The front cover needs to be the beacon that attracts attention to your book. It has to stand out in a sea of thumbnails or a shelf of books. When the front cover does gets the eyeball, the back cover has to sell the heart and mind.
The back cover of your book is essential to selling your book and building your credibility.
Think about it for a second. When the front cover of a book is interesting enough to get you to pick it up, what’s the second thing you do?
You flip the book over and look at the back cover, right?
If the back cover creates enough curiosity, you open it up and check the table of contents and maybe flip through a few pages. That’s a topic for another day … but something I’ve talked about a lot in media interviews.
If you’re shopping online, the back cover is often uploaded as an image (And should be … hint hint), and you’ll check it out as well take a look inside the book.
Then, when someone buys it, and displays it on their desk or book shelf, other people will pick it up and check out the back cover! It could be great marketing for your book and you if it’s done right.
Think of your book’s back cover as a sales page. Every word needs to be carefully selected to create curiosity and make someone want to read it right now.
So, what do you put on it? What’s most important? I cover that in this video.
The five most important elements for your book’s back cover:
1. It’s singular goal is to sell your book. Make sure every word and image supports that single goal.
A person who looks at the back cover needs to get so damn excited to read your book that they buy it, on the spot. You’ll need to craft two or three really fantastic sentences that reveal why your book is urgent and necessary. What does the reader need in their life right now, and why? And, what are you going to share with them that they haven’t heard before?
It is a sales page so treat it like that and carefully curate that copy. Many traditional publishers actually pay a professional copywriter to craft this copy it’s so important. And, they’ll spend about 250 to $500 just to write the back copy. That’s on top of design costs. It’s that important. [When you work with Book Launchers we have professional writers who will craft your copy … all included with your Platinum Membership]
2. Your picture may be best on the inside, not the back cover.
There’s some cases where you might want your picture on the back cover. You’re famous, you’re a celebrity, or as my husband says, “You’re really freakin’ hot”.
In all those cases putting your picture on the cover of your book might sell your book. However, most of us are not models, celebrities or famous CEO’s so our picture really doesn’t do anything to sell our book.
Instead, get a great professional headshot and put it on the inside with extended details about you, the author.
3. Curate really brilliant testimonials and endorsements.
Now, I shot another YouTube video on how to get great book blurbs for your book. That’s right here:
Ideally you get three different blurbs for your book.
- First, you need an endorsement that says why you are the person to write this book. What makes you unique? What have you done? What’s a piece of your story that makes it clear that you are the person that should have written this book? That’s the first testimonial or endorsement you need to get. Ideally you want somebody with authority and credibility in your industry to be saying this about you.
- Second, you need one that covers the benefit to the reader in reading this book. This is a testimonial that says, ‘I read this book and the tips helped me make $10,000, they helped me lose 50 pounds, they helped run the fastest race I’ve ever run’. Obviously, someone may not have had time to apply the tips in the book to get the result, so you can use a former client. Someone who has used what you’re teaching in working with you. That way they can say, ‘the tips in this book did x’. That’s accurate.It doesn’t matter how they have had the result as much as the fact that this testimonial or an endorsement showcases a key benefit a reader will get as a result of investing their time and a tiny bit of money into buying your book.
- Third, you need an endorsement that creates curiosity. This is best from a big name celebrity or well known best selling author. Sometimes these are funny. Other times they say ’20 years and didn’t know this one secret that Julie covered in her book’. The big thing is that it should create curiosity.
4. Put your website in the bottom left hand spot of your back cover.
This is a smart idea that I didn’t do on either of my first two books. It’s going on book #3 though!
Why is this smart? Well, first of all, this is brilliant marketing for you because people who don’t buy your book might still go to your website and maybe get your free download. More importantly, this website allows people to learn more about you. If you have a solid website showcasing some of your expertise and success, this will establish more credibility cement that they need to read what you’ve written.
5. Get a logo and a bar code.
If you think you’ll sell your book in book stores you’ll need to include a price in that bar code as well. But, here’s why these two things matter. Every traditionally published book has a publishing logo as well as that barcode. By not putting it on there, you clearly highlight the fact that this is an amateur product. We are helping you look like the rock star expert that you. That means every detail like this matters in showcasing you as the expert you are.
Spend a few bucks, get a publishing house logo. We’ll talk about business names and what you should do around that in the future. Just know that it’s all fairly simple and you don’t need to stress about it. Pick a publishing company name, get a logo designed and trust me when I say, it’s simple from there (unless you prefer it to be complicated in which case I can tell you how to make a mess of it too!).
You’ll put the logo on the spine as well as on the back cover of your book. The barcode is created from your ISBN number (see the videos below on the ISBN numbers) and put the barcode on the bottom right. When you do this your book is going to look fantastic and nobody will even know it was self published unless you tell them.
Most importantly, remember, the back cover has one job and that is to sell your book.
If there is anything on the back cover that doesn’t make somebody rush to the counter or click the buy button, then you need to make some adjustments. Now, what goes in the book description on your Amazon page is a topic for another discussion. You could use the back cover copy, but that’s not actually the best idea. Make sure you’re subscribed to the Book Launchers Launch Letter[ Click here to subscribe] so you can find out what the best idea is!