You published your book and are thrilled to have family and friends order it. But there’s a problem. Your book cover isn’t showing on Amazon. Everything else about your book is there, but the cover has disappeared.
While there’s little you can do when Amazon book reviews go missing, a missing cover is another story. Here’s how to solve the case of the missing cover.
Why Your Book Cover Isn’t Showing on Amazon
The internet is a wonderful tool that makes it possible to distribute books all over the globe. Every once in a while, something goes wrong. Data gets lost or mixed up. When this happens with your book data, the cover may not show up. The cover, which was beautifully designed by a book cover designer, may even disappear from Amazon after being there for months or years.
Yes, it’s strange, but with so much data getting processed all day, every day, it’s not unexpected. And believe it or not, Amazon isn’t out to get you. Neither is IngramSpark. In fact, both want you to sell as many books as possible. Because every time you sell a book, it helps the online retailers’ bottom line.
Anyway, what can you do when your cover is a no-show?
Getting Your Cover to Show Up on Amazon
When your book cover isn’t showing on Amazon, follow these steps to get your cover included with your book listing.
- Log into your IngramSpark account.
- On the left side, click Titles.
- Find the book title that has no cover showing up on Amazon.
- Click on the title to open it. (If there are multiple titles or versions of the same title, right click and open each in a new tab. This way, you don’t lose track of which titles you’ve updated.)
- Under the Basic Info tab, scroll down to the keywords section.
- Hover over the keywords listed and click on the pencil icon on the far right.
- At the end of the list, add a semi-colon— ; —and then one additional word that describes your book.
- Click Save. Otherwise, this won’t work!
That’s it. The next time Friday rolls around, IngramSpark will notice you changed some of your book’s data. Because of that, they’ll resubmit your book data to all online retailers. This will alert online retailers—including Amazon—and should result in your book cover showing up in the coming days or weeks.
Some Things to Consider When Working to Get Your Book Cover on Amazon
This article wouldn’t be complete without a few quick notes.
- The directions above are only helpful if you print and distribute with IngramSpark. If you use a different company, please contact that company.
- After saving your updated listing, you may notice a change on your Titles page. Instead of reading “Title Available,” your newly updated title will state “Revision Incomplete.” Don’t stress. This will change in the coming minutes, hours, or days.
- Finally, if you follow the directions above and your title still doesn’t show on Amazon, contact IngramSpark directly for assistance.
Still waiting to publish your book? We understand. It’s a big deal, and you want to do it right with help from people you trust. When you’re ready to move toward publication, check out what our authors have to say about us to figure out if you want to submit your manuscript for consideration.