In a conversation with a bookstore owner (on the tails of last week's editorial about bookstore owners and AI), she gravitated into talk about self-published authors (she didn't call them indies). She said she has seen so many cheap and badly designed covers that they deter her from wanting the book on her shelves. She felt the cover actually reflected on her store.

Have you thought about that impact of an inexpensive cover?

You may not think they can tell. They can. You forget they lay hands on the best books out there, created by traditional publishers where a lot of thought goes into what attracts a reader to pick up a book. A cover that comes anywhere near to looking homemade gives the impression that the insides have been given the same attention and deters readers, bookstore owners, libraries, and so on. It also gives them the impression that you don't write well enough to be traditionally published.

You can argue about that and call those thoughts rather cliche, premature, or uninformed, but those bookstore owners only want the best for their customers to keep them coming back. They break a lot of sweat in their decisions to provide an attractive store. Their decisions are based upon their needs, not yours. Books have to move (i.e., get bought) in a store, and are usually given limited time to prove their worth. A bad cover never gets picked up.

Invest in your book, especially the cover. The general population (and bookstore owners) use the cover as the first impression of your work. It's what opens the door. . . or shuts it.