Friday Five Challenge
Okay, for you writers out there–have you wondered if your cover truly draws a reader in? And for you readers, how does a cover affect your buying decision? It’s Friday, so I’m taking part in Rosie Amber’s Friday Five Challenge today.
Here are Rosie’s rules:
My Friday Five Challenge is this….. IN ONLY FIVE MINUTES….
1) Go to any online book supplier,
2) Randomly choose a category,
3) Speed through the book covers, choose one which has instantly appealed to your eye,
4) Read the book Bio/ Description for this book,
5) If there are reviews, check out a couple,
6) Make an instant decision, would you BUY or PASS?
I selected Young Adult as my category (you probably know I’m currently working on a Young Adult novel), and orphans/foster care as my sub-category.
I found a cover I really liked. The book is called Between by Jessica Warman.
I thought the cover was beautiful and evocative. As a child I would spend hours on the swings, so I loved that aspect. The colors and typeface work so well together. Not to mention the fluffy clouds! I want to bury my feet in their pillowy softness. Between is a mystery that takes place on the main character’s father’s yacht when she wakes up after a birthday party to find herself deserted. Reviews were generally good. However, one reviewer had written that he/she loved the book as written by Christopher Pike. In other words, the reviewer felt Warman’s Between came close to plagiarizing Remember Me by Christopher Pike, even using some of the same names. Egads! Warning flags galore!
So, curious by now, I checked out Remember Me.
I hate the cover. It’s garish and busy. But the story sounds really interesting. And irony of ironies, it turns out to be a ghost novel. Even without intending to, I ended up on my old stomping grounds.
Will I BUY Remember Me?
Well, yeah, of course.
2 thoughts on “Friday Five Challenge”
Interesting blog post! So, I take it that the purpose of the challenge was to determine whether or not you would “buy a book by it’s cover”, right? And to summarize your response, it was “no”. It was the review for the “ugly cover” book and the description of it that sold you on it. But would you have even looked at that book if your first awareness of it was only by it’s ugly cover? It took the whole sheebang – a pretty cover, review, & description – to lead you to a book you would buy. What synergy!
Yes, DJ, interesting synergy indeed. I have had that happen before, though, when I was reading a review and the reviewer said, “Don’t buy this book, buy this other book.” I would never have looked at the Christopher Pike novel if not for the challenge and the round-about journey. I always thought of Pike as a middle grade author, which I don’t read much. I do enjoy YA though. Hopefully after I’ve read the book I can review it though I read so many more books than I can ever find time to review. Sigh.