Copy these book covers to improve your sales 📈

Welcome to the newsletter that makes you a better author! 

• Your book cover should copy other popular book covers

• How authors can make money with NFT's

• Would you let a robot narrate your book? 🤖

• Oops! She did it again - Britney gets a 'record breaking' book deal

Why do all these book covers look the same?

An angry Reddit user posted this photo complaining that all the book covers on the bestseller list in WH Smith looked and I quote "so boring and tells you almost nothing about the book. Nothing on this shelf stands out to me."

This chap was VERY wrong and in this post, I will explain why he's wrong. 

You don't want to stand out. Wait, what?! Just bear with me on this.Birds of a feather flock together. All these books come from different authors and publishing companies but have come together on the bestseller list. That's great company to be keeping.  These books have made it here for a reason. They have a formula that works! We all know by now that we do all judge books by their cover. It's what makes us click the thumbnail online or pick the book up in the bookstore. 

Often authors want to innovate and create a cover that is unique or "genre-busting" 😰  please don't do this. People are creatures of habit and on top of that VERY lazy. They want to be able to understand what the book is about quickly. That shouldn't be a surprise. If they have to work too hard to figure out if they might like your book - guess what - they won't. It will just stay on the shelf. 

So what can you do?Study the books in your genre that are on the bestseller list. Take note of the fonts, colours, images and design choices made. See if you can guess what the book is about without looking at the blurb. Then when it comes to your own book do the same. See if friends, family, colleagues or others in your network can guess what your book might be about. 

Make money with NFT's

NFTs are sweeping through every industry from publishing to events BUT can they really help authors make more money. The answer is yes. The video below explains more. 

The age of Robot narration? 🤖

Audiobook sales have exploded. Sales in 2020 exceeded $1.3 billion (£1 billion UK), up 12% over 2019. If any subscribers can find me some more recent stats - holla! 👋I love audiobooks. I listen to them on long drives (when my daughter isn't blaring the Sing 2 playlist) or at the gym or sometimes on a morning stroll. I listened to audiobooks on tape as a child. A soothing voice emanating from the speakers helped me drift off to sleep. Not sure I want my audiobook to sound like my Google Maps reading out directions to me and telling me to "turn around where possible" - maybe I am too old-school. I still read paper books and never bought a Kindle. I fell in love with books at a young age and have always stuck with physical books.To me the appeal around an audiobook is the narrator. As a family, we went to see Sing 2 this weekend and it was great. Largely because many of the characters were narrated by entertaining and recognisable actors. They add something extra to the story. 

Britney Spears signs 'record-breaking' $15M (£12.5M) book deal 

Britney Spears has secured a 'record-breaking' publishing deal for her memoir. It will cover her rise to fame, family relationships and her experience living under conservatorship (as detailed in the Netflix doc Free Britney).

It has been reported that Simon & Schuster had secured the deal for the pop star’s memoir for as much as US$15m (£12.5m) after a bidding war involving multiple publishers (must be nice, eh).

The deal is being quoted as one of the biggest of all time behind the Obama's. The president and first lady signed deals worth an estimated US$65m but this covered multiple books. Thus making Britney's the largest for a single author and for just one book. 

Get in touch 📥

Hope you enjoyed the new newsletter format. Give us some feedback by tweeting me @patgw on Twitter, slide in our DM's on Instagram @publishingpush or if you want to get your book published click the link below 👇