A Book By Any Other Cover: How Cover Art Affects Success

Don't judge a book by its cover. A great sentiment in theory...not so much in practice.

In this episode of A Book and A Dream, Megan O'Russell discusses the importance of cover art, including how changing the cover art of a series (Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lunar Chronicles) affects our reading experience.

Links mentioned:
Sleepy Fox Designs: https://www.sleepyfoxstudio.net/

Cinder Cover: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36381037-cinder

Scarlet Cover: https://www.amazon.com/Scarlet-Book-Two-Lunar-Chronicles/dp/1250768896/ref=nodl_

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

You could be like, well, yes, I write steamy romance, but my girl is a Baker. You can't put a sexy cupcake on your book cover. Welcome to a book in a dream with Megan O. Russell and author's adventure and writing, reading, and to being an Epic sand girl. Hello, my name is Megan O. Russell and welcome to episode 15 of a book and to dream. Today I want to talk to you about cover art. I know we all hear about books covers don't judge things we do, we just do. It's just the honest truth and the sad yet kind of awesome thing is that in this day and age with so many books in every marketplace, covers are more important than ever. As an author, you have like a tiny, tiny fraction of a second to get a reader to notice your book before they noticed the title before they look at the blurb, before they look at the reviews on Amazon, the first thing that they're going to see is your cover. And it's weird because you think like, Oh well if my cover really needs to stand out I should do something weird. But we as people are trained to like psychologically respond to certain things a certain way. So you kind of have to make your cover fit in with everything else in the genre. F everyone in your genre. Let's say you were a romance artist or a romance author because it's, it's the easiest one to talk about it. Let's just be realistic. You're a romance author, you write steamy romance, you're going to have a picture of a man or a woman with lots of muscles, probably like a little bit of sweat on the cover. That's what you'd expect. Now you could be like, well yes I write steamy romance but my girl is a Baker. You can't put a sexy cupcake on your book cover because people are going to scroll past it and be like, Oh this is like a cute romance and then you're going to end up either with no readers or the wrong readers who will then, you know, give your book horrible reviews because it's too dirty for them. Cause they thought it was a sweet romance and then you know your book is doomed by the Amazon algorithms forever so you have to fit in the niche. You have to fit the expectations, but while at the same time standing out enough in the crowd to make people see you first. It's a lot. That's a lot of pressure to like fit in and stand out simultaneously and then you have to like really research like well what are the exact tropes in you know, vampire dystopian or what are the exact tropes in fantasy where like there's an assassin because they're on. Then there are like tiny little underlies that go in those as well. One of the best things about being an indie author is that I now have control over how my covers are done. I get to pick the artist, I get to do all of those things. I get to talk to her, I get to email her and my cover artist is amazing. I love her sleepy Fox designs has done all of the new covers that I have since I've gotten Indy. She's absolutely amazing. She's also amazing to work with because I sent her descriptions. There's even a list. There's a list for this, uh, of things that I need. The latest one that I sent her for a cover, the book has not been announced yet, is I need a drippy sadness crown. I am an author. Can you tell, I describe things as drippy, sadness, crown. Luckily she thinks that these things are funny and doesn't just say you're, you know, crazy and I don't want to work with you anymore. Other emails I have sent her in regards to wrath and wing. I opened your email on, the first thing I said was, damn, that's a sexy cover. So, you know, we get along quite well. It's great. Uh, and also for the girl without magic, awesome one with the amount of psychological abuse, I just don't see her that relaxed because you know how your heroin stands on the cover is super important because it's going to tell people like, wait a second, is she fierce or is she like a damsel in distress or what is it? These are so many things to consider and I won't lie to you like I'm so lucky to have sleepy Fox designs doing my covers. I will link to her below because if you're an author, she's amazing. You want her to do to recover. She's fantastic but it's hard for me. I don't do well with like visual change. If someone gets a haircut, it's going to take me like two weeks before I can figure out who they are. Again, I just stare in there like blinking and fear like it's stranger danger from kindergarten and so switching the covers of my books was really tough for me because I loved my original tethering series covers. I love my new covers, but there was this very big association in my mind of like this is what this book looks like and so transitioning to covers that I absolutely adore was still hard for me. During my traditional publishing days. There was a hug, it was an interesting cover incident. It was like 10 o'clock the day before book release day, 10 o'clock at night, not in the morning where like reasonable people are doing things and starting projects. 10 o'clock at night, the day before release day when I finally got the first mockup of a book cover for my release that was coming out the next day. That's, that's not a thing. This should be done like way far in advance. But you know, I had a contract so I just kind of had to go with it and I get this book cover and there are tentacles on the book cover like, like an octopus tentacles. Like I don't, I don't know why there was like a, a sea creature on the cover of this book. There was absolutely no sea life in the book. There was no reference to see life in the book. And so I email him back and I'm like, well good to have a mockup when the book releases and you know ours. But what are the, what are these tentacles? And the response I got was, well, there's magic in the book. And when I think of magic, I think tentacles. Yeah. So I love getting to correspond with people myself and give them ideas of things that, you know, have something to do with the book I've written so that when the covers come out, they give readers a decent idea of what the book is about and it doesn't just look like sea monsters. Yeah, it was, that was a really weird one. Now, as a reader, I'm still not okay with the cover change designs as I see a book and it's, you know, this is my cover, Harry Potter with the broomstick and you know, the flying and the Quidditch and then I go back, you know, with one of the other 50 covers that Harry Potter has had, it doesn't look like the same book. To me. It looks so different because now all of a sudden it's just a train. Harry's not there at all. And I'm like, wait a second. Did they rewrite the book? Is the Hogwarts express the chosen one? I'm so confused right now and I understand, I understand why others do that. It's about rebranding. It's about creating interest. It's about reaching a new niche market. It's about losing rights to your cover. You know, like I did and I'm sure eventually in my career, even if it's not, you know, Hey I'm leaving trad publishing, I'm going to get all new covers and reinvent myself as an indie author. I'll probably get new covers for books within the next few years and I'll just have to, you know, deal with the anxiety. But I did come across a series recently. I was recommended to read the lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer and I had seen the cover for cinder before in the bookstore on Amazon, wherever. And I'll actually, I have the paperback here. So I picked it up because going to do a podcast interview with someone who runs a podcast about Marissa Meyer. Cool. And I had always avoided reading cinder. And for those of you listening to the audio only version, there's going to be a link in the show notes that will let you know where you can see a picture of the cover I'm talking about cause I don't want to leave you out. So on the cover, it's got the red shoe, it's got the ankle and it's got like the little bionic dude. And so I'd always seen cover and been like, I'm not interested. Like whatever this is is not for me. It's, it's like a weird Nazim punk steam punk. Like it's going to be some glorious little dainty, pretty girl running around, not my thing. So I got the book, read the book. It looks really good. Look is not about like a dainty little girl who happens to have a bionic ankle. It's actually like about a really kicked buck girl who does things and saves the world and does not constantly running around in heels, which is great for me. That's what I love. But based on this cover, I would never have read it unless I had to read it for an episode of a book in a dream. So then I liked that book. I decided I wanted to move to the next book. They've rebranded. Don't worry. This one for the audio only listeners, there's going to be a link to this cover in the show notes too. So this is the next book in the series. Scarlet new rebranding cover. Look at this. This is so much more adventurous. This is actually like what this series is about. Like ah, a little dystopian and a little grungy. But look how exciting it is and look at that girl like I would want her in my team on the zombie apocalypse I like, I would want her around. That's great. So this book I would read, this book will not willingly read. So I guess even as much as I don't like change, sometimes it's really for the best. Now on a personal level, I'm kind of really upset because I got this before the rollout and now there's this and now my books in the series don't match. So they're going to be next to each other on the bookshelf and they don't match at all. But you know, that's a very privileged problem to have. I have a bookshelf with lots of books, so the fact that they don't match, I adjust. I'll deal with it. So do you as a reader, when your favorite series changes covers, does it seem like jarring to you? Do you feel like you don't know what's in the new cover like me? Like did you rewrite the book? I'm so confused. Or do you love finding new covers? Do you collect the different covers? Do you find yourself drawn to books that you wouldn't have read before based on new covers? What are your opinions like? I really want to know first of all because I as a reader do have such strong opinions on it and also because I as an author would love to know like if I were to go back in and do a new set of covers for one of my series, would you be upset if you had half of them in one set of covers and half of them and another set of covers or does it not matter to you? Do you ever find yourself completely avoiding series because there are too many covers out there and you don't know what edition you're going to get when you order from Amazon. I would love this knowledge. It's important knowledge for me and at hustle think it's fascinating. So drop me your comments right below. Don't forget to like subscribe, follow, share, share the videos. Why not spread the love more friends? We did some more opinions on covers, which is great because book covers are so important and I will see you all next time.