Self-Publishing Authors: A Dust Jacket’s a Waste and Don’t Waste that Dust Jacket

Spoiler alert: Turn your book wrap into a poster

Photo by Paolo Chiabrando on Unsplash.

Two things strike me as true about the world of book publishing:

1. When it comes to book production there are a ton of specific rules and norms, and if you’re playing the game correctly, you simply follow them.
2. When it comes to book marketing, hell, anything goes. You do what you can to get the results you want.

Then, at least in my experience, there’s the rare, occasional rule of thumb that never leaves you. I want to talk about one of them today because it’s a production rule I’ve always followed but it now comes with a marketing caveat.

The unwritten truism I learned in my twenties and still abide by is this: Don’t give your reader more book than they want. Read: Don’t make them buy more book than they want.

That is, don’t go gaga over paper, binding, editorial, and design choices — unnecessary production values — than the reader of this particular book expects and is willing to pay for. Don’t do it. Most readers for most books will be fine with the standard white paper and paperback cover, give or take some acceptable variations like offwhite paper and a matte finish on the cover.

If you’re paying for the sewn in ribbon bookmark or the full color foldout map or the $8,000 index (all real examples), then you better have a damn good reason to absorb those luxuries into the cost of the book.

If your book will be selling to thousands of libraries, you spring for a printing with library binding. If you’re issuing a standard nonfiction hardcover on a serious topic, readers will be expecting a dust jacket for that $28.95 cover price.

Which brings us finally to dust jackets. For most self-published authors, they are a waste of money. Don’t do it unless your readers and brand and sub-genre require it. Certain cookbooks. Certain beautiful children’s books. The abovementioned serious hardcovers.

Don’t make your readers buy more book than they want. And certainly don’t absorb the price on your end either.