Reblogged from TRSA:

By now I’m sure most of you know how important a book cover is for selling books. I’d say that the three most important things in getting someone to plunk down cold hard cash for one of your books are: 1) word of mouth, 2) your book cover, and 3) your blurb. However, you’re not going to get any word of mouth unless you first sell a few books, and to do that you’ll need to have a dynamite and unique cover … and a great blurb. But the cover has to come first.

I’ll stipulate that you’ll get people to your sales page on Amazon through marketing, social media, etcetera. But what’s the first thing they’re gonna see? That’s right, an image of your book. And what about the casual browser looking for a book in a genre they like? What are they gonna see as they scroll down the page? It’s not the title of the books and it’s not the number of reviews or the star average. It’s the cover image that draws in the eye.

Here’s a fun fact: Amazon has 32.8 million different book titles up for sale (1.2 in the kindle store). That’s a whole lotta competition.

I’m here today to advocate for having a unique book cover. And I’m talking from experience. Below are three images. The middle one is my first book. Now see what I saw years later as I was browsing through Amazon.

Continue reading at The Story Reading Ape