Case Study: Book Cover for Intimacy On The Plate

Recently, we were selecting a cover design from many options for a cookbook composed entirely of aphrodisiac recipes. The book, Intimacy On The Plate, could have had many types of images which would have been appropriate for its theme: various ingredients, a couple enjoying a romantic meal, or even just ordinary kitchen utensils. The problem is such imagery, while thematically appropriate, would have been boring and unnoticeable among other cookbook covers.
To solve this problem, we decided to take a simple idea and make it interesting in a bold way. We took an image of the world’s most famous aphrodisiac food, the oyster, and arranged it to resemble the vulva of a woman’s genitalia. This eye-catching design worked fantastically well to draw attention to the book on Amazon, yet it didn’t betray the actual content of the book. Sex has always been an effective marketing tool for all kinds of products, but in our case it actually made sense and was done in an elegant way.
It was a somewhat risky move because there was no guarantee that our market would respond favorably to it. We didn’t want to get empty clicks from people who just thought the cover was intriguing without actually having any interest in the content, because increased sales and happy readers were our goals. In fact, with some of the advertising we use, we pay money every time someone clicks on the book ads we run. We don’t want them to click unless they are going to buy so we can recover that investment.
We also didn’t want to scare off our target audience. The key here was to make the cover not vulgar, as is often the case with sensual marketing images, but stylish and mature. We succeeded. The professional photo of an oyster with a pearl made the book looked luscious, expensive, and desirable. We tested the idea and received positive feedback from our large group of targeted beta readers. The cover delivered the message that it was an erotic cookbook with aphrodisiac foods and it stood out from other cookbooks.
