Posted November 2022.
We all know you should never judge a book by its cover. And we all know that everybody does, both metaphorically and literally. So I wanted to make sure my books had attractive covers I could be proud of.
But doubts nagged away at me. When the OnlineBookClub made The Price of Dreams their book of the day, they ran a focus group of readers. Some said they didn’t know what the book was about from its cover. One thought it was about the sacrifices all athletes have to make.
Earlier this year, I took one of Bryan Cohen’s courses for authors. As an aside, he said that not only must the cover tell the reader what the book is about, but through the use of colour, font and typical genre tropes, it has to let them know, at a subconscious level, exactly what the genre is.
So I did some research into political thrillers. These are some bestsellers in the genre.
Hmmm.
Predominant colour: blue. Typical font: very much no-frills, all caps. Common motif: single figure, often silhouette, often facing or running away. Image: a not-so-subtle indication of what the book is about.
I needed to change my covers. So I found me another designer on Fiverr (designby_nazia) and worked on coming up with covers that, I hope, not only give a not-so-subtle indication of the theme of the book but also fit the conventions of the political thriller genre. These are the results.
Let’s hope they work.
Paul Clark 