For a lot of indie authors, the wave of new authors self-publishing every day on Amazon and elsewhere (but especially on Amazon) means it gets harder and harder for your book to stand out from the crowd. It seems the only way to sell books consistently is to do Facebook ads, Amazon AMS ads, and release a book every 90 days to feed the Amazon algorithms. It can be… overwhelming.

I’ll admit, I am struggling with this myself, because when I started self-publishing in 2011, all I had to do was put up a good book with a great cover and price it at $0.99 to get 25,000 sales. $0.99 was an unheard of price for an e-book, and my traditionally published the books were all priced at $5.99. I’m not saying self-publishing was easy then, but it was certainly a lot easier than it is now!

Nowadays, so many indies have to use paid advertising on books daily in order to attract readers — to get clicks. That’s what it’s come to for basically all of us, and I’ve been reluctantly researching best practices for Facebook ads and Amazon ads because I’m realizing I need to get in the game too, especially since I have a new pen name and brand and can’t rest on the laurels of previous success. I’m probably not alone in dreading doing anything (like promo) other than write the actual books!

One thing that *hasn’t* changed since “the good ol’ days” of self-publishing circa 2009-2012, however, is a lot of books that are published have covers that *don’t help sell* the author’s book. The cover might be good in and of itself, but not match the genre expectations of the reader, which means the reader just passes the book by. Or, they’ll click the cover thinking they’re going to get a horror story, and discover from the blurb that it’s a romantic comedy. Worst, if the cover is poorly made, it just won’t attract any clicks at all, because it’s surrounded by books with good covers.

The good news is, having a great cover is something that we can controlas indies. We can’t control if readers click, we can’t control if Amazon algorithms push our book in front of readers. But we *can* control the writing itself, and whether or not our book has put its best “face“ forward.

If your cover is not the best face for your book — if it’s not enticing readers to click — it may be time for a facelift. At any time, you can change the cover of your old book and reinvigorate your sales. I’ve done this even with really great book covers that I loved, book covers that worked, but had stopped working over time. I’ve had so many covers for my books over the years, and without fail, every time I change a cover, I attracted a new section of my target audience.

So — if your sales are lagging, re-covering your back list is something to try. Here at SelfPubBookCovers, we will do our best to consistently provide you with a huge variety of professional covers in all genres, by amazing artists, to help you reach your goals.

2019 may be a tough year for some of us authors, because every year we have to learn new tricks to get in front of our readers. But the good news is, we are writers, we are storytellers, and writing the next book is what we do best. So keep writing, keep publishing, and keep your spirits up! There are readers out there who will be delighted to have discovered YOUR books, and are eagerly awaiting your next masterpiece.

All my best,
Shoshanna Gabriel
Co-founder, SelfPubBookCovers.com

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