Refreshing With a New Book Cover or Not?

A Pocket-Sized Jumble of 500+ Writing Prompts used to be my standby seller; out of all of my books, it was guaranteed to sell at least a few copies every single month, ever since its publication date. It was never a bestseller, but it was a steady one.

As a hybrid writer, most of my books are indie published. I’ve created cover art in a variety of platforms. I’ve hired out for cover art. I’ve had professional cover art and professional interiors. I’ve discovered some designs sell my books better than others.

The cover for A Pocket-Sized Jumble of 500+ Writing Prompts was one I had created myself using a free public domain image, and honestly, I never really liked it, although no one else every complained. Here is what it used to look like:

Even though it had steady sales, I read some articles about non-fiction covers and how most of the bestsellers had brightly colored designs. This gave me the “brilliant” idea to refresh the cover of it in 2020. I fiddled around with the formatting a bit, too. The result, I hoped, would be more sales.

Here’s what I did with it, thinking the “brighter, fun” design and colors would give my sales an extra boost:

The actual result?

Fewer sales.

So, here I am in 2023, and I’m trying to refresh the middling book with a new cover and a return to something close to the original formatting in the interior. The content is nearly identical to what it has always been.

Because I am hoping to refresh the sales as well as the cover, I’ve lowered the eBook price down to 99 cents.

Here’s the new cover:

What do you think? Better, worse, middle? You can tell me the truth.

If you’re interested in writing prompts, it’s here:

A Pocket-Sized Jumble of 500+ Writing Prompts for 99 cents on Kindle

If you can tell me why there’s a turtle on the cover in the comments by the end of the week on May 26th, I’ll send you a free ePub or Mobi file. 🙂

Also, if you think the turtle is distracting, please tell me that, too. I fiddled with that image for quite a while, tossing around the idea of keeping it or not. (However, this doesn’t get you a free book – You have to have a good idea of why it’s there. Even if you haven’t read the book, there’s a hint on the book’s page at Amazon.)