Today we will show you how to get the most out of your book cover. The best part?
You can turn it into a powerful book marketing tool and significantly improve your sales.
In fact, we have gathered 11 ways to use your book cover for marketing to generate all the buzz needed.
Intrigued? Let’s get started.
How to use your book cover for marketing
We all know how important it is to create a great first impression, whether it’s a job interview, a first date, or your book release.
And that’s when the book cover enters the game.
The self-publishing industry keeps growing these days and readers become a bit spoiled by the variety of books. One way to catch their attention is to create a professional and catchy book cover. According to Reedsy research, books with professional covers get a 35% increase in marketability. Great, isn’t it?
Book cover design is more than just a pretty picture. You can use it in so many ways to support your book marketing campaign. Let’s get straight to the examples of how you can use your cover for book promotion.
Use your book cover to build a pre-launch campaign
We hope you already know how important it is to create a buzz around your book before it goes live. So why don’t you try to use the book cover itself as the key element of your pre-launch campaign?
Let’s start with the social media campaign. Here is how you can use your book cover marketing to make it more effective.
Host a book cover reveal
So first, warm-up your readers with a book cover reveal. It doesn’t even need to be a complete cover design, you can use only its key elements (we’ll show you how later on). Here are some ideas for the book cover reveal:
- Host an online event
- Combine the reveal with a Q&A session
- Create a series of scheduled posts to intrigue readers more
- Host a book giveaway
Create a book trailer
A book trailer is another excellent marketing tool, borrowed from the world of movies. Book trailers intrigue and create psychological relationships between the readers and the book. Why not make a book cover one of the crucial elements of book trailer? You can tell the synopsis of your book based on images of your book cover, animations, special effects, and sound. Just have a look at this example, isn’t it amazing?
Surprise your readers with a teaser
Another way to master your book cover pre-launch is to create teasers. The trick here is not to reveal a full book cover or plot but just give your readers some hints. For example, you can share quotes from your book using a book cover as a supportive aid.
The great idea is to create graphic headers using the elements of the cover.
If your book cover is not ready yet, you can just use the color palette that you have selected. Don’t forget to keep establishing a relationship with the readers. While creating a teaser campaign, keep them engaged, initiate discussions, ask for their opinions and expectations.
Use the book cover in your newsletter
A newsletter is an excellent way to keep in touch with your audience. Consider including the eye-catching book cover in your newsletter. You can do it in the pre-launch stage, and when your book will be already released. So why don’t you just use your book cover as part of its design?
For example, you can include your book cover in your newsletter header and email signature. Remember that emotional trigger we talked about? So now the readers might wonder where they’ve seen this image before. Right, in their email box.
Use the book cover in pre-order links
Pre-orders are exactly what the name suggests. The idea is simple: even if your book isn’t released, you can already start selling some copies.
You can include the information about the pre-order on your website, Amazon, social media, everywhere. A lot of authors create social media banners with their pre-order information, and guess what image you should use there? Yes, your book cover.
What about adding some extras to your pre-order? Our favorite idea is to send out a digital gift pack. For example, you can toss in a poster with your digital signature, personal commentary letter, or some other additional content.
Use the book cover on social media
Behold, it’s highness, the social media. We are not even going to waste time explaining the importance of social media promotions for indie authors.
Keep in mind that you should tailor your social media content for each platform.
For example, Facebook posts with pictures have more engagement than just plain text.
Twitter is great for announcements and sharing ideas. Combine pictures with text to make the post more informative and engaging.
Reddit might be more tricky. It’s basically a discussion platform where your threads can be seen and upvoted or downvoted. They have a strict policy regarding straight forward promotion as well. But there are a lot of subreddits for indie authors, self-publishers, and bibliophiles in general. You can share your ideas, ask for advice, and as a result, get loyal readers.
Also, think about creating a Pinterest board for your book and adding your media kit and book cover there. A great way to increase your reach!
Use the book cover for bookstagramming
Check out #bookstagram hashtag on Instagram. As you can see, it’s a recent trend to share beautiful book covers and put new emphasis on their aesthetics.
Try yourself as a photographer or blogger and take great fancy pictures with your book cover using different props. Make it “instagrammable”. The sky is your limit.
Here are some of our suggestions:
- Take a picture of your book cover and include some food and drinks around
Just think about it. A coffee break with a book. Taking your book out for brunch. Having an early aperitif while spending some quality time with a book. Good stuff, right?
- Show your workplace
Take a couple of pictures of your office and include a book as one of the attributes. Find the right angle or capture your laptop with a brand new book cover somewhere on the table. It is an excellent way to show the readers part of your working process and connect with them even better;
- Take a photo of your e-book
Keep up with the times and try promoting e-books by taking a picture of your phone screen with a book cover on it; an e-reader also looks good on camera if you know what we mean;
Use the book cover for A/B testing
Another great trick authors are using to create buzz around the book cover in marketing is A/B testing.
What’s the point? You need to have two different versions of the book cover. Create a poll and ask your readers to vote on which one they prefer.
First of all, this is very beneficial for you, especially if you are at the beginning of the design process and need some advice. And you will get a response from the readers, people who dig book cover design and might end up purchasing your book.
Try to test different designs, colors, font sizes, and images. You can run an A/B campaign on your blog, on a social media network, or even create an email campaign. Here are some other ways to test a book cover design.
Use this strategy to connect with the readers, since they will feel the value of their opinion.
Use the book cover as a branding element for your book series
The author branding through a book cover is a key factor if you are a proud author of the book series.
One of the best ideas is to keep the book series cover design under the same concept. It’s easy at all, and you have a few options to choose from.
First, define a common element to emphasize:
- Images, distinctive visual segments, or even a protagonist can become a so-called business card of your book series design.
- Typography as a branding element is also popular. It’s bright, it’s fetching, and it’s always there.
- Finally, experiment with colors since their strong visual representation might help to build an author brand.
Use the book cover for author merchandise
You can also use some promotional materials for your book release campaign. We will introduce you to a fancy word they use out here, which is swag. The idea is to use your book cover design on other items. Here are some examples:
- Bookmarks
- Business cards
- T-shirts
- Mugs
- Pens
- Magnets
- Stickers
The important factor here is to invest in professional design so that the users will end up with good-quality stuff.
Try animated book cover design
An animated cover is excellent for building your social media campaign. Here are its major benefits:
- It helps to tell a story differently, adding more meaning, value, and tension.
- The animated image can highlight the visual elements and help communicate with the readers via book cover even more.
- It makes you stand out from the crowd and immediately catches the readers’ eye.
Use the book cover to connect with bloggers
Reach influencers or bloggers who have the same audience as yours and ask them to promote your book.
- Pitch to a blog in your genre to promote your book cover reveal.
- Ask influencers in the field to share your cover on their social media channels.
- Suggest your cover reveal information to a publication that your potential readers might check out.
- Join forces together with fellow-writers and organize a mutual activity.
To sum up
We hope we explained to you how important your book cover is. Use our tips for book cover marketing and hook more loyal readers!
What about having more than one book cover to sell? I feel like my book is good for teens and younger-but would probably need a better cover for younger kids. Is that a good idea?
Yes, it’s a great idea. An alternative book cover can help you to reach a larger audience.