Among the effects which I was most interested to explore, was the relationship between the cover image of a novel, and sales for that novel.
Grading the individual merit of respective cover designs is a highly subjective process. I therefore had to resign myself to a less complicated approach: dividing book covers between those where the main character is front-facing, those where the main character is back-facing, and those which do not have any human figure on the cover.
Including both the original book titles and the compilations for each series, there were 231 books with front-facing figures, 33 with back-viewed figures, and 26 with no human figures on the cover. Taken in total, the books with a front-facing figure on the cover sold about 5.0 times better, on average, than those with no human figure at all. This was essentially the trend which was expected.
Significantly, however, there was minimal difference between books with a front-facing figure and those with a figure viewed from the back (about 1-percent separated the two populations). The real difference came from having an identifiable person on the cover of the book - whether their face was visible or not.
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