Is it true that people judge (buy) a book by its cover? Marketing directors at major publishing houses would loudly answer, “Yes!” Whether that’s true or not can be debated, but it is definitely true that well-designed covers do, indeed, help sell books.
A beautifully designed dust jacket or cover may encourage a shopper to pick up a particular book from among its competitors on a display shelf, but then other factors come into play that help determine whether the book will actually deliver on the cover’s promise and cause the customer to carry his or her selection up to the cash register. Can the author’s name alone close the sale? If the author is not well known, will his or her credentials, as described on the back cover blurb or jacket flap, be convincing? How about other authors’ or celebrities’ quoted recommendations? Is the interior of the book— where the reader will spend many hours, even days—pleasantly and invitingly designed? Is the promotional blurb enticing enough to make the customer want to explore farther? What about the price: too high?
I had a conversation once about this topic with the sales manager of the mass-market paperback division of a large trade publisher. He told a story about how the company presented its line of romance novels. At that time covers were even more formulaic than they are today.
There was always—always!—a well-endowed and barely dressed damsel in distress in the foreground running away from a large castle or mansion behind her. It was nighttime. The predominant colors were dark, generally shades of blue to black. Within the castle, one lighted window appeared. “Only one. We tried it with two. Didn’t sell.”
A lot of work and research goes into cover designs, probably much more than you would imagine. A mass market paperback, and to a lesser extent a hardcover or trade size paperback, is a product, a commodity that depends hugely upon the impulse buyer’s decision to take it from the shelf or rack and buy it. Therefore, compelling packaging is essential.
Like other product manufacturers, publishers test their wares before focus groups. They try eye-catching gimmicks. Sometimes they even recall their first effort, strip off the covers, and rebind the book with a new, more appealing, high-concept cover. It’s not that unusual for a paperback publisher to release the same book simultaneously with two or even three or four different covers. Random House was one of the first to try this approach when they marketed their Bantam edition of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, one version bound in a bright shocking pink and another in bright aqua. I don’t remember which color sold best. What is important to remember, though, is that the books were so brightly colored that they were easily spotted on buses and trains and among stacks of other books. Every college dormitory in the country was probably home to dozens. When you see so many people carrying the same book, you want to own a copy, too. Right?
Publishers and the distributors who put their books into bookstores and high traffic racks in drugstores, groceries, and malls have to compete for space. If they can fill rack pockets and shelves with differently designed books, even though they’re all the same inside, they have a better chance of selling more copies. Some ideas that have tested well with focus groups and have been adopted by publishers are embossing (watch a customer pick up a book with an embossed cover and absently rub his or her thumb over the lettering); gold or silver foil-stamped titles; die cutting; and holographic illustrations, although this last method hasn’t yet been perfected to the point that whatever image it portrays is very sharp. How do you decide which books to pick up when you visit a bookstore?