I know some of you reading the title would probably answer, “Yes, my face is worth money!” Really? How much? For discussion purposes we are talking about whether an authors’ face is worth money in the book publishing industry. Putting one’s face on a book cover is a long standing debate between book publishing professionals and self-published authors. The truth of the matter though, is that there should be no debate. The question that book publishing professionals, aka: Bookstore Managers, Publishing company CEO’s, Book Buyers, Book Clubs, Distributors, etc. want to know is exactly this: Is your face worth money?
Now, most authors believe they are a celebrity in their own minds and that’s great. Having confidence and high self-esteem in this difficult and sometimes cut throat industry is a positive thing but it is not nearly enough to get your book inside of a book store or sold through book clubs.As every publishing professional will tell you, books often defy science – they evoke emotion, memory. They tell stories.Many publishing professionals use phrases like “distinctive,” “stand-out,” “elegant,” “beautiful,” or “surprising” to describe an effective cover. Keep in mind that most readers go to the bookstore looking for some kind of benefit. For non-fiction readers, that benefit is often education and for fiction readers, that benefit is often for an entertaining and/or emotional benefit.
The cover, for all buyers both professional and customer base graphs the story – when you see the title and the image you should have a flash of emotion or curiosity; you should have a sense of an upcoming and great story. As soon as that happens, the customer is engaged. Part of a book’s appeal is the unstated promise that a book will exercise the reader’s own imagination. It’s different from seeing a movie, where we know that the hero looks like. Reading is much more subjective and intuitive, so part of what makes a cover really work for a book-buyer is its ability to lure the reader in.
Lately, there has been a surge of authors putting their faces on their book covers and slapping some text around it. They aren’t thinking about the customer base or as stated earlier, they think they are celebrities with cute faces and people will buy their books. The fact is that this couldn’t be further from the truth. The authors who put their faces on their book covers thinking it will sell are thinking one dimensional, when customers and book buyers buy based on several dimensions as stated above. The author thinks of themselves. They think about how good they think they look or how good they think they can make themselves look by pushing a few buttons to either lighten or darken their look. They don’t think about the customer, they don’t think about where their book could end up and they don’t think about the book publishing professional who is the gate keeper to the book club, the book store or getting a traditional publishing contract. The author that puts their face on a book cover does NOT think about the future.
Let’s be honest here: No one on a national scale knows about you, no one is talking about you, no one is tweeting about your book, you get very little interaction on your Facebook pages and no book clubs are sharing your book. You didn’t get folks excited about your book while you were writing it and you waited until after it was done to tell people about it. This is obscurity and it’s what authors need to focus on overcoming in a competitive marketplace. Also, let’s talk about beauty. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. What is cute or beautiful to you may very well be ugly and hideous to the next person. To put your face on a book cover when you are not well known and possibly well-defined as beautiful in the eyes of society is just not smart. Beauty sells books, it sells magazine and it sells movies. Sex and beauty sell. If a customer thinks you are ugly, you can kiss that sale goodbye. They will not be seen with a book with an ugly person on a book. They just won’t.
When a book publishing professional decides on what books to put in their bookstore or book club, they are looking at whether or not your book will sell. They are looking at Will this stand out on a crowded shelf? [i.e., is it distinctive?] Is the cover’s message clear? Will this engage our buyers emotionally? When your face is on a cover and nobody outside of your inner circle knows your name on top of what is NOT happening as described above, the answer is NO to all of those and your book will not be in their book clubs or on their shelves.
Before you go into, “Well what about a model on the cover?” There is a difference between a model on a book cover and your face on a book cover and you know it, so let’s kill that discussion right now. Scroll down the aisles of a bookstore or through the website of a book club and you will see FAMOUS people with their covers on a book as the ones that are being sold. Non-famous people did not and do not make the cut.
So, let’s sum it up here: Is your face worth money other than in your own mind? Not likely. Can you make your face worth money? Yes, with hard work, determination, a professional book cover NOT showing your face and great writing. As much as you would like to put your face on a cover, after reading this article, if you don’t have a major fan base, can’t answer yes to the above questions, then save yourself the dismal embarrassment of poor sales and DO NOT PUT YOUR FACE ON A COVER because IT IS NOT WORTH ANY MONEY!
Until the next blog!

Dear ZLS Publishing: I’ve heard that regular and old-school book tours are no longer popular. Instead, virtual book tours are popular. How do these work? Will I sell more books this way or should I stick to the old-school way, although it is becoming obselete?

Our response:

A Virtual Book Tour or as some people know it: A Virtual Blog Tour (VBT) is an online “event” wherein an author “visit”s a different blog each day during a specified period of time, generally 2-4 weeks in duration. For instance, if your VBT were 2 weeks long, there would be 10-14 blogs, and each blogger would be assigned a specific day on the tour. In selecting blogs on which to appear, the author would seek out bloggers who have good traffic aimed at specific target audience(s) in conjunction with the topic of their book.

Technically, the author doesn’t “visit” these blogs. Rather, on the assigned tour day, the blogger would post a blog about the author’s book. Some blog platforms (such as WordPress) allow you to schedule a post in advance, making it more convenient for the blogger by automating the process. The content of the blog could be an article about the author, a book review or an interview.

How it works: For example, if the blogger wants to do an interview on you, each blogger provides (well in advance) 3 original questions he/she would like to ask the author, aimed at their particular reading audience. The questions are sent to the author several weeks in advance of the tour. The author provides written answers to the bloggers’ questions, and together they assemble the “virtual interview” into a structured format, so the bloggers can more or less copy and paste it into their blogs (of course, they can edit it as they choose).

Whether or not you sell more books remains to be seen. That is, like typical marketing, where success is an individual situation. You have to be dedicated to those two weeks. Setting up and doing a VBT is a LOT OF WORK and if you don’t have the time to invest in doing it, then don’t do it. You will have to devote the time to answer the questions and be available via email (at the very least) to answer any subsequent emails. It’s not just, you are on a tour that day and that’s it. It’s a lot more involved. They can be as successful as you make them. You can hire someone to set up the tour for you, but YOU still have to answer the question, the blogger is still going to want to talk to YOU, NOT just (if at all) the representative who set up the blog. This is your book, your baby, the success is in your hands.

Good luck and if you do the tour, enjoy the tour!