Poetry Friday ~ Clear & Nature

Hi, everyone! Welcome.

 

August sort of crept up on me this year. My AC is working doubly hard since it’s sweltering hot outside. Thank God for afternoon showers to cool things off. August is a big month in my family because my sisters and I all have birthdays this month. We even have a couple of cousins born in August too.

Anyway, today I wanted to talk a little about book covers and the genre of your book. Do you think book covers are important? What should book covers actually do? I believe that book covers are important because they’re the first impression your book makes on the reader. I know there’s a saying, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ but many people do. I’ve actually heard people say that they can tell the difference between a traditionally published author and an indie author by the book cover.

Of course, what’s most important to me is the content inside but first, you have to attract the reader to your book. An intriguing cover will tempt the reader to pick up your book and once the book is in his or her hand the next natural thing to do is to turn it around and read the blurb and that’s when you hook them with your fabulous writing. A good cover needs to grab attention immediately, be striking, beautiful, clean and professionally made, but also let readers know instantly the basic genre.

The reader should know whether your book is a fantasy, horror, romance, sci-fi . . . by looking at your book cover. The cover also often convey the geographical locations and the main character’s age and sex which is also important.

I can’t stand it when a book misrepresents itself. Call me crazy. Also, and this may seem random, let me mention that the categories on Amazon are getting more and more ambiguous every day. It’s getting hard to figure out a book’s genre. I understand that putting general categories like Fantasy, Romance or Horror alone is not good for the Amazon algorithms but some people get so creative with these categories that they’re confusing the heck out of some people (including me).

If you wrote a horror book and there are ghosts and witches in your story then Kindle store>Horror>Witches>Ghosts are great categories, but I’ve seen some weird combinations that don’t make sense and it’s obvious that the author did it to climb up the ranks. And I’m telling you, your book may come up in the ranks at first, but readers are not going to be happy when they think they’re getting a romance novel and instead are getting hardcore erotica.

I found a great article that can help you make the most of the Amazon Categories while still representing your book accurately. Read this and you’ll thank me later. How To (Ethically) Hack Amazon Categories | David Gaughran

Okay, the bottomline is to be honest about the genre of your work and make sure your book cover, blurb and Amazon Categories clearly represent that genre.

**Check out the book covers below. I’m sure you can’t mistake their genres. If you’re interested in more info. about a book click on its image.

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Your book’s genre should

be expressed plainly or

readers won’t like it

 

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In honor of my birthday, both books in my Fantasy Angels Series are on sale, through the weekend, for 99¢! Please take advantage of my birthday special and spread the word. Thank you!

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Clear and Nature are this week’s prompt words chosen by Colleen Chesebro ~ The Fairy Whisperer.

*The catch is that we can only use the synonyms to these words in our poems.

Colleen hosts a challenge that anyone could participate in called, Colleen’s Weekly Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge every Tuesday, and you have until Sunday to create a post featuring your Haiku, Tanka, Haibun, Etheree or Cinquain poem. She is an author and poet, and also does book reviews and so much more on her blog. Be sure to check it out.

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Happy Friday and thanks for the visit!