Holy cow. THAT is a lot of information. The cover looks awesome guys!!
29 Comments (page 1)
Thank you my good sir!
Great information! For the last few steps, I know of a couple of guys who will actually test ~50 covers for every book they launch. How? Facebook ads. You just set up the cover image as the actual FB ad image, and see which one gets the most clicks. After all, that's the effect you're looking for once it's in the amazon marketplace, no? They use facebook to test covers, and adwords to test book titles. Also 50+ titles. - Linus
Linus! That's brilliant! Thanks a ton for introducing me to this. Just bought your book - looking forward to reading it :)
Thanks man! Cover on my book is a bit shitty to be honest -- I haven't done any of this. Guess I need to step up my game... (juggling 4-5 other projects, my book hasn't been the priority...) Let me know if you do the whole FB thing and how it works out. :)
Will do! Hope your other projects are kicking ass
Great Guide, specifically, I had never heard of LeadPages before- what an incredible service! Thanks for the info. Any tips on the adwords side of things? Specifically, what keywords did you target, do you aim for low competition and how much did you need to spend before getting the 100 signups? Thanks! Jamie
We love LeadPages! Are you launching a book Jamie? Writing one? We focused more on FB ads for this test. Spent about $200. I'm not going to put our whole keyword list here but there were a lot having to do with making money, entrepreneurship, the names of authors similar to us, their books, and some entrepreneur education companies. A lot of our signups came from other places as well. Does that help?
Awesome idea Linus! You could get more bang for your buck that way. The CTR from FB ads would show the image attractiveness, and then you could test other things on the landing page itself. Thanks for the great idea, I'll definitely be adopting that one :)
"You may want to bookmark this page for later reference." Uh, DER. What a serious treatment of the subject. I thought I might see an intro, a coupla bullet points and some nice encouraging words for the wrap-up... But, DAYUM! I'll be right back here when it comes time to design the cover of my next book, for sure. Question: if you have a book out already, but feel as though it may benefit from the wisdom in this here post... does it make sense to tamper with an existing brand to see if another cover might sell better? My instincts say yes, but not sure... I don't want to do a change-up if it results in LESS people recognizing and buying my work, but then again the cover may not be the best. Your thoughts, Bro? Keep Stepping, Kurt
Thanks Kurt! What're the details on your situation? I think your instinct is correct. A new book cover could be a great way to boosting sales on an older book. Its a different story, but publishers are playing with different covers for classic books. I just bought another copy of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" with a new cover.
Thanks Kyle, This definitely helps. I'm considering a few different business options for now but am planning on re-visiting the idea of writing a book in the future. It always helps to have some tools ahead of time for projects and this guide is perfect. I haven't used FB ads a whole lot before but I assume the targeting is pretty accurate- and only $200 is a steal for that amount of response. Great Guide!
Looking forward to seeing what you make :)
Okay, the more I think about it the more I am DIGGIN Step Three above. It's like a booby-trap to grab interested people that are hovering at the point of purchasing ONE of your brilliant products... which they may or may not do at this point... but slam-dunk their contact info. Fuh... reaking... brilliant. I've already read this post a couple of times, preparing for my soon to be released book about quickly starting a local service biz. I'm bookmarking the thang because it keeps dropping the wisdom when I need it. Keep Stepping, Kurt
Ayo!!! Once someone says, "Yes" once it gets real hard to say, "No" :) Let me know if I can help with your book along the way. When's it comin!? (Psst, ours just hit Amazon, you're going to be hearing lots more about it!)
Now that was a detailed and useful post! Thank you.
Hey Kyle, I keep coming back to your post, so good it is. I wonder one thing though and I am sorry if am asking you stupid things. Did I get this right? Did you wait to award the winning design AFTER you've got your testing (testing could have taken weeks?!)? When designers submit their proposals - do they submit a full picture so you can use it on leadpages or just a thumbnail in low res? Hardly usable for such a big image as you've shown.. Thanks Mark
Sweet write-up on love the detail on creating a winning design brief AND the hack to get more designers to enter your contest. I haven't done a 99designs contest yet but gotta admit, the results look pretty sweet from the ones I've seen!
Super comprehensive and helpful post, thanks so much for putting it together! I'm wondering how long you ran the Leadpage and VWO tests for and how much that ended up costing you (beyond the book design) to arrive at your final choice? Thanks!
Hey Ryan! I ran the tests less than a week and spent just about $500. (Overall the landing page worked well enough to almost totally pay itself off in optins :) )
Hey Nick, love your site! Interesting read on Fiverr I'd love to know if you use this!
Thank you for this wonderful information. I went to 99designs and started a contest. I did what you said, invited creators and initially was disappointed with the results. At day two (or three) all I could say was WOW. I got the most amazing, kick-ass cover design. The contest is not closed yet but I do see a clear winner. This whole process is new to me, so thank you for your good advice.
Honestly, I never realized how important the cover of a book could really be. This will be a huge help for my soon-to-be-released travel guide!
Awesome resource guys. I just wanted to offer up PickFu (https://www.pickfu.com) as a quicker and easier way to test out the book covers (and titles). A PickFu poll will get you 50 responses within about 15 min and it includes written explanations of their choice. Send me an email if you have any feedback or want to give it a spin!
Great info!!! Thank you so much!
Before coming across this article, I was not aware of 99Designs. I was going to hire a local designer to create my book cover. Instead, I set up a book cover contest and invited 25 designers. I ended up with a total of 46 designers and more than 125 designs in my qualifying round. Your advice was invaluable. I am in the finals and I am thinking about following your advice about setting up a test site. Just reading all of the steps seems a little daunting at this point, so I am not certain that I will do it. But, your info about 99Designs is priceless.
We love 99 designs! So glad you're using them :)
This is so much helpful! Really appreciate for your work!
Hi, i have yet to receive the pay per click ad coupon, any idea as to what may have gone wrong??? Thanks :)