Your cover represents your book on Amazon, Smashwords, B&N or where ever else you are selling it. It is almost always shown in thumbnail size. If you are paying to advertise your book on websites like Awesome Gang or BookGoodies, your cover is your ad. If you have sold the book and it is sitting on someone’s Kindle or other device waiting to be read, your cover is what will make them want to read and possibly review your book.
You have to make sure your cover looks good at thumbnail size, no distractions like crazy backgrounds or small unreadable text. Your bookcover is your way to grab a reader’s attention. Look at an Amazon category page, look at the bestsellers lists and see what kinds of covers are at the top. Emulate those covers. Be creative *inside* the book. Look at those covers and see what you can do better.
To me as a reader, nothing is more frustrating that having text I can’t read on a book cover, even on the view on the book sellers product page. I don’t want to have to click into the book just to read the cover. Print books on a bookshelf are a different size and resolution than what is represented on a computer monitor or an iPad or Kindle. Keep up with the times and the changes and make your covers the ones that lead the way. Crisp, clean and eyecatching.
Go to the BookGoodies homepage and take a look at the covers there. Which would you click on and which ones make you gloss right over them? It’s up to you to make your cover stand out in a crowd.
