It’s the Cover, Stupid!
How book covers sometimes let both the reader and the author down.
Never judge a book by its cover, they say, yet consumers do it all the time. Every publisher and bookseller knows that covers sell books. But do consumers also form expectations from just looking at the cover? Well, based on the results of some of the initial Jellybooks reader analytics data, we think they do.
I would like to discuss two recent Jellybooks cases in which the cover was central to the interpretation of reader analytics tests that we conducted with book publishers during the past 18 months
The first case regards a cover that was well designed and clearly aimed at grabbing book buyers’ attention both online and in physical bookshops. This particular cover had a single dominant color and “told a story” with a single image. It appears, though, that it was telling the wrong story.
Users who picked the title in one of our test reading campaigns told us in post-reading surveys that, based on the cover, they had expected to be reading a crime novel or perhaps a spy thriller. They were thus quite surprised to discover that the book was actually a work of non-fiction
The narrative described a slice of CIA history. The spy and crime themes were there, but not in the novelized form readers had expected. As a result, the drop-off in reader engagement that we measured during the initial chapters was swift and sharp (over 60 percent) once readers realized that this was not the book they had expected.
We draw two tentative conclusions:
(a) when presented with a choice of 20 titles or more to choose from, test readers may be solely guided by the visual cues the cover provides and not the synopsis of the book, which requires more time to read and absorb, and
(b) covers shape reader expectations about the book’s content that feeds through to completion rates. The book cover is not just packaging, but a visual summary of the book itself and that summary needs to be accurate.
The second example comes from a different reader analytics promotion. Once again, readers were allowed to choose from up to 20 titles being tested, but instead of being able to choose only one title, test readers were allowed to make to five choices. One title frequently chosen, though rarely as first or even second choice, was a psychological thriller with a somewhat quirky cover: a cat staring at the consumer. Astounding, though, were the results for this book relative to its sales.
The book was a recent debut novel for which the publisher had held high hopes. However, sales were well below expectations. In a rare case of “what went wrong”, the publisher investigated whether the content or the publisher’s marketing was the culprit. The reader analytics showed that the content, and hence the author, were not responsible for the sub-par sales performance:
(i) The book had an exceptionally high completion rate: more than 75 percent of those who tried the book finished it — a rate achieved by fewer than 5 percent of books that Jellybooks has tested.
(ii) The thriller had a very high velocity. Readers were glued to the pages, and a majority read the book from start to finish in just a few days.
(iii) The book had an excellent recommendation factor based on the Net Promoter Score (NPS) concept. Readers were strong promoters of the book and recommending it to their friends.
However, many test participants also noted that the cover was “weird.” Readers indicated that they really enjoyed discovering the book, but that based on the cover, they would never have picked it up in a bookstore. Well, why not?
The cover was clearly outside the genre conventions readers were familiar with and accustomed to.
The digital book jacket did not call out to the kind of reader who was looking for edge-of-the-seat suspense drama. A cat on the cover, no matter how vicious the feline stares at you, just does not hold the promise of an edge-of-the-seat psychological thriller. It was a case of great content let down by its packaging. In other words, the cover designer had been a bit too creative.
So what are the consequences?
In the first case, the publisher learned that being too smart with the cover can backfire. The cover drew people’s attention but then disappointed relative to the expectations the cover raised. The content was great, but the wrapper let it down. Those who finished the book gave it high marks, but it seduced many into trying the book for which the content was “not their cup of tea”. And those readers would tell others “that is not the kind of book you want to buy.”
In the second case, the publisher is now considering how to relaunch the book with a new cover (and a lower price to draw attention). A relaunch is, of course, never an easy proposition, especially as scarce publicity and marketing resources are often soaked up by the never-ending line of new books to be released.
Now, other reasons may have been behind the poor sales, like the launch of another book overshadowing the launch of this book or plain bad luck, but it was certainly not the content.
The best solution is to try to get it right the first time by picking the right cover. The effort spent up-front is small compared to lost sales or corrective action later.
But how do you know if you have the right cover? Test it! More on that ina future post.
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If you are reader, who wants to participate in a test reading campaign, you can sign up at Jellybooks (www.jellybooks.de if you are a German speaker) and we will send you an invite to the next test reading campaign in your country.
Note: All the data reported in this post was collected in test reading projects financed by Innovate UK. EPub 3 files were modified with candy.js, a small piece of reader analytics software that is embedded into ebooks, so that Jellybooks can record and store the user’s reading behavior offline. Supported reading apps include iBooks, Adobe Digital Editions (ADE), Vitalsource Bookshelf by Ingram and selected Android reading applications such as Azardi, Ebook Reader and Mantano. The data stored within the eBook file is extracted when the user clicks the “Sync reading stream” button at the end of a chapter or the end of the book. All users are informed about the presence of the analytics software and reading data is only extracted with the consent and assistance of the reader.
