About Me: Cover Reveals

Posted June 2, 2014 by Lola in Cover Reveal, Lola's Ramblings / 2 Comments

aboutmefinal

About Me is a feature on Lola’s Review where I talk about me. Usually these posts are everything that doesn’t fall under any standard header, like blog tours, book blitzes, cover reveals or reviews. About Me posts usually are about books, but are more personal discussions of a certain topic. If an About Me post is about a non-book topic it gets the non-book content posts tag and will be posted on a saturday

Yesterday was the kick-off for my June Cover Reveal Sale over at Lola’s Blog Tours. All cover reveals booked in June will get a 50% discount. The event made me think about cover reveals and what I like about them, so I decided to write a post about cover reveals both from a blogger point of view, from a blog visiter point of view and from a blog tour organizer point of view.

Cover Reveals as a blogger
I like participating in cover reveals. I think it’s fun to showcase a new cover on my blog and share my opinion of the cover with my followers. I don’t participate in cover reveals too often, usually once a week or once in the two weeks. I always try to participate in the cover reveals for my favourite authors or authors from whom I read some books and enjoyed them. I also sometimes take a chance and participate in a cover reveal because I like the sound of the blurb and even sometimes when I know the designer of the cover and thought some of her past covers where nice.

Not every author does cover reveals for their books, but in my opinion that’s a missed chance to generate buzz and interest for your book. To me it happens quite often I add a book to my to-read list after seeing it on someone else’s blog. I love beautifull covers and sometimes a cover can convince me to give the book a try. So yeah I think it’s fun when author’s do cover reveals for their books and I think it can create some nice exposure for the book and get people to add it to their to-read lists.

I also feel like there is some sort of risk involved with a cover reveal from a bloggers’s perspective. You sign-up to showcase a cover of a book which you haven’t seen yet. It’s the reason why sometimes I sign-up for a cover reveal, but don’t post. Sometimes I really don’t like the cover and don’t want to post it, although this doesn’t happen often. Another reason for why I sign-up for a cover reveal and don’t post is getting the materials too late. This really is a pet peeve of mine, sometimes I get the cover reveals materials the evening before the reveal. Now that doens’t sound like a big problem, but if you take into account that I live in the Netherlands and in US EST time I go to sleep at 6pm that means I likely won’t see the e-mail with the cover reveal materials until the next morning, when my posts should be up already. I hate hurrying in the morning to get the post up, so usualy I just don’t post in those cases. Although if it’s a cover reveal for a favourite author or an especially stunning cover or I have enough time that morning I probably still post it. So in general I prefer to get the cover reveal materials a few days in advance so i know for sure I have time to schedule my posts.

The importance of a cover
Thanks to cover reveals and also the time before the cover reveal I’ve begun to realize how important a cover is for my opinion of a book and if I am willing to read it. To me it happened a few times that I I got a review request for a book that didn’t have a cover yet, I accepted to review the book and then later when I saw the cover I realized I probably wouldn’t have said yes if I had seen the cover before. This was quite a startling realisation for me as I always like to think I wouldn’t be affected by covers, but the truth is for me a cover maters. The blurb is the most important in determining whether I want to read a book, but things like the cover also play an important part. You know those books I mentioned above that I probably wouldn’t have reviewed if I had seen the cover before? Well both turned out tow be enjoyable books and I gave them both 3 stars, they might not have been perfect books, but there are still enjoyable reads that I would’ve missed out on if I had seen the cover before.
It also happens the other way around that I want to read a book solely based on how pretty the cover is. I think it’s a bit weird, but also fascinating how a cover can influence our opinion of a book and whether we want to read or not. A great cover can convince me to read a book I wouldn’t based only on the blurb and a not so great cover can push me away from a book I would want to read based on the blurb only. So in general a cover matters, it’s important what your book cover looks like.

Visiting blog posts with a cover reveal
I like seeing cover reveals on other blogs although sometimes. Like mentioned above seeing a book on a blog can lead me to add it to my to-read list and really beautifull covers can make me consider reading the book or actually make me read the blurb, while without it might not have done that. Cover reveals can also a bit annoying when a lot of bloggers in my feed participate in the same cover reveal as then you see the same posts a lot of times. I prefer it if bloggers add some personal touches to the cover reveal, I want to know what they think of the cover. Even a short sentence or two can already give us some idea of what the blogger think of the cover and I like seeing these touches. I often have an opinion about the covers I see and I think other do too and a cover reveal can be a nice place to share those opinions. Unfortunately in my experience a lot of bloggers just post the cover reveal and don’t say anything about the cover, which makes seeing the same posts over and over again annoying as the posts are all the same.

Organizing Cover Reveals
Cover Reveals are pretty easy and fun to organize. Just put up the sign-up post and promote it and then about a week before the cover reveal I send out an e-mails to those who signed-up. As a blogger I don’t like getting cover reveal materials too close to the actual date, so I always try to send out my cover reveal e-mails at least a few days till a week before the actual reveal. What I like most about organizing cover reveals is the cover reveal day itself, it’s almost magical how the cover pops up on blogs around the blogosphere. It’s only one day and that makes the impact of it much bigger as the cover seems to be everywhere.
If the authors want it I also add a questions to the sign-up form if bloggers are interested in reading and reviewing the title for which the cover reveal is. I think this helps with keeping the book in people’s minds. As a blogger I have signed-up for cover reveals sometimes and afterwards completely forgot about the book as I never heard of the book again, this particulary happens when the cover reveal is early in advance (which often is the case with cover reveals).

For cover reveals I ask that authors send in their requests at least 2 weeks in advance, as cover reveals don’t have the top posts on a blog, they don’t have to get booked as early as blog tours. Ofcourse the longer the sign-ups are open the more people sign-up. With most cover reveals a lot of sign-ups come in the first week after the sign-up post is up on my website, but after that signups usually keep trickling in. I even have gotten some last day sign-up fors some tours, which is one of the reasons I leave sign-up open til the day before the event starts.

To conclude: from all point of views I like cover reveals.
It’s fun as a blogger to participate in cover reveals, although I don’t participate in them to often and always try to add some personal touches or my opinion to the post. I hate getting the materials for a cover reveal to close to the actual reveal.
As a vlog visitor I like seeing a new cover on a blog and sometimes even decide to add a book to my to-read list due to seeing it during a cover reveal. It can be a tad annoying though when a lot of bloggers participate in the same cover reveal and you see the cover everywhere. I prefer if bloggers add some personal touches or their opinion to their posts, so not all cover reveal posts are the same.
As a tour organizer I love organizing cover reveals, they are prety easy to organize and fun as well! And I love seeing the cover everywhere on the day of the reveal.

So what do you think about cover reveals? Do you like them or not? How often do you participate in cover reveals? And why? Do you add some personal touches to your cover reveal posts? Do you like seeing cover reveals on other blogs?

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2 responses to “About Me: Cover Reveals

  1. Hrm. I think they can be done well but how they’ve been going lately they’re very spammy to me and I tend to ignore them. Some of them on cover reveal day I’ll have 30 blogs I follow participating in them. And really that’s just way overkill and makes me less inclined to pick it up. I do like seeing covers though just not in such…mass. Ya know?
    anna@herding cats & burning soup recently posted…Cat Thursday–It’s…Baby G!My Profile

    • I agree with you, if a lot of blogs in my feed feature the same cover I tend to ignore them really fast. I also think that’s because all the posts seem to be the same and I wish some more people would actually take the time to make their posts more personal. And I also like seeing the covers and I think covers are such an important part of a book.

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