*Sorry for missing last week. Seriously. It was the first moving day. We were doing to do two more, but instead I’m putting myself through heck this week, so we only have one more this weekend. I want my life to resume a space in which I write, at least in the afternoon. I’m getting writing withdrawal with VIVID dreams, and no one wants that 😉 – SAH*

Once you’ve decided to go indie with your book, got it beaten into shape (the shape being one you’re not afraid of the public seeing. Its beach body, you could say) and made accounts with the various services that allow you to sell your book to said public, you have a very important task in front of you: the cover.

Look, there is one more thing at least as important for the selling of a book: the blurb.

There is a reason both these things are important and it’s not “because stupid Amazon demands that I put it up.”

The reason I’m starting with the cover is that, running a promo post for (mostly) indie writers on Sundays on my own blog, I despair of y’all understanding covers.

Look, it is perhaps inevitable that we who labor in words think that visual arts are a lesser branch, or that people who are buying our book should buy it for the words, or…

The worst part, the absolutely worst part when you tell a writer that his/her cover is inadequate, is when they’re confused “but why do I even need a cover? it’s an ebook!”

These are writers who SHOP for ebooks. But apparently never catalogued their own selection process to see what they need to convey with a cover.

Look, I’m out of it, so no practical examples today, but look at the image that illustrates this post: can you not see this as the cover of a noir mystery with a female detective?

That’s because the image is doing its job: cuing you as to what kind of post this is (Undercover!) and being sassy with it.

Your book cover is your packaging, and in any product the packaging is the first advertising space.

Your cover is supposed to do three jobs:

1- Tell people what kind of a book this is by showing genre, tone and slant. A romance cover is different from a mystery cover, is different from a science fiction cover, and all three are different from a travelogue cover which weirdly is what most indie authors slap on all three genres. A drawn, cartoonish cover signals funny, while an oil painting with beautiful detail signals serious or possibly lyrical. Etc.

2- Tell people you are competent, professional and don’t half ass things.

3- IF POSSIBLE, as a stretch goal, be intriguing enough that people can’t wait to open it and see the inside. This is a stretch goal because few books achieve it, indie or trad.

I’m going to give you homework in preparation for a test. This week I want you to go to Amazon and look at the best sellers in each genre (and particularly in your own genre.)

Next week, there will be a quiz. I promise your answers won’t go on your permanent record.

(Yes, there will be more detailed instructions once we figure the broad, obvious signals.)