Not quite. The cover is the face of the book — that's hard to argue with. If it doesn't draw the reader in, they're unlikely to pick the book up at all. But there's a small detail I didn't think about when I wrote my first book.
In the ebook version — and in audio too — readers get to preview a free sample (or listen to one). By default, that free sample is the very beginning of the book: the preface. And my first book, in its first edition, opened with philosophical musings about how long my path had been, how long it took me to gather my thoughts before I could start writing and 'entrust my life to paper.' A tearful bit of reflection, basically. At the time, it never occurred to me to wonder how interesting that would be for a reader, and it certainly never occurred to me that my little outpouring of feelings still had to be sold somehow. In short, that preface had nothing to do with the beauty of marketing.
It was one of the editors on the service my husband built — EditRoast.com — who rubbed my nose in this 'unsellable' fragment. My manuscript got 'roasted' there by three editors, each with a distinct personality. Vera Zorkaya doesn't go easy, but she's precise and stays polite. Boris Tochka is a cynic — no sugarcoating, just the blunt truth. And Lyova Tirazh is the one who looks at a manuscript purely through the question of 'how do we sell this masterpiece.' It was Lyova who sat down and told me, flat out, that selling my creation was going to be an uphill battle — because of that exact free sample nobody would care to read.
So what did that add up to? I'd spent almost a whole year writing the book. Then several more months working with different specialists to prepare it for the platforms, went through registration, got approved, uploaded the book — my beloved cover with the balloons — and... the reader opens my tedious preface and closes the book. They can't flip through it the way you'd flip through a book in a store. All they get is that dreary chunk of text full of a forty-five-year-old woman's musings.
Well, I hadn't thought about any of that! Who had time to think about it?
When I was starting to write the book, that was the last thing on my mind. But now I know so much more — go me — and I simply rewrote the preface. There was plenty of advice from all three editors, of course; that wasn't the only thing dragging my sales down. I fixed all of it. And the book started breathing again — and selling.
How do you like that, Elon Musk?
But it's worth not underestimating any of the stages of work, or the other factors that affect how a book sells. So let me close with this: a beautiful cover won't save a book. But a bad one can rob it of its chance.