Does Weblit need cover art?

So last week when I was musing on topics for this new blog @tompl over on Twitter suggested “Does Weblit need Cover Art”?

I thought about it and it’s a pretty good question. I’m sure different people will have different answers, but in this post I’m going to give mine.

First, we need to talk about cover art and book covers in general.

What is a book cover?

Well, apart from the obvious job of holding the pages together and protecting them a book cover is an advert designed to draw potential readers in. The front cover art is a poster designed to attract potential readers and make them flip over and look at the back cover copy. The back cover copy is intended to seal the deal and make the potential reader open the book.

So for dead tree books a great cover is imperative. It’s not just the art but the whole package. People judge books by their cover all the time. Books can live and die by the quality of their cover.

Once you get away from paper books things become less clear cut, but the principles remain the same.

Between the world of weblit and paper books and often entwinned with both lie ebooks. Do ebooks need covers? Well, not physical ones, no – they have no pages  to hold together. But they do still need a poster type graphic (which we still call a cover) to catch the potential readers eye and get them to click through to the ebook’s page. Once there you need to entice them with your blurb to at least look at the sample (at that point your “cover” has done its job and it’s all down to your writing).

But what about Weblit? That’s what we’re talking about here isn’t it?

Websites are very different beasts from ebooks let alone paper books, but if you want readers you still need to entice them in.

Many weblit authors use art but others don’t and I’m not sure it makes much difference performance wise, but I haven’t seen statistics either way.

For weblit authors who use them ads are another analogue to cover art in the advert sense. They serve the same purpose as the front cover in getting potential readers to click through to your site. While plain text adverts can be very effective, an eye-catching graphical one  seems to generate even more clicks.

Once the potential reader arrives at your site you need to have an attractive, readable site which doesn’t send then running screaming for the hills. Now readability is more analogous to page layout in paper books and a discussion for another time. The general  web design, however, does have parallels to cover design. It needs to be attractive and draw new arrivals into staying long enough to see what’s there.

When I was picking a template for the main site I took this into consideration. This is why I paid to have the masthead made. I’m happy with the masthead but I’m still tweaking aspects of the rest of the design to make it even better.

That’s the front cover aspects of the web design, what about the back cover?

Behold! The Dragon Wars landing page! This is the page where people who click on my Project Wonderful ads end up. It’s intended to do the job of the back cover. I’d definately say a landing page where new arrivals on the site get some idea what they’ve arrived at is better than shoving them straight into the story. I don’t think mine is as effective as it could be yet and once I finish tweaking the site design I’ll revamp it.

I’m confused! What was the answer?

Yes and no. Weblit has many of the same needs a paper books, but the medium means they are applied differently. Nice graphics certainly help as long as they aren’t over done but they are only partly neccessary.

In Weblit I’d say good “cover” art is marginally better than no cover art, but no cover art is masses better than bad cover art and an attractive site design trumps them both. After all the best “cover” in the world won’t entice someone to stay on a site with clashing purple and yellow colouring.

Well, that’s what I think on the matter. What about you guys?