Yup, product. Because that’s exactly what you have there. It isn’t just a book; it’s a product.

Your product. Totally your call if you want to put it out there in crappy packaging. But that also means you’ve practically guaranteed it’ll have the same dim chance of being purchased as, say, a tube of toothpaste in a crappy homemade box sitting on the shelf right next to a slickly-packaged tube of Crest. More fascinating: Even if that Crest costs more, people will buy that. Heck if they’ll put some crappy-looking thing into their mouths.

Not much different from books. Damned if folks will want to put some crappy-looking thing into their heads. Especially not when they have a choice.

Yup, choice. This Crest example points out another absolute fact: Your book has competition. That shelf will be full of slickly-packaged Crest-caliber products. That crappy toothpaste’s chances are looking dimmer by the second, huh?

Assuming it even makes it to the shelf to begin with.

I’m not Amazon. Heck if I really know what goes on there under the hood and behind the scenes. But I can observe. And so can you.

Go try browsing Amazon now; see how many books with crappy covers you see while clicking and browsing around. Hardly any at best. Most probably, absolutely none. Not front and center. Not in the marginals nor even the out of way recommendations that appear beneath the fold.

None. Practically speaking. Because Amazon’s far from stupid.

Not that Amazon goes around looking for crappy-looking products to nuke. They’ll feature and “recommend” whatever’s selling. That’s it. Nothing even technically difficult about being able to do that easily. And automatically. Their system will automatically put the better-selling, pro-looking books out “on the shelves.” It has a whole bunch of those to choose from too. So, with a totally unbiased, no ego thinking cap on your head, what do you think that book with the crappy homemade cover’s chances are of getting any play on Amazon’s virtual shelves?

Unfair? Hahahahaha! Amazon doesn’t charge us a fee for the privilege of being able to sell our stuff on its sales platform to reach their customers. Not a penny. We’ve got no skin in the game! And that kind of fee was a very common practice in the industry (and all the others too, for that matter) before Amazon came on board with its playground. They totally did away with it for their market.

Not only that, thanks to the “virtual” benefits of the marketplace they’ve created, they’ve given us a chance to play on the shelves right next to the Big Boys and their products. Right next to them. We can duke it out against them head on at no fracking cost! Nowhere else IRL (in real life) will we see this kind of business opportunity. That some choose to totally waste that unheard of opportunity with a crappy homemade book cover… that’s a sighing headshaker right there. Giddadahere with that unfair.

I’m no Amazon-can-do-no-wrong fanboy. But in this particular area, things are as clear as clear can get. If your book isn’t selling, it isn’t their fault, nor their responsibility.

Amazon isn’t the only place you’ll experience problems with and resistance to having a crappy homemade book cover. The industry sure has matured a lot since the Kindle first burst onto the scene over a decade ago.

Advertising, for example. The top book advertising services and sites will refuse to accept an ad for your book if it sports a crappy cover. Get that? They won’t take your money. They have an image to uphold and maintain. They feel a responsibility to present an industry image that meets a certain minimum standard of quality. That they’re thriving with no shortage of advertisers throwing money at them, well that sure should give you pause to consider what you’re doing.

Sure, there are other lesser advertisers out there with non-existent standards. They’ll take your cash. Good luck with those.

Reviewers and bloggers too. Those among them who are worth the effort to reach, the ones you can hopefully talk into reading your book and sharing it with their groups of followers. They’re not exactly wanting in the “books to read and review” department. They’ll ignore and outright refuse a book with a crappy homemade book cover as well.

Yeah, there’ll be reviewers and bloggers out there who’ll take anything “free” tossed their way. Some have started calling themselves “influencers,” and have even started charging fees to “review” your book! I think you can tell what I think about that lot of opportunists and mercenaries and how effective their spit will really be for your book sales.

Let’s move on, shall we? Now, let’s focus on getting things done. Good news: Practically-speaking, there’s not much to it!

Your book cover design doesn’t need to win awards. What your cover design just needs to do is look the part. It’s a uniform, basically. Ideally, you’ll want the cover to attract prospects. That’s difficult. But what you absolutely positively don’t want to have is a cover that will repel a prospective reader if their eyes happen to fall on your cover. Guess what a crappy homemade book cover does.

You can get one done for only $5!!! Yes, only $5 for a pro book cover design. Through the Fiverr website. The artists are able to charge higher prices now, but I just did a search for book cover, and there are still quite a number of them that charge just $5 to start (they can charge more for premium services and features, which you won’t really need for a Kindle book). We’re talking pro quality cover designs here.

Five bucks. You can’t afford that? You gotta be kidding me. For the sake of argument, let’s do some really simple math. That’s 20 quarters. Just toss a quarter a day into a jar. In less than 3 weeks, you’ve got your five bucks. Oh, you don’t have quarters on weekends? That’s just a month’s worth of weekdays to get to a five, then. Or just skip tomorrow’s coffee and pastry at Starbucks and be done with it, for goodness sake.

One last tip, and this has nothing to do with money. Go for larger, thicker typefaces (fonts). So the title and author byline will still be legible when viewing that cover at smaller sizes, especially thumbnails. You know, how your cover will normally appear to prospects browsing through Amazon and other sites. Sans serif fonts usually do better with resizing, by the way, than traditional serif faces.

For similar reasons, take the draft cover designs you’ll be getting from the artist and examine them at smaller sizes, not just big ones! Some of those cover designs, particularly the highly detailed ones, can sometimes look really odd when shrunk down in size.

Good luck and have fun!