YOU CAN'T JUDGE A BOOK...
We all know the saying. We apply it to anything around us where there is a possibility of underestimation. Indeed (if my memory from school literature lessons serves) the earliest version of the phrase was originally penned by George Eliot, in The Mill on the Floss, where Mr Tulliver describes the binding on a book… at least I now hope that is the first instance of its usage.
This was a time when books were for the wealthy and educated (often one and the same group of people) and almost all books were leather bound, ornately decorated with gold leaf and beautifully finished to the highest quality. The similarity between the outer visage of any tome in comparison with any other, made assessment of the content impossible… hence Eliot’s observation.
Time moved on and as education became more accessible, so books and reading material had to follow suit. Eventually, the traditional leather book binding was replaced with simpler methods and materials and the first ‘jackets’ were printed to around books. These were simple in their own right, but remarkable for potential buyers as publishers now had a medium which they could print upon.
Soon, images and information about both content and author were able to be utilised to aim books at target audiences… and as printing and binding methods moved on through the 20th century, printed-cover hardbacks and paperback books began to take over, although some hardback publishers still provide a cover jacket to this day.
So here we are. The 21st century is in full swing around us and there is a small shred of comfort to those of us who lived in a non-digital age, that we can (if we wish) still go out and buy a little bundle of paper and ink – otherwise known as a book – and actually read from the page. And this is important because more often than not, when we ‘wrinklies’ go out and buy ourselves one of these now alien, non-functioning, cumbersome items of education or entertainment, we still look at the cover!
Go on, admit it… when you go trotting around a book store, it’s the cover art that gets you first. We even try to second-guess the tastes of other people when we buy a book as a gift!
For some of us (myself included) that aesthetic ‘hit’ is a necessary encouragement to buy.
Now, I am guessing the more educated and astute amongst you will have said “but he got the quote wrong in the title!” and you would be quite correct. Eliot wrote “DON’T” judge a book by its cover… a phrase long adapted and used since in every conceivable form, depending on the user and the impact they were trying to convey. Alas, I am no different… and in a way, I have made a rather awkward rod for my own back by using that title, as I am about to begin the underlying subject of my post with a bit of a contradiction.
Digital publishing has opened up a whole world of possibilities for the average Joe and Josephine to write and publish their own material, but in the vast minefield of the digital world it is a long and complicated job to find good, suitable, free or cheap images to incorporate into cover art.
There are many who employ cover artists, but a large number have a tendency toward creating their own covers – especially when they first start out on the self-publishing road.
A simple search on the wibbly-wobbly-web will point you to an ever-growing number of sites where you can pick up royalty-free images, or pay a very reasonable amount for something a little better which may be more suitable to your book. The inevitable consequence of this is that you may occasionally come across a handful of publications which have utilised the same images. As more and more scribes take to the keyboard, this is almost unavoidable.
When I first began publishing, my covers were self-assembled… and whereas I thought I had hit the nail on the proverbial head with my efforts, it quickly became clear that I had a great deal to learn about cover design and the need to make things stand out from the crowd. In those early months, there were a few more established Indies (you know who you all are, my froggy friends) were immense in the help they offered to drag my work into a more acceptable state… and so I move toward my contradiction.
In the digital, self-publishing world, it is often the case that you CAN judge a book (and the author) by the cover they apply to their work.
First-time publishers fall into a variety of categories.
There are the ones who have a little capital and who have already spent a long time writing and perfecting their book, getting it edited, proof-read and re-edited at great expense. These are the writers who go and seek a cover artist, take their time to select the best offering, then make those tiny changes many would consider mundane; all in the pursuit of making the final, published article into a truly finished product.
Whether these authors make it big or not, their efforts usually go rewarded with decent sales and (if the stories are good enough) they build a reasonable fan base who will go on buying their books.
Next up, the ones with restricted capital who put a lot of effort into the book and take the time to find the images they want for the cover. If they can afford the licence costs, great. Otherwise, the search continues until the outlay is acceptable.
They usually get the best images they can afford and tend to take the time to learn how to blend and use a variety of existing stuff to get what they need.
It may be a little more of a lottery, but when they get the balance right they tend to sell well and get good recognition.
Mixed in with that second group are the writers who have enough artistic ability to create their own covers and do a good job of them. Their covers always feel more creative and you can tell they have put the time into the finished book.
Next; the group who really don’t concern themselves with copyright and paying for the images they find. Although I know these people exist, I genuinely have no idea how many of them are out there… I would like to think there aren’t many, but if you happen to be someone who simply downloads images and uses them without checking who owns them, I would ask you to please consider that you are using someone else’s hard work. Would you be upset if someone copied your book and sold it as their own? A little negotiation isn’t hard. And if it turns out you can’t really afford to use the image you want, at least you know long before you end up facing charges of breaching someone’s copyright.
The last group I will mention are those who really believe you can make that elusive fortune by writing a story and throwing it out into the great digital universe; mistaking their own belief that every reader out there will love their book (usually one containing five-to-ten thousand unedited words) for the simple fact that they have produced a document with dubious, unreadable content, thrown together a basic, terrible, amateurish cover and are now charging a small fortune for it.
Thankfully, these rarely pass muster.
Cover art is a tricky business. Everything from the colouring and the image content, down to the fonts used and their positioning on the image, is of critical importance. Get something wrong and you may well put off the readers you were trying to attract.
Arty-farty fonts which are difficult to read are not the best choice. Go to the book store and take a look at the covers on display… Crisp, smooth edges, nicely contrasting to the images, easy to read – even from a distance… but even this is fraught with danger.
Did you know that you can only scale a True Type font accurately? All other, lesser fonts will pixelate if you make them too large, or put them into WordArt… and herein lies a valuable lesson.
Did you also know that MOST True Type fonts are also subject to copyright? You can’t use them on a published product unless you pay for the privilege. And since Microsoft own a large number of these copyrighted typefaces, don’t live under the illusion that you can’t be prosecuted for using them.
To date, I don’t know of anyone who has been pursued for using a font illegally, but as with images… once the floodgates open…
The self-publishing world is one which offers massive flexibility to the independent author. You can effectively republish your work every 24 hours; you can edit or update any aspect of your work at any time. And while this is a big part of the appeal to the vast majority of us – allowing the freedom to update and correct errors pretty much as you continue to sell the previous one.
The down side? Readers and reviewers can be fickle. We don’t like being the guinea pig for the impatient author and our verdicts tend to reflect our findings. Once that bad review is there, it is near impossible to get rid of it.
And this brings me full circle.
Despite all of my earlier contradiction, these remarkable editing freedoms actually prove the old adage to be quite accurate. You really can’t judge a book by its cover… not any more.
The advent of digital publishing means that many authors have different covers for different national markets, and then further covers for their paperback versions of the same book… or, they simply update the cover every few months.
In most cases, this is done in the name of improvement and I know several authors who have changed covers only after reader feedback has recommended it, but less scrupulous writers will switch a cover as sales begin to fade, sometimes duping the reader into re-buying the same edition. Maybe I’m being cynical. Maybe that is not their true intent… who knows?
Basically, cover design is important. It is the shop window your potential customer looks at when selecting their next read. So, please, don’t sell them short. Put a decent amount of effort into your covers. Don’t just like them… love them.
When the reader comes along to judge your book, the cover will be one of the key factors they use to make their decision.
