[markobeezy]

The cover for my guinea pig novel,"Teaching Bobby", was hand-drawn by my prison guard brother-in-law during one of his lunch breaks. Based on the quality, that's not exactly a stretch of the imagination, is it?

Anyways, I'm thinking of getting a brand-new cover in the next month or so, which would be about a year after the novel was released. Has anyone else done this? Does it boost sales, almost like a new book?

Thoughts?

P.S. I'm changing the cover because I'm about to release the sequel, and of course that will have a fancy new cover

 

[Millard]

I did it. A couple of times actually. I was spurred on by comments in a couple of reviews along the lines of "This book is awesome, but the cover's so bad that I almost didn't buy," which related to the old, old covers dating back to the paperback editions. I switched those out for something new, and then a couple of months later, updated those to better, swankier versions.

It's hard to say if it increased my sales at all, but nobody's commented on how the quality of the cover doesn't match up to the book, so at least I'd hope to be grabbing the sales of those who might have been put off purchasing by the old covers.

And if you're considering changing because you've got a sequel coming out, it's a good idea to try and link it with the first one, stylistically, like I do with mine. I like people to look at a cover and know it's part of my work, in the way they would by reading a paragraph. And that stuff just looks nice if it's identifiably you when someone clicks on your author name on Amazon and the covers are all together on the page.

 

[Ell]

was hand-drawn by my prison guard brother-in-law

This is like the coolest thing I ever read on these boards.

As a principle, I see no problem with changing the cover. The illustration is actually quite good, the placement and typography are bad. If you want to tie them into a series, yeah, they should make sense together and a new cover is the way to go.

 

[SBJones]

I updated the cover to my first book Requiem back in January.  It had been about a year and a half since its release.  I primarily updated it so that it would match the rest of the trilogy.  Has it increased sales?  I would say 80% no and 20% inconclusive.  Several other factors have happened in that same time like the completion of the trilogy, holidays, and free runs.

One of the benefits of being self published is that if something doesn't work, we can change it almost instantly with little to no cost to ourselves.

 

[Caddy]

Yes, it is done all of the time.  Sometimes it increases sales.  If the cover isn't good, people don't move on to the description.

 

[Alan Petersen]

He's actually a good artist. A professional book designer could have created a more snappy looking cover with that same drawing. Anywho, I agree with the others, no big deal in changing the cover. Even folks who have sold a ton of books change their covers from time to time.

 

[markobeezy]

He's actually a good artist. A professional book designer could have created a more snappy looking cover with that same drawing. Anywho, I agree with the others, no big deal in changing the cover. Even folks who have sold a ton of books change their covers from time to time.

I knew he was skilled before I asked for his help, it's just that he used the 30 minutes between inmate-beatdown and afternoon roll call to scribble something on scratch paper. I'm sure with professional tools he could be a sought-after cover artist.

 

[Alan Petersen]

I knew he was skilled before I asked for his help, it's just that he used the 30 minutes between inmate-beatdown and afternoon roll call to scribble something on scratch paper. I'm sure with professional tools he could be a sought-after cover artist.

I just got the visual. "Don't make me go over there and thump your skull, I'm drawing!"

 

[scottmarlowe]

I'm considering having the cover for one of mine redone as part of the book 2 launch. With another 3 books to come out after this next one, I want them all to have some commonality and I'm not sure I can get that with what I have now. This particular book was put out a couple of years ago.

 

[ElHawk]

I changed the cover for one of my novels recently, about a year after I'd first released it.  The original cover looked good, but I got a new design so I could keep a cohesive look between all upcoming books, if that makes sense.  It was a branding issue.  The book sold well with the old cover (between 800 and 1000 copies per month, pretty steadily) but with the new cover it looks like it will sell slightly more.  If you can make an improvement, even if it's just in branding/recognizability, do it.

 

[Sharebear]

I changed the cover for one of my novels recently, about a year after I'd first released it. The original cover looked good, but I got a new design so I could keep a cohesive look between all upcoming books, if that makes sense. It was a branding issue. The book sold well with the old cover (between 800 and 1000 copies per month, pretty steadily) but with the new cover it looks like it will sell slightly more. If you can make an improvement, even if it's just in branding/recognizability, do it.

Ditto except for the 1000 a month part, but that would be super sweet if it happened.

 

[jvin248]

.
When I'm wondering if I should change a cover I do a search like this:
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=chandler long goodbye
"The Hobbit" is insightful too.
.
.

 

[BJ Whittington]

I really like your "hands" image, I agree the cover overall needs work. I would be tempted to ask a cover artist to play with that image and come up with a fresh look to brand it with your upcoming release.

 

[thebookcoverdesigner]

I would definitely consider at least adding some colour to it.