What’s A Book Cover Worth?

Posted on 12/3/2014 by Jim Pickerell | Printable Version | Comments (3)

At the annual Self-Publishing in the Digital Age conference in London last weekend one of the speakers, who is a graphic designer, advised the audience that they should never pay more than £10 for a picture for their book jacket. The speaker also acknowledged that the jacket picture is the most important choice an author can make when it comes to selling the book.

At another point a man from Amazon.com said they offer 550,000 self-published titles a year and the average title sells 250 copies.  


Copyright © 2014 Jim Pickerell. The above article may not be copied, reproduced, excerpted or distributed in any manner without written permission from the author. All requests should be submitted to Selling Stock at 10319 Westlake Drive, Suite 162, Bethesda, MD 20817, phone 301-461-7627, e-mail: wvz@fpcubgbf.pbz

Jim Pickerell is founder of www.selling-stock.com, an online newsletter that publishes daily. He is also available for personal telephone consultations on pricing and other matters related to stock photography. He occasionally acts as an expert witness on matters related to stock photography. For his current curriculum vitae go to: http://www.jimpickerell.com/Curriculum-Vitae.aspx.  

Comments

  • Bill Bachmann Posted Dec 3, 2014
    Just say NO!

    www.billbachmann.com



  • Andrea Stern Posted Dec 7, 2014
    Would anyone write a book that only gave them a £10 return?

  • Jim Pickerell Posted Dec 10, 2014
    In fact, I think lots of people think others will be a lot more interested in what they have to say than turns out to be the case.

    I'm not surprised that so many of these authors sell so few copies of their books. And since they are not going to sell many copies they can't afford to spend much on a cover photo. A £10 photo is probably not going to do much to help sell their book, but they can get plenty of such photos in microstock.

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