Updated March 1, 2023

Subtitle
Understanding the buyer’s first impression of your book can boost your book sales significantly

Synopsis
If you hope to have your book achieve financial and critical success, you must understand the book shopper’s perception of your book when they first see it. Once you understand their thought process, you can adjust your book accordingly and significantly improve your chances of making a sale.

What You Will Learn
1. You will learn how to improve your book’s sales by fully understanding how your readers perceive you and your book.
2. You will learn what specific questions you must ask yourself to improve the reader’s perception of you and your book.
3. You will learn what readers first notice about your book and how those things can affect their perceptions.

Introduction
If you have any hope of having your book achieve financial and critical success, you must understand how book buyers (your customers) view your book (your product) when they first see it (online or on a shelf). Once you understand their thought process, you can adjust your book accordingly and significantly improve your chances of making a sale.

Put Yourself in the Shoes of the Buyer
To understand how book buyers perceive your book, you must separate yourself from your feelings about your book and think as the objective and the skeptical buyer would think. Think about who your audience is, try to step into their shoes, and then look at your book objectively and subjectively – through their eyes.

Important Questions to Ask Yourself
1. What would attract you to a book like yours?
2. What would attract people in your audience to a book like yours?
3. Would you, as a buyer, be more attracted to a beautiful cover or the cover blurbs?

4. Would you buy a book based on its cover art or because of the well-known names quoted?
5. Does the book’s page count seem too long or too short to cover the topic adequately?
6. Does the subtitle seem to be promising too much for such a topic?

7. How do your book’s attributes compare to those within your subject category?
8. Does the information, images, graphics, fonts, etc., on the front and back cover seem appropriate and respectful for the topic?
9. Does the table of contents appear to cover all the essential topics necessary for this book’s subject?

Here is a quick look at a few of the subjective and objective items that book buyers notice when they first view your book:

1. Cover Art
Having the appropriate graphics, images, photos, illustrations, colors, fonts, etc., are essential if you expect to get noticed by book buyers. Books with a great-looking cover almost always sell better than those that are lame, confusing, or unprofessional-looking.

What needs to be on your book’s cover that will draw in, or attract, a reader and a buyer? Are the graphics, colors, and fonts appropriate to the book’s subject matter? Make sure that you design several covers. And don’t be afraid to hire professional help.



2. Title and Subtitle
Your title must grab buyers as quickly as possible. Generally, it must let the reader know what your book is about in as few words as possible. You can give more specific details in the subtitle. The subtitle is where the author lets the buyer know what the book is about. When deciding which book to purchase, the buyer usually gives more weight to the subtitle than the main title.

3. Author's Name
The well-known big names will always get more attention. But there are several ways for less famous authors to get the shopper’s attention. The new or less renowned author can impress the consumer by putting the title of a previous book they wrote directly under their name on the cover.

One of the best ways to bring attention to a lesser-known author is to get a much bigger or more well-known name to write the book’s foreword. This person’s name will also appear on the cover,