How important is the Art Cover for a Novel?

[Tatsuo]

Share me your thoughts.
Your opinions Matter.

 

[SuperMushroom]

It's really important. My following on RR and my readers here pretty much doubled overnight when I updated my cover from my crummy placeholder art to what it is now...

 

[Tatsuo]

It's really important. My following on RR and my readers here pretty much doubled overnight when I updated my cover from my crummy placeholder art to what it is now...

What would you say of RR compared to SH?
Better here or better there?

 

[SuperMushroom]

What would you say of RR compared to SH?
Better here or better there?

My followings in both places are still pretty small, so I can't say I have much experience with either community. But I did luck my way into a few vocal readers on RR, which I'm quite happy about!

I don't see any particular reason not to upload to both of them though.

 

[philpil2010]

i just spent like 5 secs in canva for mine i have no clue

 

[Xcalibur_Xc]

It's very important.

 

[Tsuru]

Share me your thoughts.
Your opinions Matter.

>Are "looks" important in blind dates ?
THAT much important.

It's very VERY ultra important.

Typo. XD
-------------------
Something else, is the true answer.

Or you put waifu.
Or you put something unrelated but very badass or sexy, or downright "whatever can catch the eye, no matter wtf it is"

 

[Seraphelki]

The blind date comparison is accurate.
When most readers are glancing through the many possible works, the cover art is gonna be the first thing they even bother to stop for.
It's almost like the dating apps where you swipe left or right.
Something about it is going to interest them to then go and look at the title. The title of the work is definitely important too - either being catchy or just quickly explaining the main plot/content - but it's that first 'wait, let me see what this is' that the cover art brings to the table.

 

[PancakesWitch]

Very important, always make it interesting, sometimes within a scene or multiple characters in it. Just some generic looking guy holding a weapon is not enough nowadays, there are thousands of covers like this too.

 

[beast_regards]

Covers are crucial for the Royal Road. The books without the cover are practically guaranteed to be ignored completely as the Royal Road's readers are conditioned as the Pavlov's dogs to think the coverless books as badly written by default. It's part of the Royal Road's "professional" wank. If you don't have "professional" cover, you don't exist. If you get "professional" cover, better to pay for "professional" add from "professional" moderators of the "professional" site. They probably overcompensate to hide they are not real company from real country, but nevermind...

Cover is still one of the three ways to grab the attention of the readers among the flood of the free content the site offers as recent updates section displays only three information:
1) Cover
2) Title
3) Chapter Title
And this is what you have to work with.

You don't have any other reliable way to get attention that those three ways, so better to use all the three tools you have to the maximum extend.

And what you put on the cover?

Well...

The Scribble Hub already figured out that boobs are new meta, so they promptly banned it.

But judge for yourself....

What gets your attention more:

A title, or the catgirl of questionable age?

 

[CharlesEBrown]

It depends. It is frequently very important BUT, important or not. it can be something as simple as a stylized logo and the author's name, or an image from inside the novel, or a character sketch - or you can even do a throwback to the paperbacks of the late 60s-early 80s and have an image that kind of sort of have something vaguely to do with the contents but it is clear that the artist read nothing more than a one paragraph summary and did not even get detailed character descriptions.

 

[RepresentingSilence]

Cover art is the first thing that most grabs attention title is second and summary is what actually gets people interested in reading

 

[ChrisLensman]

You cannot overstate the importance of cover art. Within a month of adding my first piece of cover art my total views had more than tripled.
Especially here on Scribble Hub, you will only ever find a series one of two ways. You either see it on the front page or you search by a specific genre.
With the former all people see is the name of the series, the title of the newest chapter and the cover art. And aside from attention-grabbing, clickbaity names and chapter titles the cover art is the only thing that could possibly draw in readers.
With the latter people at least see the synopsis but if there's no engaging cover art people will just scroll past.

Even if it's "just" AI art, just get a piece of cover art. Also, while the cover should feature a main character, it doesn't necessarily have to feature the main character. What I mean by that is that female characters get more clicks so pick the female lead even if the protagonist is male.

 

[ACertainPassingUser]

Comments above are already explained things to you.

For Inspiration,

These are the cover of the first volumes of the Top 10 best selling Light Novels according to Wikipedia

1. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime

2. The Apothecary Diaries

3. Guin Saga

4. A Certain Magical Index

5. Sword Art Online

6. The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya

7. The Irregular at Magic High School

8. Slayers

9. Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?

10. Kagerou Project (Also known as "Kagerou Daze")

Most of these Covers were very old and so many people copied them off already, they became the norm and boring ones.

But, they're still better and have higher standard than our usual Webnovel.

Just by copying those covers would make your webnovel have higher chance of being read upon than the average lower quality webnovel covers.

And of course the covers above have been bested by covers of the subsequent volumes of those novels. As in, Volume 8-15 cover would have beat volume 1 covers above.

Yet we knew how quality the covers of volume 1 are, in comparison to most webnovel cover.

 

[beast_regards]

You could argue that you don't necessarily need cover, it's not stated anywhere in the rules that you need one, and there isn't any script actually forcing you to upload the picture, but you would be subtly and unconciously pushed towards it in one way of another.

 

[packbat]

My personal ranking as a reader is:

1. A good cover.
2. No cover.
3. A bad cover.
4. A plagiarized cover.
5. A GenAI cover.

I imagine a good cover will draw in more eyes than no cover, but a lot of the best stories on the site don't have a cover at all.

 

[LilRora]

Covers matter a LOT. When I look back at my own stories, I heavily suspect a certain cover was one of the main reasons for the number of readers I got.

When I'm looking for stories, the cover may not be the most single important thing that draws me in, but it's the first and by far most noticeable compared to the title or the synopsis. If you have an eye-catching cover, which is a very subjective quality but there are some trends you can spot, you may get even several times the amount of views you would have gotten otherwise, simply because that much more people notice your cover among thousands of other stories.

 

[InBetweenRealms]

>Are "looks" important in blind dates ?
THAT much important.

Typo. XD
-------------------
Something else, is the true answer.

Or you put waifu.
Or you put something unrelated but very badass or sexy, or downright "whatever can catch the eye, no matter wtf it is"

Looks make you sit, money makes you stay, Dammit I'm speaking wisdom

 

[Hans.Trondheim]

How important is a novel cover?

As someone who creates them, very. Tis to attract readers to pick up your work, as well as added flair to your novel.

Who should be in the cover?

This is not even rocket science. It should be the character or scene that defines the work, the one that makes your story interesting to your audience. So, by this, it means not only the MC, the villain, and some random passers-by; it should be anyone that makes your reader go, "What's this story is all about?"

 

[TheKillingAlice]

The human brain considers if something or someone is "good" or "bad" within the span of time it takes to do half a blink. We are insanely and innately superficial creatures. And those impressions are lasting, as even if you later on feel better about something or someone, you will never forget that first negative impression you have had, though you will never really be able to explain it, as it happens subconsciously, as long as nothing consciously adds to that as well.
In a book, you first "see", then you understand. You see the cover, look at it more closely if it catches you, THEN you read the title. And if it seems to be interesting enough, you check out the blurb or, if available, look into the first pages of the actual writing. On an online platform, the next thing you see will be Chapter titles and reviews. But to see those, you will have to click on the book after potentially seeing a very small picture, not even being able to read the entire title (it's not always possible to make them entirely easy to read).

So, answer yourself from that basic context: Is a Cover really that important?