RW Peake – Why Book Covers are So Important

Why Book Covers are So Important

by RW Peake

We live in an increasingly visual age, and nowhere is the visual more important than on the Internet. Stop to think about how many purely text-based websites are out there; now ask yourself how many of you are regular visitors to that site? And on the Internet, when browsing for books, the impact that a great cover can’t be underestimated. I am one of the lucky people to have a GREAT cover. For my very first book, as a complete unknown at that who had never established any kind of presence as a writer, I stumbled onto what is the equivalent of the winning ticket to the lottery, in the form of my cover artist.

I had been messing around trying to come up with my own cover, and while I’m not completely untalented when it comes to the visual arts, what I had created was………….okay. Barely okay. When I was showing it to the woman who was not only my professor for a Creative Writing class I was taking, but became my de facto editor for the first part of the first book, her reaction was polite, but hardly enthusiastic. Instead, she suggested that I talk to a friend of hers, and of all the lucky accidents that have happened to make this book successful, this was the happiest and the luckiest. From the very first cover that Marina Shipova showed me, to the version that is now the cover of my book, I immediately knew that I had hit paydirt. And that has been borne out by the reaction to the cover, which I used as a springboard to go from 45 books sold in my first month, to more than 600 the next. It’s true that the cover might draw readers to your book but it’s the words that keep them there, if you think of your cover as your storefront, where you are displaying a taste of the wares inside, I think you will be well served.

A good cover should be not only pleasing to the eye in terms of the color scheme, it should be evocative of its topic and theme. My first cover, in terms of these two aspects, is deceptively simple. In essence, it’s just the face of my main character. But given that my book is about war, it’s the “thousand yard stare” of a young man who is clearly haunted by all that he’s seen that has struck a chord with the readers. As soon as I started getting feedback about how powerful my cover was, I made two instant decisions. The first was a no-brainer, and that was to retain Marina as the artist for all of my books. The second was to tell part of my story through the cover, using the same character, but endowing him with all that comes with his advancement, both in his professional life and his personal life. His face shows the passing time, and his body bears more of the scars that are an occupational hazard for a Centurion of Rome. The third cover, which is under development, will continue with this same theme. And I expect it to be as well received as the first two.