look for markers among them to include in your cover.

 

[1] http://commerce-futures.com/ecommerce/blog/the-visual-generation–the-ecommerce-revolution-tips–technologies-for-victory.html

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory#Generations:_The_History_of_America.27s_Future.2C_1584_to_2069