“You Can’t Judge A Book By Its Cover”…and other fallacies

You Can’t Judge A Book By Its Cover

We’ve all heard that old aphorism…”You Can’t Judge A Book By Its Cover”-probably while you were in grammar school.

It used to mean: don’t just to conclusions based upon a first impression.

Flash forward a given number of years and here we are-– and many of us are trying to sell our writing; a book (or three!) and suddenly the cover has become so, so important. The burgeoning of Amazon publishing and Amazon’s rise from scrappy little book seller to purveyor of pretty much anything has changed the book landscape probably permanently…I was going to say “for good”, but that implies permanence and that Amazon is a good thing and the jury is still out on that last bit… I hate to see small neighborhood book stores struggle to keep their doors open, for it is in the bookstore NOT the website that one might stumble upon something new that you might never have considered. -But the cover beckoned and you skim the first few pages or read the blurb on the back and presto- that book goes into your “I’ll buy this” pile.

“Can’t judge a book by its cover”? Not for lack of trying these days. The cover is what teases the potential reader to read a page or two, to see if he/she likes the writing style or approach. The cover is the Pusher; the Pusher for your Product. The cover teases: “The first taste is always free…”

In a bookstore you can browse as long as you like – until they shut off the lights anyway- which makes browsing infinitely more difficult…On Amazon et al, the potential reader is allowed to read a few pages and then must decide. I much prefer the “analog” version (though there is a lot to be said to being able to “carry around 10-11 books in your “Kindle” or whatever).

The cover is your- “Hi! How’re ya doin’?” as the reader scrolls past myriad books (and their covers!) offered.

The cover must hint (or shout!) what the reader will find inside the confines of the cover of the book offered. And hopefully “this concept, action or idea” will appeal to a great many readers thus inciting a “best seller”.

So, in effect, we are asking our readers to do that exactly: Judge THIS book by its cover (-and buy it!).

However, you drive a Chevy, and I drive a Ford- or a Tesla! -and none of us will ever be able to explain exactly why, to the satisfaction of the other, thus proving that everyone’s taste is individual- as individual as humor, or food, or anything else that makes each and every one of us unique.

On second thought, since most writers are broke, working two jobs and still just getting by, perhaps I should have said: “I drive a 10 year old “beater” and you drive a 15 year old “beater”…”

For instance, take that garage band down the street, playing that Prince tune for the tenth time in a row. They have dreams of one day filling an arena with cheering fans? Yeah well, the likelihood of that is less than 1 in a million. It takes a special “something” to rise above the noise and clatter of all the other bands and become really popular. I recently saw a Grateful Dead cover band. They stuck to the “canon” of core Dead tuunage, yet, in the end, they were nothing more than a “bar band”. And unsurprisingly it is the same for writers, though we can do our “thing” from the relative comfort of our home instead of a skanky tour bus, and that’s not nothing. It’s probably easier to stay in touch with a cover designer from home as well, as you put the finishing touches on the cover of your work, in hopes of becoming a household name for your breakthrough novel, and begin imagining that you’re fielding calls from TV shows who want to interview you.

So how do you find an image or a concept that appeals to a broad array of potential buyers? Entire books have been written on that subject! –And to no one’s surprise, there doesn’t seem to be any real consensus, as we are all unique and therefore difficult to cubbyhole and “pitch to”. But don’t despair…I said “difficult” not “impossible”. Others have done it, so I know it’s not “impossible”.

You will try…and fail, and try again, and hopefully you will find that perfect image, font, treatment that causes the hurried and jaded viewer to slow down, pause and think: “This looks interesting…”

This might be obvious to any and all, but I hadn’t heard anyone say this so, I figured that I would…

You can’t judge a book by its cover?  Hah! Well, that’s only if me and my cover designer haven’t done our job well… Judge away, and I hope that you like it!