Good and Bad Book Covers - Is Your Book Cover Good?

Your book launches, you're feeling so good about it. You have a clear, ideal reader, a cool hook, and you've invested time, energy and money into getting it edited and designed. You launch and there's some sales, but then it fizzles out. You run ads, but nobody clicks on them. You call stores, but nobody wants to carry your book. If your book isn't selling and you're wondering if it's your book cover holding you back, this video is for you. Why, hello there. I'm Julie the book broad from Book Launchers. We're your professional, professional self publishing team, helping you write, publish, and promote a nonfiction book that grows your brand, builds your business, and makes you money. The best part? You keep all the rights and royalties. We're providing you emotional support and expert guidance along the way. And we care more about you, your book, and your success than anyone else. Okay, so here's the thing. Even if you hired a professional cover designer, your cover may not be as good as it needs to be. And if you didn't hire a professional cover designer, I can almost guarantee your cover isn't as good as it needs to be. Bad covers happen for a lot of reasons. Some fairly common reasons. You didn't have enough money to hire a pro to begin with, or you thought you could save money by using a cheap service to create your cover. And to your untrained eye, your cover looked good enough. Number two, you designed it yourself and you couldn't see the issues. Or three, you had a family member to sign it. Or number four, the book was written to establish you as the expert, so it made sense that you put yourself on the COVID even though you're not famous or well known. Or the final one, your cover wasn't bad necessarily, but it just didn't stand out or work in its genre. A bad cover is not something you should feel bad about unless you don't take action to fix it. How do you know if it's your cover holding you back? Well, the challenge is you can't know for certain, but here are some signs that your cover is holding your sales back. Check. Your concept is good. People are genuinely interested and excited about it, but that isn't translating into the sales you're seeing for your book. Check. When you run Amazon ads, you're getting the impressions, but you're not getting clicks. This is a big sign. Your title or your cover are off for the audience that it should be appealing to. Check. You are told by media reviewers or other outlets that they like your pitch, but they won't feature or show your book cover. And sometimes they won't tell you this directly, but you can read between the lines. But this is also where it's helpful to have a third party pitching you because they often will tell the third party that another one. Check you've consulted professionals and they suggest your cover has design issues. Or check you put your book cover in the lineup with the top 20 or top 10 books in your genre and it either blends right in or stands out for the wrong reason, which can be it looks amateurish, doesn't fit the genre, has your picture on it when nobody else has a picture on their cover, or vice versa. You don't have a picture, but everybody else does. In the case of Bob Workman, who was kind enough to share his story with you. Hang on one sec. For that, he had a cover design made up that he loved. It fit with his previous book launch that he'd done 20 years ago that had been really successful. We were a little nervous because it had gun imagery on the COVID and that could be challenging in today's day and age. But his book is called Hired Gun 2, and it's a fabulous book for great salespeople to avoid getting fired and to navigate the politics. And he was determined to use that cover. The. So we tweaked it and we went with it. But after a few months, we ran into a few issues. The biggest two from that checklist before were that Amazon ads were not performing, we were not getting clicks, and we'd actually had a few media pitches where they loved the pitch, but one actually said they wouldn't show a book with a gun on the COVID on their show. So we approached Bob about a cover redo, and to his credit, he was all for it. And here is his unboxing of the new cover and a reveal of his old covers.

What it do? Everybody stay tuned for a real important announcement. Get out of here. Hey, get ready for this. This is the unboxing of Hired Gun 2 Part 2. Take a look at this. We just got this box in. And this is the brand new improved cover design for Hired Gun 2. This time it's so big. A real knife. We want this one. So let me. Let me cut this baby open. This is the BR new cover design for Hired Gun 2 Part 2. Why? Because I insisted with our wonderful publishers that this was the design that would work, that this is the best design. I knew it because I had done this book and it was a very successful book cover design, except nobody knew if this was fiction or nonfiction because it doesn't say anything except Hired Gun. This one said all kinds of good stuff on it, but it's got some old geezer on the front holding an old shotgun like artillery. Our wonderful editors and publishers came up with this, which I think is far superior to this old one. New one. I'm excited. I really like this. And guess what? Now we are in airports. As you're traveling, check us out. We're in Miami at booklink. We're at Love Field and Epley Airfield at Hudson's Bookstores there. And we're in Anchorage, Alaska at Mosquito Books. And we're also talking to people at DFW, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Denver, JFK, LaGuardia. So about to be bad and nationwide as ZZ Top would put it. But I just wanted to let you know we have brand new cover design. Same book, same everything except the outside. We just gave it a new skin. That looks a whole lot better, I think.

Don't you?

Do you think that looks better? I think it looks better. Thank you very much. Sayonara baby.

Thank you so much for sharing this, Bob. And I'm so pumped for your new cover. And as you heard on the video, it's already paying off as he's getting widespread airport distribution for his book and we're rebuilding the Amazon ads. So we'll be to tell you later how those Amazon ads are performing with the new cover. A great cover stands out but fits the genre, appeals to the ideal reader and looks well done. It will create curiosity and make people pick it up and go what is this book? Check out some of my favorite covers from recent launches. Here's Blow the lid off Malibu Burning. Mean people suck. Be the hero of your life and legacy. Oh, these are all amazing covers and the books have performed really, really well. Bad covers happen and if you know you have a great book but it's not selling well despite a lot of effort to create that great book that will appeal to an ideal reader, a new cover could make all the difference in your results. Have you done a cover redo? What did it do for your book sales? Let's chat about it below. And when you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some sweet book launcher swag like this oh so soft journal. And you'll be one step closer to being one of my beloved YouTube besties like Ron Neitzel, Veronica Pryor, Fascian Studio 38 and the fabulous Kevin McGuire. Big virtual hugs. Thank you so much for your comments. Likes and shares. You make my day and many times my week by being here. Like this video? Go ahead and give this video a thumbs up. It may or may not do anything on YouTube, but it makes me feel good. And that's worth it, right? And while you're here, subscribe to the channel and turn the notifications on so you don't miss the amazing videos I have coming up every Tuesday and Friday. All right, what are you doing still listening to me here when you could be right there learning about the table of contents and how to make it super duper awesome, which is essential to selling your book once your cover grabs their attention. Or you could be over here on this video that YouTube thinks you really, really must see. Either way, there's so many great things to share, so let's keep this conversation going, shall.