Yes Virginia, people DO judge a book by it’s cover. A great cover stops a book browser in his or her tracks during a lap around the local book superstore and makes the book browser want to learn more.

That is why one of the most difficult aspects of book marketing lies in the cover design.  An effective book cover will stop a book browser in his or her tracks and then, through color, images and typography, entice the book browser to pick up the book and, dare we hope, buy the book.  That’s a LOT to ask of a single image, but it’s what your book cover designer MUST be able achieve!

Over at Smashing Magazine, in the post Excellent Book Covers and Paperbacks

Book covers are hard to design and nice to look at. An effective book cover manages to catch human’s eye and convey the idea behind the book on one single page. However, it’s getting even harder: to make a book really hard to forget, designers need to design the cover in a unique, creative and striking way. That’s not that different from Web where it’s important to build a sound information architecture upon a rather restricted design layout.

The post includes a lot of “old school” book covers of best selling books from the past.

Charlie Johnson over at the Graphic Design Blog also has a great post on 12 Remarkable Book Covers - They Will Make You Grab the Book.

When I can’t say it better, I quote…. he writes:

An expressive cover page does not let the reader forget a book. Attractive book covers play an important part in making a person choose a book, while wandering in a bookstore looking for an interesting book.

It won’t be wrong to say that majority of people judge a book from its cover. These covers help the readers guess about the storyline of the book, so it needs to be attractive and revealing.

He then goes on to display 12 FANTASTIC book covers that would stop any book browser in his/her tracks.

If there’s anywhere in the book publishing process to try to save a buck or two, it isn’t in designing the cover!

Filed under: Easy Author Book Marketing, Marketing Basics for Authors, Selling Books, Successful Marketing Tactic, book covers, book marketing, covers, great book covers | 1 Comment

Ditto is a social entertainment guide that compiles lists… and one of those complied lists is titled “Rock Stars of Web 2.0”

The list includes such power players as Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net, Larry Page of Google, Ev Williams of Twitter and Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress.

However, the one individual that leads the list is Clay Shirky, a writer. Well, he’s more than a writer. He writes of himself on his site:

I have been a producer, programmer, professor, designer, author, consultant, sometimes working with people who wanted to create a purely intellectual or aesthetic experience online, sometimes working with people who wanted to use the internet to sell books or batteries or banking.

However, Clay’s most recent accomplishment is that he has written the book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.

The fact that a writer would appear as a Web 2.0 Rock Star shouldn’t surprise you. (The fact that he’s Number 1 there should give you a clue as to what he’s writing about.)

What may surprise you is that he launched a blog specifically to promote the book.

Now, you should understand that Clay’s website gets MONSTROUS traffic according to Alexa. He’s definitely leveraged that traffic to promote not only the book but also the blog. But you may be wondering, “Why launch a blog when the website gets so much traffic?”

Clay shares his thinking on the website:

Along with the book, I am launching a Here Comes Everybody blog, designed to both chronicle and extend the themes of the book. I’m delighted to finally have to book out, and to be able to begin blogging about it. In addition, this site collects many of my older writings, from which many of the themes of the book arose.

If one’s good then two are definitely better. Clay’s relatively newly launched blog already has a great Alexa ranking and his book is selling well on Amazon.

Contrast this to my experience of early this morning. I was logged into my Biznik account and trying to find writers for the web to include in my upcoming course “The 8 Week Power Blog Launch” (read more about it at Make My Blog Successful.) I found many writers, but few that had websites let alone blogs.

How, oh how I am going to tell if you can write if you don’t provide any examples?

When I first published my book Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results I thought books were Minor Sale transactions.  However, it didn’t take me long to realize that a book buyer expects to form a relationship with the author.  The book buyer anticipates spending valuable time with the author and as a result, even though the cost is minimal, book buying definitely qualifies as a Major Sale.

I quickly discovered that the people who wanted to buy my book were people who already “knew” me.  The way they were “introduced” to me was through my blog.  The could read what I had to say and see if I really knew enough to warrant the investment of time required to read my book.

I wasn’t familiar with Clay Shirky before seeing him top the ditto list.  After perusing his website AND his blog, I’ll probably pick up a copy of his book.

I promise you, I’m not the first or last book buyer to follow that path!

Filed under: Easy Author Book Marketing, For the Writer, Selling Books, Writing as a Business, blog, internet marketing, Selling Books, websites to sell books | Post a comment

If you’re an author, it’s essential that you have your own author website.  Most of the big chain book stores won’t stock a self published book but many self published authors have found success by taking their book marketing efforts online.

Mark Landsberg launched Self Publisher’s Place as a way for self published authors to promote their book.  If you want to list your book at the website Self Publisher’s Place, having your own book author website is a requirement for listing your book. When Mark asks for your URL, he’s not asking for your publisher’s URL.  He wants the address you’ve established to promote your book.

If you’re an author, it’s essential that you have your own author website to promote your book.  That website should have a domain name that is yours and yours alone.  Ideally, the domain name is either the name of your book or your author name.

Your book is your PRODUCT and you need to have a place where people can go to purchase your book.   That’s why every author should have a website to sell and promote their book.

Filed under: Author Web Sites, Easy Author Book Marketing, book author websites | Post a comment