Market Research

I decided to do some market research on book covers, and go to stores to see what covers they had where. I went to Waterstones to see the front window display. There were different displays on show, and all of them were bases around one book. The display would share the same colour themes as the cover, and quotes of the book and reviews around it. These were all popular books displayed, but it shows that the cover plays a big part of the book.

However, when you walked into the store, it was different, as the books were catorigised into genres, and etc. This shows the cover is important, however the context of the book is what makes a person buy it.


I also decided to see the popular books on the online writers website: Wattpad. I wanted to see, again, if there was a consistenty for eye-catching covers. Below, you can see the covers on the 'front page'. Even though it's a small selection, you can see similarities between the covers though they're all very different.  For instance, there's a colour theme in each cover. This draws attention to the book itself and means from a distance you can still notice it.

Also,  they all have big titles you can see almost straight away, and in a font that isn't too fancy or graphic, etc. This makes you stop and study the picture, colours and even the author. This then leads to the next step of turning the book (or clicking on it) for the context.

From this, I've learned how important book covers are as they are judged, however the most important part of a book is the context, but you want the reader to pick it up.

I also wanted to list my book as a cheap and affordable price, but not so cheap that it makes the book looks bad. I found this chart on this site.

I would list my book as fiction, paperback, and young adult, so I looked at the average pricing which is £8.58. This is probably a good range as teenagers and students can't pay £15 on their leisure reading material. I did some further research, and this website here said that 9 is the magic number to sell at. This helps me round it up to a nice and even number and have decided on the price of £8.99/€11.99 for my book.