Don’t Judge a Book By Its Cover…

Or: rules that will never be followed.

That tired saying. While its sentiment isn’t wrong when applied to examples other than books, no writer should go into self publishing thinking their book won’t be instantly judged by its cover. You do it, I do it–the market does it.

I’ve seen my share of covers that make me not want to touch the book with a ten foot pole, and I’m sure you have too. But I’ve also seen many books that jump out at me because of… its cover. What a novel idea. The cover is the first thing a prospective reader sees, so maybe it should look good.

In the self publishing space, I’ve seen far too many covers that are objectively bad and some that make me want to cringe.

Thing is, we judge books by their covers without even knowing it. Something pulls you to look at a book a split second longer than another. What is it? Unless you’re actively fighting your mind’s ability to make snap judgements at a glance, you’re likely to look right over that newly released book with the blurry art and Helvetica font title.

You’re much more likely to land your gaze upon…

… Something like this.

Yes this is a shameless plug for my upcoming novella. But we’re talking about book cover, so how could I not add mine into the conversation?

You can pre-order my book here, by the by.

Speaking of bad book covers:

^ This is the cover I whipped together in Canva a few years back. See I had released Intersection on a writing/reading site. I knew that having a cover was better than not, and so this abomination was born.

I got a lot of good feedback on my story while it was available on that site. And I may have been content leaving it there, but the platform has not innovated since I started using it. I would’ve hoped for a way to connect with readers over there, but there is none.

That being said, my old cover was not good. You only need to look at the two side by side to see which you’d be more likely to read.

And they’d be the same story.

Fact is, if your book doesn’t have a professional looking cover, it’s not going to sell. So investing in a good cover is a key investment in your book.

This has been my TedTalk.

I’m still pretty swamped with stuff right now (I’m currently doing more research into how to get people to buy my book, so I’ll be busy until I crack the code), so I’m not sure what I want to write about tomorrow. Another surprise post! I’ll think of something, don’t worry.

Until then, I hope you have a wonderful day,

Colin J Switalski

*This was originally posted on my old blog on June 13th, 2023.