Judging a Book by its Cover

There’s a reason Madison Avenue uses scantily clothed models in suggestive poses: SEX SELLS. All you have to do is click on the television, open a magazine, or drive by a roadside billboard to know this. The more out of context or unrelated the sexy imagery is to the product it’s supposed to advertise, the more jarring the effect, and the better people tend to remember it. This is called the Von Restorff effect.

I learned this the hard way. Taking a Chance, the second book in my Doctors of Rittenhouse Square trilogy originally came out with this cover…

Book 1 and book 3 in the same series looked like this…







Can you guess which sold better?

After doing an informal poll of friends, family, and readers, it seems that the issue really is the cover. (If you need more convincing, check out this more thorough treatment on the subject: Sex and Advertising.)

So, introducing the new cover of Taking a Chance…