{"id":604,"date":"2008-05-19T05:00:07","date_gmt":"2008-05-19T13:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightreading.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/19\/market-testing-book-covers\/"},"modified":"2008-05-19T07:28:29","modified_gmt":"2008-05-19T15:28:29","slug":"market-testing-book-covers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightreading.com\/blog\/art-and-illustration\/graphic-design\/market-testing-book-covers\/","title":{"rendered":"Market testing book covers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rightreading.com\/blog-images-08\/super-crunchers.jpg\" alt=\"super crunchers book titles\" height=\"397\" width=\"435\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Book publishing has always been a little backward in some aspects of marketing. For example, while a graphic designer might produce several covers for a book, these are usually reviewed only by a select group of decision makers involved with its production and marketing. I&#8217;m not aware of many focus group tests, even for titles that will be receiving massive resources.<\/p>\n<p>Now Bantam Dell is running <a href=\"http:\/\/www.randomhouse.com\/bantamdell\/supercrunchers\/covervoting\/index2.html\" title=\"super crunchers poll\" target=\"_blank\">an online poll<\/a> to help choose among three different covers for the paperback edition of Ian Ayres&#8217; <em>Super Crunchers<\/em> (which &#8220;explores how detail-rich data and our increasing ability to &#8216;crunch&#8217; information is changing the way we live&#8221;). I suppose it&#8217;s a positive step, although I&#8217;m not sure that online votes correspond directly to potential sales.<\/p>\n<p>In an extravagant gesture, Bantam Dell will give a free trade paperback copy of the book to twenty lucky winners (a value to the publisher of perhaps a dollar per book in direct production costs, so they are committing some $20 to prizes an an inducement for people to vote) &#8212; this is announced by a huge red checkmark together with the words (all caps) ENTER TO WIN, followed by a screamer. I can&#8217;t imagine this kind of overselling is effective.<\/p>\n<p>Is one of these covers better than the others?<\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p><em>via <a href=\"http:\/\/mjroseblog.typepad.com\/buzz_balls_hype\/2008\/05\/title-testcover.html\" title=\"market testing in book publishing\" target=\"_blank\">Buzz, Balls, and Hype<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Book publishing has always been a little backward in some aspects of marketing. For example, while a graphic designer might produce several covers for a book, these are&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[32,50],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightreading.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightreading.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightreading.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightreading.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightreading.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightreading.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightreading.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightreading.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightreading.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}