Does your book cover convert to your market? Not sure? Click here to submit your book cover to the Author Accelerate 31 Covers Promotion.
There’s a lot of talk about writing to market, and rightfully so. You’ve heard of writing to market, right? It’s the process of actually writing books that a lot of people actually want to buy. Because why write books that there isn’t a substantial audience of readers for? Makes sense, right? Author Chris Fox, who wrote the book “Write To Market” is correct when he says, “Many authors write, then market. Successful authors write TO market.”
But part of that, a very important part, is doing the same thing, and specifically making your cover to market as well. So let’s talk about how to produce a cover to a market, and why you need to do it.
Let’s take a few random top selling genres and examine the covers and see what we find, shall we?
Cover To Market Research: Romance
This genre is pretty easy to show as an example, however, it illustrates the point quite clearly. Take a look at this book entitled “Anaconda”. This book is currently the 820th most popular book on Amazon overall. According to the KDP Calculator, that means it is selling about 118 books a day. KDP Rocket says that the estimated monthly sales of this book is $2,690.
What About The Competition?
Notice a theme here? Like I said, this is an easy one. The covers that sell well in this genre all (usually) feature an attractive man with his shirt off.
There are other similarities. Some covers have couples. Notice the themes, the colors, etc… If you were writing and marketing a book in this category, why would you make sure your cover fits into this design theme?
Cover To Market Research: Cozy Mysteries
Again, take a look at the top covers in this popular genre. Particularly, look this book example.
This book is currently the 1,754th most popular book on Amazon overall. According to the KDP Calculator, that means it is selling about 95 books a day. KDP Rocket says that the estimated monthly sales of this book is $2,161.
Starting to get the picture? Designing a book cover to market makes sense, doesn’t it?
Cover To Market: Superheros
My friend Bryan Cohen did a complete redesign of his book cover (and title) to better market to his audience. On the left is the new cover, and on the right is the old cover.
To quote Bryan’s analysis. “My new covers matched the style of the Superhero genre and the branding is more consistent across the titles. Readers who love other books in the genre knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that my book was something they’d like.”
Cover To Market Research: Book Series
Here are some of the other books in the series. This also brings up an interesting point about cover consistency especially in a series. There needs to be cohesion in a series of covers and Bryan’s design team did a great job of doing just that.
Author Mark Dawson does a masterful job of cover consistency as well. Here are two of his series.
Cover To Market: Post Apocalyptic
Post-apoc is another “easy” genre to show examples from. Take a look at the cover from J. Thorn’s book “Barren”.
It’s the end of the world as we know it, right? Post apocalyptic book covers have very similar themes.
Does Your Book Cover Convert To Market?
The business of marketing and selling books is about conversions. A conversion can ONLY happen when someone first notices your book. And if your cover is not designed to convert to the market, you’re never going to maximize your conversions/clicks/sales, etc…
This all sounds like common sense, right? You’d be surprised how many authors try to reinvent the wheel and design a cover that is “out of the box” and different than the top-selling books in their space. That is a huge mistake.
Does your book cover convert to your market? Not sure? Click here to submit your book cover to the Author Accelerate 31 Covers Promotion.
