Anyone can make a bad cover for a book. A small press who doesn't do a lot of business with booksellers like B&N, a large publisher who does. Anyone.
And anyone can truly believe in their heart that their bad cover is beautiful.
Most of my experience is in the romance section and my own opinion on this is based on anecdotal evidence. When covers are too "experimental," even if we can convince the chains (B&N, Borders, Walden, etc.) to carry the book and put it face out, we still do not get the same sales.
People are attracted to covers for many different reasons, but mostly because the cover of the book tells them what is inside. It is, I am told, a fact of the industry that if there are wings or a dragon on the cover of a book, it will sell.
I consulted pnh about this, because he is the head of SF/F at Tor, and has been for many years, and is widely regarded as one of the top SF/F editors in the world. Here is what he said (quoted with permission):
The fact is, the strongest force operating here isn't Evil Big Publishers or Evil B&N or Evil Wal-Mart; it's consumer conservatism. If anything, B&N is notably skillful at second-guessing the exact contours of consumer conservatism, because they don't have any particular aesthetic ax to grind; they just have a strong idea of what works and what doesn't, based on a VERY LARGE DATA SET.
He also noted that the William Goldman rule ("Nobody Knows Anything") is always in effect -- we don't, as a general rule, know if people buy books because of the covers, in spite of the covers, or without even noticing.
So my answer is.... I don't think so, but there's really no way of knowing for sure.
no subject
Anyone can make a bad cover for a book. A small press who doesn't do a lot of business with booksellers like B&N, a large publisher who does. Anyone.
And anyone can truly believe in their heart that their bad cover is beautiful.
Most of my experience is in the romance section and my own opinion on this is based on anecdotal evidence. When covers are too "experimental," even if we can convince the chains (B&N, Borders, Walden, etc.) to carry the book and put it face out, we still do not get the same sales.
People are attracted to covers for many different reasons, but mostly because the cover of the book tells them what is inside. It is, I am told, a fact of the industry that if there are wings or a dragon on the cover of a book, it will sell.
I consulted
The fact is, the strongest force operating here isn't Evil Big Publishers or Evil B&N or Evil Wal-Mart; it's consumer conservatism. If anything, B&N is notably skillful at second-guessing the exact contours of consumer conservatism, because they don't have any particular aesthetic ax to grind; they just have a strong idea of what works and what doesn't, based on a VERY LARGE DATA SET.
He also noted that the William Goldman rule ("Nobody Knows Anything") is always in effect -- we don't, as a general rule, know if people buy books because of the covers, in spite of the covers, or without even noticing.
So my answer is.... I don't think so, but there's really no way of knowing for sure.