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Judging by the Cover

The old saying do not judge by the cover of the book, seems not quiet the truth when it comes to eproducts (digital products). An ecover is a digital cover used for selling ebooks and other products online. The image of the cover plays a key role that would become a deciding factor for a buyer. A cover that lacks in quality immediately carries a negative picture in the mind. This article shows how to make your ecover attractive and sell.

A client opting to make a purchase is often influenced by two things: the description of the content and the cover image. A neat looking cover which conveys a feeling of tidiness, something new which one wants to possess. It is how a mind works.

You must have noticed that usually when webmasters display an image of a person next to helpline, one gets the feeling that he is talking to the person in the image. This play on the mind is also why advertisers use people with strong personalities or well-known faces to promote their products. The image sends the meaning that the good-looking person is the one actually talking and is using the product that is advertised.

To give an example of what I am talking about, just imagine that you are looking for a certain kind of shampoo and you see the advertisement of an famous actress with long beautiful hair holding the bottle of shampoo. The mind says that this actress is using this shampoo and since you are already looking for the shampoo and you see this personality holding it, your mind at once bonds with the brand compelling you to buy it. This is all too common.

The same goes for the cover of the book. The quality of the images is extremely important. The whole point of using images is to increase sales. If you have unprofessional-looking images, you will not only damage the superior content but your credibility also.

Creating an eproduct cover is very different from actual book covers. The idea in an ecover is to carry a pleasant look with bold writings that are so large as to fill half the cover. This is not so in physical books covers. The aspect of the good look is covered in the way the book is displayed, often in standing position with added reflection to create the illusion of neatness. Usually reflection carries a notion of cleanliness as a glass without a speck of dust, or something on a showcase. It carries an illusion of professionalism, strength, power and confidence. A cover without reflection but with a shadow also takes on a meaning of power. More often than not, a cover with no shadow or reflection has less appealing look. This is just how a mind works. Naturally all these added features go with the coloring, fonts, clarity and lighting.

No product creator can hope to succeed without good ecovers. Although the ecover has no physical relationship with the ebook, it is the first thing visitors to your website see. Ecovers are known to increase sales by over 300%. The idea of an ecover is to get the attention of your website visitors and create a lasting impression about your product in them. Thousand of ebooks and other products are being created everyday making it very difficult to pull customers to your product. In order to survive or make a sale as a marketer, you need a profit boosting ecover for eproduct.

The quality of your ecover can make or break your digital product sales. It is similar to marketing offline. All gadgets in the market come with a box describing the product inside. If these products were just displayed on the showcase with no boxes, it carries no real meaning to the customer. If the customer who has walked into the shop and is looking for a particular item, the details on the box or cover will help him better. The attractive covering adds to the buying decision. In the same way, walking into a bookshop with only coverless books carries no attraction whatsoever. Cover design makes a huge impact. It's not right to think that creating a fantastic cover is enough with no regard to the content. The author of good content will also spend long time in cover design because he knows that it is really time well spent. However a poor content author will not bother to spend so much time on deciding how his cover looks. So there is a direct link between the cover and the content because he may feel, it's not worth it.

I have seen many ebook covers online which are not so attractive. They will be plain white with only the title and no stunning and stylish designs. Maybe the title says "Secrets to Succeeding Online". It maybe a good title, but the cover design will put anyone off. To some it will seem like some poorly written material maybe something that is copied and pasted from different places. Visitors may even leave the site without bothering to read the book description. If the author is not bothered to create an attractive cover, then how much did he put into the content?

Another link between the cover and the design that is worth mentioning is the size, height and depth of the cover itself. If the material is say a hundred pages, then the cover will depict this by its dimensions. If it's only a report, then the cover should be for a thinner one like a ring binder. If the product is a program, then a box cover is more appropriate or a CD/DVD image; same goes for a audio/video. So the content and the cover should be appropriate. Failing this will be same as deceiving the possible buyer and thus lose your credibility.

Basic Requirements

There are several ways to generate quality images. The first thing is of course, you need to have a good eye for art and good knowledge of graphics software packages such as Adobe Photoshop. The other way is to buy good software that creates covers for you. But even when using specialized ebook cover software, you have to have some graphical talent. You need to know how to combine the right layout, images, lighting and color combinations. The third way is to hire an artist to design a cover for you which will be a bit expensive.

This section will deal with what the basic requirements of an appealing cover.

Here are some criteria:

• The book title: The title is larger and bolder than any other text on the cover obviously because this is the main link to the book content. 
• Sub Titles: Usually this will give more details in bullet form about the contents of the product. The fonts are smaller than the title.
• The author's name: This is included to take ownership of the content. The font here is a bit smaller than the sub title.
• The web site address: The font is much smaller and usually on top of the image details thus making it for people to copy your images.
• Don't use too much text on your cover. It won't be readable anyhow.
• Don't use too many or too little background graphics. Usually dividing the cover in three sections and give plain co-coordinating colors gives it good look.
• Avoid large open spaces.
• The book spine or side of the cover: This contains the name of the book which usually goes along the spine. We can keep code bar here too to create some realism.

Fonts

It is better to use large readable fonts for the book title.

• Fonts such as Arial, Futura and Impact are good fonts for book covers. Do not use fancy unrealistic fonts. Sometimes we can get carried away and use some fonts that cannot be read at a glance. There are so many fonts out there. Make a folder in your hard disk and save all the professional looking fonts in there so that it is easier to test for the type of book cover you are making. 
• Use colors that will stand out from the background color. Usually white or yellow is used. Depending on your background colors, red, white and yellow often work well.
• Make your fonts stand out with shadow and outline.
• Do not use more than two types of fonts.

Images

• Use good quality graphics if you want to be unique.
• Usually photographs work better than clipart.
• Avoid crowding the cover with pictures. Covers with no pictures also look good if the colors used are appropriate. For example if the content is about bees, then we can make the top third of the book black, the mid section yellow and the bottom third black again - the color of bees.

Colors

• A well-considered color scheme is often the difference between a reasonable cover design and a great one.
• If the scheme used is too outrageous, then this will spoil even the best of content. So go easy on the colors.
• Do not over do it by splasing all colors of the rainbow in uncordinated manner.
• If you are going for a plain look with no images, its ok as long as you keep to good fonts and 2 or 3 colors.

In conclusion, we can learn from this article that a lot of things need to go into consideration in order to create a cover that is appealing, attactive and want to make one to read the contents.

About the Author

Nezine Mark writes articles, reports and books on Web Graphics and Private Label Rights. She is a graphics designer and programmer by profession. Nezine is also involved on Internet Marketing with six years experience.

Blog: http://www.ezine4success.com
eCover Package: http://www.ezine4success.com/ecover101/