Cover Design

I like your Valentine cover, DK, but I'm not the expert. Did L&L charge you to design your Ghost Orchid cover?

L & L Dreamspell as a traditional small press pays advances and royalties (though the advances are small) and charges nothing to the authors they accept. Their editor became a partner in finalizing the voice and all other aspects of the story. Their artist, Linda Houle, listened to all that I suggested for the cover and came up with something entirely different that I really like and that has received many positive comments. It was obvious from all the elements on the cover that she read the entire story (the celtic cross, the stars, the features of Neev and of course, the ghost orchid - the key elements of the story).

The artist has a side business designing book covers. On the side, I did have her design the cover for my ebook anthology that I published at Kindle ebooks, AMOUR: Stories of Love and Friendship. I love that cover too. In that case, I told her what I was looking for, and she created exactly that with even more of an exotic touch than I anticipated.

I know you don't like some of the covers at the site; I'm not crazy about all of them, but there are some really creative covers that are exceptional. I like the cover for the book, The Key, as an example.

DK,

Was there an advantage to self-publishing your e-book over having L&L do it? Other than the royalty split, of course. (I assume your e-book was well-developed and edited so you would not need those services.) Do they not promote e-books enough to make it worth having them do it?

L & L rejected my anthology because it was six stories, already published at Amazon.com by one author. They prefer to publish anthologies that highlight more than one author and are original work. However, they do accept submissions that are single author anthologies and they will publish works for which rights have been returned to the author. It depends on their preferred submissions at the time and what they think fits with their target audience.

While my ebook was in professional form, I had an awful time with formatting it for Kindle even though it was in HTML. I will be pulling it down from Kindle and pubilshing each story separately instead of in the anthology. The stories were intended as singles orginally.

My preference is a publisher rather than self-publishing at Kindle. However, I'm experimenting a little with already published stories for which I hold the rights.

Al Stevens wrote:

If I self-publish, it will be a similar cover. Perhaps the version of this one that you said was a "winner." Removing details is not difficult in Photoshop. But I'll solicit other opinions, too. Maybe run a contest. I won't mention the naked lady, though.

Don't judge a book by its second cover:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704680604576110082106314462.html

You can see the cover here:

http://books.simonandschuster.com/Madonnas-of-Echo-Park/Brando-Skyhorse/9781439170809

From the description of that book:

"and Aurora goes on a journey through her gentrified childhood neighborhood in a quest to discover her own history and her place in the land that all Mexican Americans dream of, "the land that belongs to us again." "

The reconquistas always crack me up. What exactly is it about "the land" they want? Why do they think once this happens (it's slowly happening by demographics already), the land will be any different than the one they're so desperate to leave? Do they think the welfare offices will continue to load their EBT cards, the hospitals will continue to give them free care, and the schools will continue to give them free educations? Will everyone abandon their homes, let the reconquistas move in, and the rest of the US will support them?

There went my thread...

Haven't we discussed your cover to death? lol

I suppose so. Since it had something to do with writing.

Keep your thread Al; look at the number of views and you will see that it had interest to people even if they did not post.

This is the cover for my latest book:

Are they spider-related?

They are four diverse stories woven together. This is the foreword:

This collection of four diverse short stories should appeal to all readers of fiction. The first story, Tank Full and Thankful, takes the reader from the northern hemisphere to the South Island of New Zealand and gives a snapshot of life in the antipodes.

The second story, A Friend in Need, is one of lasting friendship as two young boys grow up together and separate in their late teens. They lose contact with one another but never forget the bonds they made in childhood.

The third story, Leo’s Daughter: Mistress of the Web, is a fantasy based on Greek Mythology. Two stories are combined into one: the mythological story of how Athena was born fully grown and sprang from the head of Zeus and the story of Arachne who was turned into a spider by the goddess, Athena.

The last story, Not a Hill of Beans, highlights the slave trade that still exists in the third world. The story says a great deal in a few words.

Sounds interesting, but I'd have still picked a different cover.

Well, surprise, surprise. I love the cover. You can se it full size here:

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v685/shelagh/Frontcover.jpg

(use the magnifying glass to zoom in)

It might be ok without the spiders.

How much do damage to sales if I leave the spiders?

Shelagh wrote:

How much do damage to sales if I leave the spiders?

You'll lose all the arachnophobics.

In an earlier post I gave these examples. Now I am trying to learn how to use Photoshop to product lighting effects like these. Bright light coming from the background and illuminating the buildings in the street scene. There are a gazillion PS tutorials online, but I haven't found one that touches on this technique.

Tutorial here:

http://powerretouche.com/Illumination_Editor_tutorial.htm

It's a clever cover, Shelagh. In fact, all your covers show original thinking. My only concern is the lack of contrast. I note that Romance of My Dreams 2, though a beautiful cover that actually ties in with my short story, sort of washes out in terms of detail. It doesn't "pop." A cover that "pops" is what gets the attention over the others.

I've often thought that there's a relationship between greeting cards and book covers. Don't you know how some cards just jump from the rack into your hands? It's usually the large words and the way the graphics and colors appear.

Choose your favorite:

dkchristi wrote:

It's a clever cover, Shelagh. In fact, all your covers show original thinking. My only concern is the lack of contrast. I note that Romance of My Dreams 2, though a beautiful cover that actually ties in with my short story, sort of washes out in terms of detail. It doesn't "pop." A cover that "pops" is what gets the attention over the others.

I've often thought that there's a relationship between greeting cards and book covers. Don't you know how some cards just jump from the rack into your hands? It's usually the large words and the way the graphics and colors appear.

I agree, DK. At the time Mr. Planemaker's Flying Machine came out everyone loved the cover. Then I received a review written by the Astronomer Royal for Scotland. John C. Brown, and everyone loved the review. Then the book was serialised on Preton FM community radio. None of these marketing tools -- cover, review, serialisation --- produced significant sales (in fact, hardly any at all).

Everyone loved the cover for The Power of Persuasion and the book was on the list for Wales Book of the Year. Again, no extra sales.

The cover for Forever Friends is universally loved. The video trailer on Youtube has received 16,756 views:



No increase in sales from all those views!

The covers for the Literature & Fiction Interviews books are very attractive. They may have contributed to the number of sbook downloads but have produced no sales.

The Forever Travels anthology has an extremely attractive cover. Again, no significant extra sales.

This time, I decided to design a cover that I know will print well even if it does not show up on the 'net the way all the others do.

You can read the comments on two of the stories in Four Short Stories here:

http://www.myspace.com/shelaghwatkins/blog/249782054

and here:

http://www.myspace.com/shelaghwatkins/blog/223551803

I put the stories together in a single volume so that I could dedicate the book to my brother. It's good that there is technology around that allows me to do that!

I'm getting the hang of the lighting thing. I didn't find an adequate tutorial, so I just started experimenting with the small subset of Photoshop with which I am familiar.



There's a lot more to do with the lighting effect and with the silhouette.

Here's one for my recent WIP