Can you tell a book by its cover?



When you start writing books everything is about the story, the plot, the writing process. But as you get to the end of that process you realise there's quite a lot more to getting a book published than just words on a page.

I've discovered two great resources in exploring this business side to publishing a book. The first is a podcast, the Self Publishing Show which is consistently full of high-value information and totally inspiring too. 

The other resource is on Reddit, the EroticaAuthors Subreddit. The erotica market is huge, and the guys there are sharing their expertise and stories of success and failure. I've been devouring it for the last couple of months and I highly recommend checking it out if you're thinking of writing romance or erotica. 

Anyway, one of the things highlighted in both those places is how important a good cover is. 

On the whole, the recommendation is to look similar to the genre you're writing in.

I thought I'd ignore that.

Listen to my reasoning, because I really want your opinions on this.  Erotica covers seem to fall into three categories.

First, there's the cheesy, scantily clad guy or girl or some combination:
 
I mean, I'm in
No, this isn't a joke, this is in the TOP 30 of Amazon's UK erotica bestsellers. And okay, I get the reasoning, you're horny, So a hot girl or guy draws you in. I can see this working best with erotica targetted at guys. So why the fact it's on Daddy Erotica I don't know. 

Secondly, you get classy, really well-designed covers like this:
 
Now that's great (and is top ten in the erotica charts at the moment) and if I'm writing erotic romance it's the direction I'd be tempted to go. But the 'edging erotica' I'm working on at the moment is definitely not romance.  It's kinky shit designed to get you off (well, maybe not all the way...) so I'll save this look for other stuff.

So last of all is the symbolic cover. think the 50 Shades ties or top seller Sylvia Day's stuff that all involves shoes or jewellery:
 
Again these are cool, and from a design perspective, really easy. Get some cheap royalty-free stock images, apparently, pair it with Arial font apparently and boom, you're set.

I like the fact you can get all metaphorical with images. But it's still very romance oriented, just romance with some good hard action.

I want something different.

The reason for that is I do feel like we're doing something at least a bit unusual here. There's very little orgasm denial erotica out there, and most of it is male orgasm denial.
Plus, if you've read my blog or my captions you know I like to bring a bit of fun to proceedings. So maybe it's a bit presumptuous but I started looking for an approach that was a bit different. Sexy in its own way, but definitely distinctive.

So this is what I've come up with.  I'd love to know your thoughts.

I've taken a pop art style as the inspiration for them. I liked the images, most of the ones I've found are by a talented Russian artist who goes by the name of StudioKS and had a load of them in my go-to Photo Stock Library.

But I also like the fact there's something of the pulp fiction feel about them. Before the movie of the same name pulp fiction was a trend in books as printing became cheaper in the 20th Century. Detective novels, sci-fi, they used to be churned out by the tonne and printed on really cheap recycled, 'pulp' paper. 

As you'll see in a previous post, my plan for writing edging erotica is going to be similar. Quantity, quantity, quantity. That's because while I am keen for them to be quality too, my belief is that rather than trying to make one, perfect novel, I'm going to churn out as many stories as I can for you to enjoy, and in the process of writing, and your feedback and input, get better, and better

It also fixes a major issue for erotica covers, which is most Stock Image libraries do not get model releases that explicitly say the images can be used for erotica, so the terms are that

Also, I know that some don't like actual people on the covers as they prefer to create a picture of the characters themselves. I'm hoping using illustrations gives a nice middle ground between being personable but not feeling limited by what you see on the cover. 

Most of all though, they're distinctive, and I love that. 

What do you think, should I just be boring and go with a nice pair of tits, or am I onto something here? Would you stop and have a look?