Book covers: the 'Mona Lisa' effect and other tricks
Pol, Nil, Jan, Roc and Jacobo have met at Sol Soler on Plaça del Sol in Gràcia for some beers. As soon as they entered, Roc saw a girl who caught his attention.
“Look at what a pretty girl over there, at that table”, he told Jacobo.
The girl is sitting at one of the corner tables with some friends. She looks happy. While her friends chat among themselves, Roc can't stop looking at her. After a few minutes, the girl went to the bathroom. She did it quickly, seriously, and practically didn't lift her head. When she returns to the table, she dares to look at Roc for just a moment, who hasn't lost sight of her for a single second. The girl's gaze, though fleeting, meets Roc's.
“Dude, she looked at me, she looked at me! I turn her on!
“Ha, ha, ha”, Jacobo laughs. “Don't get your hopes up, she probably looked at you because you were looking at her; she surely felt observed and instinctively returned it. It usually happens. Don't get excited, kid!
Book covers have images and many of them look at us, just as it has always happened with magazine covers at newsstands, where celebrities and models appear who have been photographed to create the Mona Lisa effect, which is when, no matter where you stand, they don't take their eyes off you. This “hey, you, look at me, I'm looking at you!” technique has an immediate result in sales, and that is that 79% of readers decide to buy a book based on the cover. But apart from the gaze effect, there are others that are decisive in the purchase decision. Romance lovers are attracted to pastel colors or passion red, light illustrations, or human figures with emotional attitudes. Thriller and mystery addicts prefer large, condensed fonts, and black, dark blue, or shadows to generate tension. Fantasy has many more ingredients and covers tend to be more complex, with imaginary worlds and symbolism. The more detailed the cover, the more interest it generates in readers of this genre. And then there is minimalism, one of the most powerful trends, which consists of the use of a single visual element on a clean background: in a psychological thriller, a bloodstain in the middle of a white cover to create unease, and in a contemporary novel, a match or a butterfly that convey intellectual quality and elegance.
Thus, colors and typography act as visual metadata that the brain processes instantly. To all this can be added other determining aspects, such as those readers who do not want to take any risks and look for covers that resemble those of other books they have already enjoyed, or the object effect, especially in the physical market, where the cover turns the book into an object of desire. Many readers admit to buying these books just because "they look good on the shelf" or on the living room table. Finally, covers are also subject to the digital visibility of online stores, where the image must function as a thumbnail. If the title is not legible or the image is too confusing in a small size, sales drop drastically.
El Roc did not know the girl from Sol Soler, but months later it will seem to him that he heard her cross the street of Tres Senyores.
