Episode 20: Setting reader expectations through your cover and book blurb

In today’s episode, Fable and the Verbivore take on the topic of cover designs and story blurbs as representations of an author’s work. We focus on the writer perspective of doing the utmost to ensure the front and back cover elements make a promise to the reader and that the story delivers on that promise, and as a reader not judging a book solely on its cover and hook alone.

Starting with an anecdote from Brené Brown as she worked with her publisher’s art department to create a cover that appropriately reflected her book Daring Greatly, we discuss how it’s important as authors to invest our attention and work to get the cover and hook details right so that it represents the work accurately and augments the story without misleading the audience.

We also discuss examples that we have noticed as readers where the cover may not have felt fully reflective of the story, but where we were glad that we ignored that initial value judgment based on our first impression and gave the story a chance. We also bring up some examples where the aesthetic elements and story fully support one another, and where the cover and blurb did their job in creating interest in us as readers to pick up and devour a book.   

We hope you enjoy listening to this week’s episode! Keep reading, and writing, and putting yourself out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

The Verbivore mentions Brené Brown’s Netflix special “Brené Brown: The Call to Courage” in this episode, which she highly recommends. The story about how the design process went for the cover of her book Daring Greatly starts at timestamp 3:10.

Books Mentioned:

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Bethany Stedman