The old adage says, "don't judge a book by its cover." In actual fact, you can tell quite a bit by even a glimpse at the cover of a book. Publishers put quite extensive resources into getting the cover right because people do, and should, consider the cover. First of all, a cover can tell you whether a book is serious or not. Even as fiction writers, we want people to know whether our work is deadly serious or light-hearted. The cover is the first clue. Book covers can also tell you if the publisher knows what they are doing or not. Many self-published books are evident by their covers. Others tell you that the publisher doesn't understand the intended readership. Consider a book, fiction or non, that has an actual person's face on it. Often this is not a strong selling point. Some biographies do this, and that may be the one case where a good subject photo works for the cover. A poor one, however, can put readers ...
Blog of a struggling writer.