Should You Change Your Published Novel’s Cover?

Cover Possibilities are Endless!

Let’s face it, the old adage about a book’s cover no longer holds true: people do judge a book by its cover.  Your novel might be the best out there, but if it doesn’t look good, who’s going to buy it?  The short answer: no one.  The long answer: family and friends.  And the general book reading public?  They’ll pass you by faster than a tourist skirting around a beggar with a bowl. 

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Sometimes Paying $30 to $50 is Worth It

I’ve got quite a bit of experience changing the covers on my published novels.  My first self-published novel, The Jongurian Mission, saw 3 different covers before I settled on my current cover.  And that cover itself may change again in the future.  

As far as I’m concerned, a book’s cover is one of the most important things you can have.  It’s the first thing people see when they encounter your book, and it’s often one of the deciding factors in whether they buy your book or not. 

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I see nothing wrong with changing a book’s cover if it isn’t working.  But how do you know if it isn’t working?  Here are 3 reasons you can tell:

• Your sales are low or non-existent;
  


• You made the cover yourself;
  


• Your cover doesn’t tell buyers what your book is about.
  

If you think that one or more of those 3 things might apply to your book’s cover, then it may be time for a change.

The Evolution of a Printed Novel’s Cover

I first self-published The Jongurian Mission on January 2, 2013.  I had originally finished the book in the spring of 2010, but didn’t know what to do with it.  So I left it to sit and collect electronic dust for more than two years.

When I finally decided to upload it onto Amazon I had no idea what I was doing.  And I had no cover to boot.  So what did I do?  Go out and hire a professional graphic designer to make me a top-notch cover?  No, I put out my crappy home-made map that I’d created with Microsoft Paint.  Feast your eyes on this:

Yes, that’s actually the image I chose as my book’s first cover.  Pitiful, isn’t it?  Well, thankfully I came to my senses a week or two later and got my act together.  My next cover was much better than my old, but it was still awful.  Drum roll please:

As you can see it’s an improvement, but not by much.  Hey, at least it looks like a cover now!  

But would you want to buy a book with that cover?  I didn’t think so.  It tells you nothing of what the book is about and clearly looks homemade.  I kept that cover for another few weeks before I once again got my act together.  I went online, found some images I thought represented a few scenes in my book, and did some editing with Paint and PowerPoint.  Here are the results:

Now, if you compare this cover to the first cover, which was a crappy map, I think you’d agree that it’s a vast improvement!  If you compare it to the brown homemade cover, which really resembled a paper grocery bag more than anything, it’s also a bit better.  But can this cover compete with the big dogs on Amazon?  I don’t think so.

I was violating the 3 reasons I listed earlier:

• My sales were low and if it wasn’t for family and friends, would have been non-existent;
  


• It’d be pretty obvious to most that I’d made the cover myself;
  


• And the cover didn’t do an adequate job of telling buyers what the book was about.
  

Getting Serious With My Cover (Sort Of)

I knew that I had to get someone to make me a cover.  After all, I saw myself as a writer, not as a graphic designer.  Thankfully by that time I was working online as a freelance writer and I knew people who could give me a cover cheap.

I wanted to keep my original image of the ships mainly because I didn’t know what else to do.  There’s a pivotal couple of chapters in The Jongurian Mission that take place at sea, and one ship is sunk by another.  So in that regard the cover was accurate, sort of.  The main problem is that I didn’t want buyers to think they were getting a book about sea battles.  So what did I do with the image?  Nothing, as you can see:

I had a guy in Europe make me this cover.  As you can see he didn’t do too much.  I had him keep the original image, as well as the black upper and lower borders.  The little gold banners on the top and bottom were a nice touch, as was the better font and color scheme.

But do you notice anything?  Take a good look at the title.  See it?  Yeah, that’s right, the title is misspelled.  The book is called The Jongurian Mission, not The “Joungurian Mission.”  I didn’t notice at all, so happy was I at getting a “professional” cover.

And do you know what I did next?  I enrolled it in Amazon’s KDP Select program and set it free for 3 days with that cover.  It wasn’t until someone on the Amazon KDP forum sent me an email over my website that the mistake was pointed out to me.  I felt like a complete idiot!

I immediately contacted the guy in Europe and had him fix the cover, as you can see below:

And that’s the cover you’ll see today if you choose to check out The Jongurian Mission on Amazon or Smashwords.  Is it the best it could be?  I don’t think so.  Should I change it?  Probably.  So why don’t I?  Laziness, I suppose.

The book is selling, though at a snail’s pace, although now that it’s permanently listed for free on Smashwords, with Amazon hopefully following suit on soon, I think I’ll leave it as it is.  Could I get more downloads if I changed it to something better, perhaps paying someone $100 or more to really give me something great?  I think so, most certainly.

But as you can see, this book has undergone many cover changes, all of them over a period of just four months.  I originally published the novel in January, 2013, and put on the current cover in April of the same year.

So that’s the evolution of an eBook cover.  Hopefully a few new authors can gain some insight from my experience, and not repeat my mistakes.  eBook covers, just like print covers, can always change and evolve; they’re certainly not set in stone.  Find what works, what doesn’t, and what ultimately makes you happy.  And then set your sights on your next novel, and what its cover could be.

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Update - Sept. 15, 2013

This post was originally put up in July, 2013.  About two months later I once again edited my published novel's cover, this time getting what I really think is a great cover!  Of course, a few months from now I might be putting up another.

I think after awhile you start to alienate people by doing that, however, especially if you've sold enough copies of the book.

This book is now listed as perma-free on Amazon and all the other retailers, so go ahead and get a free copy if you're interested.

Side Note - Oct. 24, 2013

I've been getting a few questions on what's the best way to utilize PowerPoint when making an eBook cover.  This is a good question, and I'm not the best authority.  What I do know is that you often have problems with the picture becoming distorted when you're re-sizing it.  I got around that problem by doing a print screen of my PPT book cover and then transfering that to MS Paint.  Here are some pictures involving the original covers of my Chinese historical fiction novels to give you an idea:

You can see this picture is too large for the PPT Landscape view, so I left it like it was.

Now all I've got to do is resize it. Not the best fix, but it is an option that allows you to not resize images too much.

Voila! A usable eBook cover, although I never had much luck with sales using these.