This will seem to be a post about publishing. It actually isn’t.
Yesterday at Mad Genius Club we had someone get very snooty over one of my covers – which, btw, I know it’s not the best it COULD be. I’ve seen the work of professional cover designer and I couldn’t do it. Not yet. – completely ignoring what I’d said I was trying to do and say with the cover. (Long story, but so far as I can tell – and I confess I haven’t spent an awful lot of time looking at the publisher name, though I did look at the covers – the only people still doing historical mysteries are my old publisher Prime Crime. Being cheap and in a sub-branch they think will never sell well, they mostly seem to use photoshop of buildings and/or figures cut out of paintings. So, my cover was trying to imitate that.)
The reason my covers don’t look as though they came out of a professional designer is because they didn’t – they came from me. I’m at best a semi-trained beginner.
So, Sarah, you’ll say, why didn’t you hire a professional cover designer?
Two reasons. The first one is the vile metal. Yes, I know. “If you’re going to do this you should do it right. You should hire someone.” It’s a lovely idea except that most professional cover designers are working on SALARY for the publishing companies. As with everything else, if you find one willing to work piecemeal, they’re likely to either be in a completely different field (there’s a lot of non-fiction book designers, but that’s not the same cues, and they might in fact be worse, since they THINK they know what they’re doing and won’t look) or to be youn’ ones laid off in the current crunch.
Does that mean there are NO good cover designers out there for hire? Oh, by no means. Kris and Dean have an excellent cover designer. On salary. (I’m taking a cover design workshop with her.)
As with artists (I found one, and hope the cover he’s doing for Witchfinder works out, even if I’m very new at cover direction and he’s very new at covers. We’ll see. I know he’ll work for Shadow Gods, but for this one I’m afraid it will signal either “funny” or “young” which the book isn’t. Though a lot can be countered with cover design, but non funny/YA is new for him) the problem with cover designers is only partly money. The other part is finding them. And the problem is related – the cover designers I can find and/or pay for are likely to be just a little better than I, and that advantage might be lost between the things they know that just ain’t so and my inability to explain myself as to what I want.
Add to that the fact that I have to bring out 11 novels as soon as I can, and you’ll start seeing the scope of my problem. Say I pay a cover designer $250 – a really low price – to do a cover design. Now multiply that by 11. Then add in the fact that the two times I tried to hire a cover designer, it got dropped on the floor, and I wasn’t even told that it was no longer being worked on (maybe my instructions offended them mortally. Maybe they got better work. I don’t know.) And consider that my main job is/should be writing, and that riding herd on artists/cover designers takes time from that, which is – after the all – the main way I make money.
There was this publisher – Science Fiction Age – that used to send out rejection letters that started with “In an ideal world this would be an acceptance.”
Well, in an ideal world, there would be battalions of cover designers out there waiting to work for every indie writer, for a very reasonable fee — or any fee. They would be prompt and courteous and versed in the signaling for every genre and sub-genre and it would be much like hiring out proof reading.
As I screamed back at SFA rejections “This is not an ideal world.”
Some writers start off at a much higher peak for cover design. My friend Cedar Sanderson, for instance, or Kevin J. Anderson. (Maybe you need to have a name ending in “son” – how does Hoytson sound, ya’ll?)
While I’m not wholly without artistic training, I have been shorting my art for the last five years (because I’ve been so busy) and as with any artistic thing (yes, including writing) a lot of it is training. In this case, training the eye. You can know everything cerebrally, but – I swear this is most of art classes – if your eye isn’t trained, you will still suck. Most of my art classes were “learning to see.” And like things that are muscle memory – piano playing, painting, or even running – if you’re away from it for a while, you lose it. Mea culpa, and all that. Amanda Green has told me I need to go back to classes and practicing, though I think she meant it for mental health. Well, I need it for helping to design things too. And one of the legend-artists of SF tells me that I’m actually quite gifted, (okay, what he told me is that as much as he enjoyed my books, I’d missed my real calling. It hurt a little.) but “gifted and out of practice” still boils down to “amateur.”
So I’m not one of those “comes in with a lot on the ball” designers. It’s all cerebral, not eye yet. So it will scream “beginner.”
Does this mean I should either spend the next year going door to door trying to find someone who can professionally design my covers or sit on my hands until I can do it at the “required” level?
Oh, for the love of Bob.
First of all, not all the books that come out of NYC look like “best professional designer.” The reason for this is obvious.
As in everything else, from proof reading to editing, there are the main people at the houses, who are extremely well paid and who work only for the high least. And then there are the low-level trainees, who are just learning some of whom are just out of high school/college.
I’m not here going on the “most of what comes out of NYC is cr*p.” A lot of it is, of course, because they don’t invest money on it. But most of it is “good enough.”
Well, my intention with cover design is “good enough” – though of course, I aim higher. But I know where I fall.
In fact, when I audit cover designers – by looking at their stuff on line – most of them are about as good as I am, with a difference. A lot of them get stuck in one genre. Like literary.
There was a page of “clever” cover designs going around – I can’t find the link now – for things like 1984 and Metamorphosis. They were very nice, but here’s the thing: if they weren’t classics and most people didn’t know what was in them, they’d make no sense. Like the 1984 cover with silhouettes of rats around the front cover. Would a potential reader of anti-totalitarian books buy it on that? Probably not. It could work with a great blurb, but it wasn’t, by itself, a “selling cover.”
Most people out of college try to be similarly clever and “high class”, just like most editors and agents just out of college want to do “literary.”
Anyway, so…
What I’ve been doing is going over to Amazon and looking at the bestsellers in print, then trying to imitate that. I discard “made famous by a movie” books like GRRM because, well, his series was doing okay before the movie, and now they’re designed to fit with the movie. And then I look at the genre and subgenre, to see not only what is being done, but what is being signaled.
For instance, I started out with the Musketeer series, wanting the cover to show a scene from the novel. I tried to draw it, so I could show it to an artist who could then improve on it. (Believe it or not artists understand pictures better than words. Shocking.)
Then I went and looked at the covers in mystery-cozy-historical (yes, it’s a cozy in the sense it’s not a hard boiled.) And got a shock. What they’re using now – foreshadowed by the last two covers for Musketeers, which seem to be stock paintings, for some reason involving apples – is something evocative of the time, like, a piece of architecture (for Victorian) or a figure from a painting (for everything else.)
To put the scene I wanted to put on the front cover would simply date the books as being abt. 10 years old.
Having determined this, I raided pictures of musketeers from paintings. I learned not to put the entire painting in, because it gives off a “classical” and “literary” feel. I still feel the background is not textured enough, but overlaying say a wood cut of the time, no matter how faded, becomes “cluttered” with all the lettering these books have.
The covers still feel cluttered to me, because I’m reclaiming the books. Having found out that at least half of my readers on either side don’t know Sarah D’Almeida is in fact Sarah A. Hoyt, I am doing them as Sarah A. Hoyt writing as Sarah D’Almeida. This is a hope to integrate both readerships, or at least a significant portion. (The musketeers have a “fantasy” feel to them, anyway.) And I know I’m not doing what professionals do with balance of mass and lettering. I am sort of at the edge where I can “sense” that, but not do it reliably yet. Because knowing it intellectually is not the same as learning to see.
So, the book won’t say “High push.” Well… it’s the reprint of a midlist series. It’s possible – I still get fan mail for it, five years after the last came out – that doing the sixth book will revive the series, in which case it might very well pay off. BUT even if it pays off, it will be at around the 10 to 20k per book, not the millions. (Oh, I’d love to be proven wrong, but historical mystery is one of those genres that has run off its own readers and it will take a while to find their way back. So I’m looking at it as “old faithful” not “gusher of money.” Frankly neither is science fiction. If I were doing this JUST for the cash, I’d just be doing Paranormal Romance. I’m not. — though I might do some in the future, of course. But never the only thing.)
This is the part where this is not about publishing: I know I’m doing an imperfect job. I also know I’m improving.
I was never one of the worst cover designers out there. For one, as an author, I’ve seen a lot of covers. I can go back to the styles of my youth, because that happens to everyone, and sometimes I missunderestimate what a font says (I think that’s a cultural issue, too. I didn’t grow up here) but when I started I already understood “the cover is a sales tool.” I never had that kind of cover you used to see at Smashwords, with the wrong aspect and the letters that looked like a ransom note.
That said, my early covers were pretty bad. One or two, unexpectedly, rose to the sublime. But most sucked. Fortunately, in the herd of authors putting their back stuff up, they were fairly normal and passed unnoticed.
However, every few months, everyone ups their game, and I look at the old covers and go “OMG” and redo some – I wish I had the time to redo them all. (That said, I also buy books in the store and go “OMG” at their covers.)
Does this mean I should wait until I get good at it? Or wait till I had the money and the perfect cover designer?
Sigh.
Keep in mind every week those books aren’t out is lost income. Even if it’s less than a hundred per book per month. It’s still income. And every little bit helps. An imperfect cover out there will earn me more money than the perfect cover in a year or two. (I can always change it in a year or two.) And the chances of my even recognizing the perfect cover if a designer did it in a year or two, if I have no experience, are zilch.
As I said, this is the part where it’s not about publishing. There are things you can only learn by doing. Writing is one of them. Cover design is another. (Though if I can find a design course in the local community college, I’ll take it. Like writers’ workshops it won’t be a magic bullet, but it will probably help. And I am taking Dean’s cover workshop.)
I could sit around and wait for that time when I’ll be perfect.
Somehow that time never comes, and it’s even less likely to come if I sit around waiting for it (witness what five years of no practice – part of it born of the frustration of seeing my mistakes and not knowing how to fix them – have done to my drawing.)
Look, I feel the exact same thing about writing. When my first trilogy was published, I knew I wasn’t up to snuff. I kept expecting people to come along and say “Hey, who let the amateur in?” Now? I don’t read it. I’m sure the thumbs would show all over the clay. They would to me at least. And yet, people love it.
But then, even though now I think I’m pretty up on my craft, if you force me to re-read one of my books (something I must do when getting back into a series) you’ll see me cringe. Yes, even Darkship Thieves.
This is merely a sign I’m progressing. Am I perfect? Oh, heck no. I hope never to be. If I’m still working, I hope I’m still progressing… which means I’ll never be perfect.
So, what is this post all about?
Some things you only learn by doing. You know those “Might have beens” – try them. Make an effort. If what stands between you and what might be is the consciousness of your own failure, give things a try.
First, you’re always your own worst critic (in fact, you should only worry if you think you’re perfect.) Second, you will improve in the doing. Third, while it’s embarrassing as heck, some things have to be learned in the public eye and on stage, as it were. Because I can spend my life doing covers (or writing) and putting nothing up, but the ultimate test (“How does this sell?”) just won’t be there, and my subconscious will treat it as “just play” and eventually I’ll stop doing it. (Like my art.)
If what’s stopping you is that you aren’t perfect, consider that no one is ever perfect. And you certainly won’t be if you don’t practice.
I don’t know why in certain artistic fields – and in a lot of non-artistic others, like public speaking or even software design – people think they have to be good to start. In others: painting, music playing, dancing, sewing – people know that they’ll spend years practicing and years as apprentices. All talent does is give you a leg up. BUT it doesn’t make you perfect.
You aren’t a good writer? Try it anyway. You aren’t a good painter? Try it and learn in the doing. You aren’t a good cover designer? Well, honey, neither is most of NYC. You can’t explain politics eloquently? Hon, give it a shot anyway, your voice is needed. You want to do a podcast and aren’t sure about your voice? Study what others are doing and learn. You’ll improve. You want a date, but don’t know how to approach women? Well, as Jane Austen pointed out in Pride and Prejudice, that too is a matter of practice.
You learn in the doing. You don’t do, you don’t learn.
You pays your money, you takes your bets. Sometimes the paying down is in money, sometimes in time, sometimes it’s in effort. And sometimes, after all your time and effort you find you’ll never rise above “competent” (if you really put time and effort in it, you’re unlikely to be lower than that.)?
Well, that would be tough. But if you don’t bet you can’t win. And you’re left sitting by the fire with the memories of the life unlived.
What’s worse, you’ll never know how good you could get – if you’d only try and work at it.
According To Hoyt 
I do my covers except one, which I got at a discount… It is way better than mine lol. But, I have had to re-do covers when I realized that the one I had made was amateurish. ;-)
I have to do my own covers because I can’t afford to spend the money even for a talented beginner. *sigh… But I need to get my stuff out so I do it anyway and it does add some interesting creative ideas in my head… I am not an artist and have never been a good at design. I was a typesetter though so I can fake some of it. lol
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Well, in an ideal world, there would be battalions of cover designers out there waiting to work for every indie writer, for a very reasonable fee — or any fee. They would be prompt and courteous and versed in the signaling for every genre and sub-genre and it would be much like hiring out proof reading.
Would you be interested if someone made a company that did covers, sort of like Naked Reader Press does books?
Say, each artist does some generic mock-ups?
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Like this?
http://thrilling-tales.webomator.com/derange-o-lab/pulp-o-mizer/pulp-o-mizer.html
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Not much good for other genera…but something like that, for covers in general, would be awesome!
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Actually it’s not even good for sf/f. It gives a “This came from Gutenberg” (where all the old pulp stories are because they failed to renew copyright. Which applied at the time they came out.) feel.
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I look at that and it rings the “non-gray-goo fantastic fiction, possibly Baen” bell in my head.
Also, I could make a copy of the Marelon: the Magician with that stuff…but not much else, not for “serious” lit, etc.
Says “call back.” Then again, I don’t buy many ebooks. (I don’t buy much but used books, these days, unless I KNOW it’s going to be good.)
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You might have gotten different ones. It’s not kidding about being a generator.
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I wouldn’t want to use any of the designs. It’s my opinion — my own, idiosyncratic and personal opinion — that your cover should at least TRY to look wholly original, even if you just ran in the door from boosting the elements from abandoned picture books in some back alley and are still filing of the serial numbers while the glue dries.
And this guys stuff — while mind-blowingly good — is too recognizable.
All the same, you could learn a LOT by studying and trying to emulate what he’s doing. In your own style, of course. In fact, I’m blogrolling his site for further study myself.
M
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That’s kind of awesome. I love the titles, too.
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There’s a whole sequence of already generated one that starts here:
http://thrilling-tales.webomator.com/it-came-from-the-pulp-o-mizer/POM_000
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I’m thinking maybe something more like a video game’s character customizer screen. For this, it would take a lot of elements, where you could select from them, choose your base scene, your lighting, action (or inaction, as the case may be) stances, maybe have some scene decorations to place, and outfitting the people. Different selections for different genres, with some overlap of course.
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Then, you could take it into your image editing program and personalize it even more.
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If they actually were better than mine, yeah. There are some for romance novels on line, and they’re professional and good, and you can buy them for like 200 — but not for all the genres.
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I got mentioned in the same sentence with Kevin J Anderson. I’m going to just quietly geek girl a little here… My covers are largely based on what little graphic design I acquired for a different business. They still need tons of work, IMO. But in putting them out there, they are on the market. Waiting for the perfect cover, or to be able to pay for a cover artist (Ok, yes, I am doing that for Pixie Noir. But I will still do the layout and design myself) might have meant they never got out. So, just like writing, the beginning is: just do it. Finish it, shoot for a high standard, but if it’s less than perfect, don’t shove it in a dark hole and forget it. Run it by someone you trust, and then let it free. You know this, but there are others who are so scared of it they won’t even consider Indie, and that is a mistake.
Ok, stepping off my soap box (how did that get there?) and going back to homework. I’d rather do covers than read and dissect latino literature. Actually, the reading is sometimes good, Dissection is just messy.
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Well, exactly. I know I’m not THAT good, but I take a ton of time and pains, and do my best, and then in a month look at it and go “Oh, so wrong” and redo it. :-P
And are you sure Hoytson wouldn’t immediately improve it?
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I think Dan (and the boys) would have something to say about that!
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And are you sure Hoytson wouldn’t immediately improve it?
Wouldn’t it depend which one you drafted?
(…no, I couldn’t resist, it sounds like a title instead of a name; now musing on “Hoytcat” and “Hoytwife” and such.)
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“Dissection is just messy.”
Vicks, lass? It helps with the smell.
Oh, wait. You meant disscetion of *literature…*
*puts mental forensic technician back in its box*
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Some of this “li-ter-acher” I’ll take the Vicks for, thank you sir…
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My condolences, Miss Cedar.
If it helps any, back oh, about fifteen years and one pickup truck ago, I was in college as well… suffering through African-American Culture and Society, required for my degree.
At one time, my New Yorker roommate (longest lasting of the nineteen I had sequentially) picked up my text for that class, and proceeded to read entire sections out loud in the most ridiculous Cajun accent ever devised by a truly diseased mind.
I remembered those passages best, and managed to squeak by with a C, despite the instructor doing everything she could to eliminate the last remaining brain cells in her classroom.
De Peiti Boug, E doan lahk de Boude Man, see? Picture it as a yank’s yank trying to talk Cajun-southern. Memorable. *chuckle*
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There used to be a customer for the helpdesk where I worked (she worked at a hotel group whose main offices were in Atlanta), who had the most beautiful cajun-like accent I ever heard. I don’t think it was quite authentically cajun, but it brought quite a bit of that to the table.
Even though she was dense as a brick with her computer, it was a delight to speak to her, because of her voice. And because she understood that she wasn’t computer-savvy, and listened to what we told her when she called.
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I have experimented with doing my own covers for e-books, using my own photographs, tweaking them with photoshop artistic effects and then adding titles, etc. They’re serviceable enough (if I say so myself) – but I can see the difference when I hand off the work to my little brother, the professional graphic artist for print editions. He has done my last three – and two of those involved merging two photos. The latest one – I went to the local conservation society and they let me take a photo of the hallway in a very, very Victorian house, with a door open at the end. (They get a credit, and a free copy, of course!) My brother edited in another photo, of a landscape in the country beyond the open door. The underlying theme of this latest is about escape from a stultifying existence … and having the nerve or desperation to step outside that door.
The book goes live November 11, btw. And if anyone would like to hire my brother, he’s a freelance and has quite reasonable rates. His email available upon PM request.
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Not bad at all.
It passes my test: make it tiny on the screen and see if you can 1) still read the title, 2) read the author’s name, 3) have some idea of the image.
At all but the tiniest, 1) and 2) were satisfied. The inside of the house is a little dark for the inside part of the image to still be intelligible at a tiny size – but most covers fail that test eventually – and the ‘doorway to an outside world’ concept was still there.
One to at least try to imitate.
I presume the lettering in the actual cover is a little less pixilated – ie, it’s a higher-def image.
My mother’s paintings of windows and doorways may end up on my covers – she reverses the concept: they are painted from the outside, showing a dark, mysterious, and inviting cool interior. Mexican colonial houses (her usual subject) are like that.
When I’m ready your brother may have a job.
Alicia
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Sure – and he loves working with original art. I think he is really good at matching the font to the artistic concept, too. (He has done other book covers for us at the Teeny Publishing Bidness.) When you’re ready, email me at clyahayes-at-gmail-dot-com.
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I had to scroll back and look at it a second time to find the author name. On first look I thought that was a subtitle.
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Eh … I’ve got local name recognition, so there is that going for me. The fans are wanting all to know ‘what happens next?’
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Celia Hayes, I would be very interested, in his info. I have a “kindle rant,” A YA, and 3 cookbooks I will need covers for. I have $500 budgeted to pay for the YA, would love to spend less. only have $1200 to pay *all* tse costs involved in editing, cover design, formatting, ISBN’s, bar code generations, etc. The others will be paid for as the YA (first out) pays enough. Contact me at g-r-a-f-x-m-a-n-u-s At yahoo dot com. (take out the dashes)
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Walter, I just sent you a PM with his contact address – let me know if not received! Let him know your budget and any particular ideas that you have for the general look of the cover – he will work with you.
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I once read some advice on job-hunting, which I think was in What Color Is Your Parachute?, that said: “You’re going to get dozens of nos before you ever get your first yes. But you only need one yes: once you get that yes, you’re done.” (Assuming it’s a job you’d consider taking, and if it isn’t, why did you apply for it?) “So for every no that you get, just consider it one more no crossed off from the forty or so you’re going to receive before that yes, and remind yourself that you’re now one step closer to that yes.”
Applies to dating too. Assuming you’re looking for a long-term relationship and not just playing the field, you only need that one yes. So don’t be discouraged by the thirty-nine nos you’ve gotten so far: the yes you’re looking for may be just around the corner where you least expected it.
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Same applies to writing. First short I sold, I’d got rejected 80 times, including from pays in copies. And then it sold to a pro mag that didn’t exist when I first wrote it.
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Off topic (moi? off-topic???) but when we were involved in home education a couple decades ago there was also a push of the idea of eschewing “dating” for courtship. As all here are sensitive to the meanings and implications of words i trust I need not develop the distinction.
Pushing it back on-topic, just how much difference does a “perfect” cover make? Assuming the purpose of the cover is to accurately and effectively target the market for the tale, then a “perfect” cover might mean … what – 25% more sales? So if the market for a story is 20K with a weak cover, a “perfect” cover gets you to 25K sales? How much are you willing to spend for those additional sales?
What if the cost of getting that “perfect” cover that boosts sales by 5K is not writing another book that nets 20K sales even with a less than perfect cover?
What if the key to the e-book market is to maintain sufficient brand presence that people ignore your covers and buy your brand? I may be a minority, but most Baen covers do nothing for me. Certainly none has influenced me to try a book a tenth so much as that logo on the spine.
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This was the target I was flailing around trying to hit earlier. Baen covers don’t grab me. The first Baen book I read was handed to me in Mosul, Iraq when I was desperate for words, and I thought the cover was silly. But I inhaled the book. And as opportunity presented itself I started snagging other Baen stuff, because the brand was easily identifiable at a glance and I’d learned to trust it.
So I’m studying cuing and trying to craft ideas that target the right audience, but I’m really trying to grok branding and how to utilize it.
From what I’ve understood so far, word of mouth trumps all other advertising ventures in moving books. From that I want to be able to capitalize on any mouthiness on the part of readers and have an identifiable brand people can find.
Of course, the idea you slipped out there elsewhere about the value of covers in a digital environment could skew the efforts. Guess our host and the MGC’ers and Kris Rusch and Dean Smith and etc. are in no danger of losing my attention any time soon. Piles to learn, yet.
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It does – word of mouth from readers who who love your books and will tell their friends about yours. I have a good number of key fans – as I call them – who love the Trilogy, and Truckee, and will tell all their friends about it. And – this is the important bit – order the books as gifts. One year, my Christmas was absolutely made by a dear lady in Houston, who ordered six sets of the Trilogy – and autographed by me — as presents for her children. It was a substantial outlay on her part. The last weekend of the month, I am heading up to Fredericksburg to do another book-club meeting, as a favor to another solid fan. I have gotten so many sales and personal contacts, and done so many events – which brought me more of the same.
I can’t conceive of an author being a total horrible person to fans, no matter how big your royalty checks are. I just can’t imagine being that jaded and contemptuous.
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I have to wonder about the cover art question for ebooks – I certainly am not contradicting the insights from those actually in the marketplace, but for myself, shopping from the Kindle (mine’s a DX, and thus monochrome with not very much bit depth), when I’m browsing through the Kindle store I can’t even really make out the cover art most of the time, and so in my shopping efforts the blurb is the most important bit of author/publisher supplied content, the user reviews are second, and the cover is pretty much last, unless I go log onto a tablet or PC to see it. I’ll also note that complex cover art turns to mud faster than something more simple (like Celia’s open door art cover).
For shopping on the web on something with a good screen, I can see the effort paying off.
I wonder if Amazon shares stats on how much shopping for ebooks is done from their monochrome Kindle reader, color tablets/readers, and PCs?
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When I think of complex cover art, the first thing that comes to mind is the covers of the early Discworld novels, illustrated by Josh Kirby (http://www.lspace.org/ftp/images/bookcovers/uk/small-gods-1.jpg is a perfect example). Shrink that one down even a little bit and it’s a confused mess. (Even more than it already is, that is).
OTOH, Kirby’s style was very distinctive and when I see it, I know this is another Discworld book — so it does have that going for it. (Or it did, until he died a decade ago and someone else started doing the covers. And by that point Pratchett had name recognition.)
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I now wonder about the strategic use of negative reviews. If I open a John Ringo or Tom Kratman or Michael Z. Williamson book site at Amazon and don’t see any reviews from outraged progressives I am inclined to think the book a bit of a dud. So, perhaps if one were able to construct a sort of model “outraged progressive” review it could help sales.
In my experience, most Amazon reviews are useless for any purpose of evaluating whether the book suits me. Reviews tend to be from highly uncritical fans or highly critical (in an entirely different way) enemies of the view presented by the author. It doesn’t matter how well written (in the purely technical senses of plotting, characterization, grammar & spelling and, y’know, literary quality*) a book is, Larry Correia is going to get ripped by anti-gun zealots and those who go ballistic over his representation of, say, a National Park Service that is actively hostile to American citizens.
The few efforts at a rational review are buried in such huge haystacks that they aren’t much worth searching for (although Amazon’s “X out of Y people found this review useful” is a step toward winnowing, it suffers the same problems.) They tend to fall in with the reviews of the sort that go “I thought Catcher in the Rye was about baseball and was very disappointed in this book.”
The best route might be to develop reliable “word-of-mouth” sites (e.g., this and PJ Lifestyle’s book blurbs) that help people of generally similar taste to direct attention to items they like and which we might also. I expect we all know people whose recommendation of a book makes us less likely to try it and others whose endorsement makes us seek out the book. The goal is to build more of the latter and fewer of the former — and when possible get the former to sneer outrageously in ways** that make us seek out what they disdained.
* “Literary quality” in the classic sense, not contemporary misuse of the term.
** “This is a terrible book with unbelievable characters who refuse to understand their lives are empty of purpose, acting instead to face up to their crises, face down their problems and (in wholly absurd plot turns) succeed in attaining their goals.”
“The author’s use of straight forward prose in lieu of crafting beautiful images rendered this book altogether too easy to read.”
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It seems to me the deeper one delves into ebooks, away from the big houses and towards indie and self pub, the further away one gets from the “I Hate The Combat Accountant” style politically-driven Amazon reviews, if only as an effect of the obscurity of some of the self-pub folks. This may mean Amazon review trolling is a true badge of success.
The main failing I’ve found in trying to use Amazon reviews to actually shop for something to read is the near-universal absence of valid criticism along the lines of “This writer is unfortunately new to the concept of commas,” or, “It seems someone told this author that a single short sentence of dialog, followed by five to ten long sentences of info dump, to include historical background, the flavor of dinner, the weather, and anything else, followed by another short sentence of dialog to end the paragraph, especially if the info dump has mostly nothing to do with the first and last bit of dialog, is the only way to write fiction. If you can make it past this writing style extending for page after page after page, the author eventually manages to tell a pretty good story.”
Dona Sarah’s practice of leaning heavily on trial chapters is the only way I see to get around the style driven ebook-against-virtual-wall effect.
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I have been firmly told several times that I am in the minority when I state that covers don’t matter to me, I seldom look at the covers on deadtree books until long after they have been read (picking the book up off the coffee table, “what the heck is that supposed to be on cover, a Barsoomian ape? Didn’t the author read the book and know that apes on Barsoom aren’t covered in hair?)
The bottom line is folks like us don’t matter in the grand scheme of things, after all it isn’t like we are going to NOT buy the book because the author spent the time and money to have an excellent cover.
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I did my own covers, but I had the advantage of living with an outstanding photographer who allowed me to use her work for free. She’s now doing cover design and looking for authors who are willing to pay for her designs.
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Get her to start a business! I know some crazy good artists who only sell stuff through DeviantArt because that’s the only place they know.
If I had clue one– or even just some people management skills– I would do it.
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If I had clue one– or even just some people management skills– I would do it.
You think you’re clueless? That’s a good sign.
Somebody who is aware enough to realize they lack people management skills is probably capable of acquiring those skills if it’s important enough to them. Caution: the learning process might be unfamiliar and uncomfortable.
You think you’re clueless? That’s a good sign…but it’s only a first step.
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We’re trying:
http://thismorningsmile.wordpress.com/covers/
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Darn you, Foxfier. Darn you to heck. I just spent a really long time mooning around DeviantArt. I blame you, of course. What an amazing place. Kept trying to figure out if anyone did covers, but kept getting distracted by the art.
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*grin*
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yes.
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A cover has one single purpose and one only, to catch the attention of a potential buyer and entice them to pick up the book or click on the link to investigate further. Inherent in that is of course the requirement not to deceive, to not promise something that the contents do not deliver, since all that does is piss the buyer off and in all likelihood bias them against any further works by that author.
Based on observation and many of Toni’s con pitches the Baen approach appears to be to hire kick ass artists and insist on at least some modest connection between the art and that book’s content. I do like that in her slide show Toni generally shows both the original art and the cover. Don’t know if Toni does the art and text integration herself, likely not as she is running the whole shebang, but from comments she’s made she does exert at least oversight of the final product.
Had not given it all that much thought before this blog, but in retrospect of course the integration has to play a major role. Seems to be three components: the artwork itself, the integration with all the necessary other bits on the cover, and again the relevance between the cover message and content.
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I would have to disagree somewhat that deception is a technique to be forbidden from covers. I don’t know how many covers I’ve seen, or blurbs I’ve read, that are completely at odds with the book. Indeed, I’ve sometimes made it a game to discover *how* a given book or blurb was going to contradict the book!
The *only* deception I find annoying is the promise of a good book betrayed by the story found therein. (Well, that, and I sometimes will encounter a blurb or cover that says “you won’t be interested in this”, only to discover that I find the story very interesting, despite the cover…)
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How important is cuing? I understand the danger of miscuing, leading folks down the wrong path and all. But…how overt does cuing need to be, or perhaps, how specific does cuing need to be? Genre is a broad category, sub-genre narrows it down, category within sub-genre squeezes it further…but at some point do you deprive yourself of readers as a result of over-specific cuing?
Or should you focus on brand cuing, much as Baen does? I’m not this far along in my work, so I’m the neophyte’s neophyte.
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Cuing is very important, if you want to sell. And yes, brand. You should have the same font/look for a series.
Baen is unique in covers. Others tend to be more like each other than like Baen.
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Which is where I think Baen’s branding works whether or not their individual covers do. I’m not always a fan of their covers but I trust the brand.
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And this is why my latest cover has 1) Rada’s sigil on it (like book one), and 2) tech details that shove the cover into mil-sci-fi (ditto book one).
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There’s a website I read that mocks bad covers in science fiction and fantasy, and yes, they have a Baen subcategory. However, all of the photos are reader-submitted, and many of them are from personal collections, so people can laugh at a bad cover and still buy the book. (Lord knows I’ve done that.) A good cover will sell the book, but a cover that satisfies the correct cues may still sell the book even if the cover, as a whole, is an offense to artistic taste and propriety.
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Thanks, timely subject for me too, since I am starting to trust being able to finish a painting again I plan to change most of my covers before Christmas, and there is the new novel too.
About the initial impression, do you have any thoughts as to what makes a name good? I mean the name of the story, that’s something I’ve been struggling most with. I’d guess the cover picture matters more to a casual browser, at least I don’t often really even notice the name of a novel except at the point I decide I want something on paper and then go for one of the Finnish net book stores to look for it (I like Amazon, but mail tends to make books ordered from any of its branches more expensive than something bought from the locals), but I suppose names can make at least some difference too. I haven’t noticed any specific trends with names for different genres – apart from the obvious, like that you get ‘death’ mostly if its a mystery, and ‘love’ is more likely in a romance novel – either, but I guess there might be.
And then there is the series problem. The names should probably have a similar theme, but are there other ways of doing it than like your Musketeer series, meaning there is the same word in every name? Or would it be enough to just have a name for the series, so it is something like Knights of somewhere 1: battle of the bay, and the next could then be something rather different. Like Knights of somewhere 2: princess Elaine? Only that can make for rather long names.
One subject which would make an interesting blog post. Any chances of seeing one? (If there already is one, link?)
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Titles are good if they attract readers and don’t leave them discontent with the book based on their impressions of the title.
Series titles should probably mirror each other, but OTOH, the pattern should be loose so that you don’t have to stretch too far if the series goes on for a long time. In my experience, those that work best have a common grammatical form. “Name and the Noun.” “Adjective Noun.”
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We’re on “common phrase, with one word changed” for titles right now. (Ex: Take the high road -> Take the star road) Seems simple, but usually involves four days of verbal ping-pong as we bounce potential titles off each other until we find one we like, and then check to see if anyone’s taken it yet. (and repeat, if necessary.)
Of course, we then add “Book #[X] of the Maxwell series” to the space adventure make it easier and more search-engine friendly.
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For The Sky Suspended and its eventual sequel, which will be called The Sum of Things, I mined Epitaph to an Army of Mercenaries a poem by A.E. Housman: http://www.poemtree.com/poems/EpitaphOnAnArmy.htm
I memorized it as an adolescent,so it was sitting in my brain waiting to be used.
Two other writers have used the same title, but because it’s a title and the other books aren’t science fiction I went ahead with it. There won’t be more than three books, so I’m safe on using up the poem, I figure.
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The cliche is, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.”
Out of tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of designs in a lifetime — ones I was satisfied with, ones I had doubts about, ones I thought stunk on ice* — I can count on one hand the number of times a customer rejected a job BECAUSE of a flaw or lack in the design. And, most of the time, they don’t even know that’s WHY they’re bouncing it.
That a design must be serviceable goes without saying. That it should be the greatest thing since sliced bread is less axiomatic.
The most important specification for any job is the deadline — when the product is available for use. How “good” (an entirely subjective value) it is isn’t even in the top ten. If you can’t afford to pay a pro for your cover, you must do the best you can yourself and live with the results.
You can’t send the thing out there with NO cover. That’s just not on.
M
*Please to note that “ones I was proud of” isn’t in that list. I know my own limitations all too well.
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Talk about a post that hits a nerve.
I keep a copy of my very first cover design hidden away on my hard drive. Whenever I get down on myself because my current covers aren’t yet ideal — and let’s face, indie or not, most writers love to get down on themselves for one thing or another — I bring that first one up on the monitor again and remind myself how far I’ve come with no budget and having had to learn Photoshop from scratch.
I’d still love to be able to hire someone else, though. Someday, maybe.
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Well, that and then trusting the cover designer to know the half dozen genres I work in….
And if you want to see a lousy cover — I wrote Plain Jane as Laurien Gardner. Compare the cover they gave me to the covers of the other books. No, seriously. And yet, my book outsells them, and keeps selling.
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I dunno, Sarah, the art is stiffer, and the banner color dull–but it coordinates with the picture. The other two clash. Was the designer color blind?
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Thank you for the information about covers. I appreciate the information about the aspect ratio and other ideas.
I have some question and if someone could point me in the right direction, I’d appreciate it.
In general, what fonts are good for covers? Also what fonts and sizes are better for the pages of a story in either print or in digital format?
What colors are good for fonts or backgrounds on a cover? (I’m not color blind but I have been accused of that with some justification.)
I’ve never analyzed covers, and beyond some obvious cues, (like the ripped bodice on a bodice ripper or a spaceship on a book with a spaceship in there somewhere,) what items or formats indicate what genre a book is in?
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Go look at some covers on Amazon for your chosen genre. That by itself will give you clues.
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Sarah, I *really* don’t have the time, but I will look up the info I have on cover design, including a membership site, and write a post for you, on this. (I can only function 4-5 hours a day, and the Nursing Home I’m in, is badly understaffed, eating up large chunks of that.) I don’t need more to do, but I can’t say “No,” to this many in need.
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sure. But it might run at MGC.
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Well, I could give you the contact info for my designer. He’s between projects and likely to be reasonable. He did my latest covers which I can post a link to when I get home if anybody is interested.
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This is the latest one. I had a kinda vague idea of what I wanted and he just ran with it.
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and just delete this if it’s out of line.
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Nah, not out of line at all.
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Well, I’m no cover expert…but now somebody else around here is taking my money. Added to the wish list.
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*blush* ah, thank you :-)
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Well really the thanks go to you, for putting the product out there. But you’re taking my money and I’m grumpy. Evil capitalists. :|
Um. Tongue firmly in cheek. In fact, I may have tongue cramps.
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Mwahahahahahaha! My evil capitalist plan is coming to fruition!
Ahem, I mean, yes, tongue definitely in cheek ;)
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You know, your avatar and that evil laugh? Oddly works…
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Not to cast doubt on the subject, but as I remarked before the purpose of a cover is simply to entice the casual browser to investigate further. There was a time when this was critical in the days of many bookstores filled to the brim with a vast selection. Even the individual genres had thousands of choices with nothing to differentiate but that flash of color and artwork.
Personally, as a long time SF fan I pay little if any attention to a cover any more especially since most of my reading is now on Kindle or computer screen. I buy primarily by recognized author, or by brand (ie Baen), or through recommendations over social media.
So I guess my question is: are we arguing over how to make the best buggy whip, or do you expect the power of attractive covers to continue to be a major factor in sales?
Don’t get me wrong, I like a good bit of art as well as the next reader, particularly scantily clad females and exploding rockets, but am raising the question, is the cover the best place to expend energy and resources?
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Cover is Marketing. For a certain amount of resources expended on it, sure it’s worth it! They serve a function, and it might be as simple as grouping the books on a shelf by series and genre. More likely, though, there is a relationship between cover art and sales, be it ever so small.
Most of us want to think we are above “judging a book by its cover,” but there’s got to be a reason that all books don’t come with monocolor wrappers with different fancy fonts for the title and author. Heck, I’m not proud, I know an exploding spaceship on the cover tends to grab my attention. Same with an eye-catching title. These things alone will not get me to buy the book, but like as not I’ll pick it up and read the back flap for the blurb.
That “first glance eye-catching” bit is probably HUGE, especially in indie. Whether they buy the book or not, getting that first bit of attention gives an author a larger pool of potential readers. That’s why having an appropriate cover to the genre, cueing, and the rest all work. Or so I surmise, based on what experts in the field have said (thanks Sarah!). *grin*
Having a great cover ain’t as important as having the book *out there* and selling, but it sure can’t hurt…
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I would agree that the eye catching first glance is significant when your target is snagging new readers, but it would seem to me that the really successful authors depend more on a broad and solid fan base which not only guarantees likely buyers of the next book but also serve as a great word of mouth source.
Not saying covers don’t have a place to play, but caution to not give them all the credit or blame for sales. Impact, yes, but what I’m speculating on is just what that percentage is.
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What percentage? Damn good question, and there are probably charts and surveys and such about this somewhere, because, as you say, it consumes resources authors could be using to write moar bookses.
Agreed that the really successful ones probably owe that to a solid fan base, but “really successful” to me probably means you have the excess resources to afford pro covers, thus making this a non issue. Rather like “we’ll hire you once you have five years experience.” “But I need the job to get the experience, so hire me!” “Sorry, regulations. Get experience, then we’ll hire you.” Circular, like that…
Of course the covers do not get all the credit or blame for sales, there we most definitely agree. Better covers can’t but help. Is the “better” worth the investment of money, resulting in more income from more readers? As you say, it’s worth speculating upon.
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This may be apostasy, but I wonder whether the covers particularly matter in books whose sales are primarily online. If I am looking for a genre book on Amazon or B&N online, for example, I am not looking at the covers for genre cues — I already handled that when I typed in my search range.
I am not sure I even pay much attention to the covers displayed, although a blank cover box might give me pause as it suggests a book not readily available, such as first or other rare (i.e., expensive) edition.
So long as a cover is not actively off-putting I am more influenced by the “readers who bought this also bought …” suggestions than by covers.
With E-books I don’t even consider whether the cover is likely to embarrass me if seen reading it in public, say at a restaurant, park, doctor’s waiting room, in line at the grocery …
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That’s an interesting thought. You’re probably right that cover art has a much less effect on largely ebook sales. Seeing as I’ve not bought but a very few physical books since acquiring my kindle, and most of my purchases have been researched beforehand, I can offer at least one anecdotal confirmation. *chuckle*
My favorites I’ll probably end up getting as hardcovers, though, sometime. Once I become independantly wealthy enough to acquire a library-sized house to fill from basement to attic with books, that is. *grin* I blame Cedar for reviving that childhood dream.
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I venture to say that genre signalling is even more important in ebooks. You see, the also-bought algorithm (or as it’s affectionately referred to, the Also-bot) only shows cover and title, number of reviews and rating. If an indie author is lucky and good enough to get onto the also-boughts of a top-in-subgenre/genre ebook, then a whole lot of eyeballs see the book that otherwise wouldn’t, and you need that cover to signal it’s in a subgenre they’re interested in, and it’s intriguing enough to click on.
As a book climbs the charts, it may make it to the bestsellers page (or the hot new releases). When a reader looks at either chart, all they see is the same as the also-bought. I know from talking to multiple authors that if your book gets “above the fold” on the first page, it gets enough eyeballs there to perpetuate its success – and sales do drop sharply after the book drops below the first page of bestsellers. (Makes perfect sense, too – search engine optimization folks note that the first five returns in a search get the lion’s share of the clicks, and by page three, you’re fighting with the ants for scraps.)
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I’ve heard of people being turned off by a book cover. Indeed, the complaining soul said that the cover — well, so much effort had been spent on making it look good in a small version that there was nothing more to it in the large one. The lack of additional detail turned him off.
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I think RES has this right for now. In the E-book world I think most folks pay no attention to covers. This is mostly because for me my main reader (a 3rd generation e-Paper based Kindle) is just greyscale. It also doesn’t show covers, the lists are just names. This may be changing, When I borrow my wife’s Fire the covers are what you see.
I’m pretty certain I’ve never really bought a book for its cover. Cover art when I started buying sci-fi was just pointless. Often it had absolutely nothing to do with the story (e.g. The covers for most of the ’70s Lensman series, almost any cover for Asimov or Bradbury in the 60’s to 70’s. ). What has caught my eye were titles. For example at a 6th grade
book fair I saw a book titled “Starship Troopers”. I’d only just started reading scifi/fantasy, and had no idea who this Heinlein guy was (Hey give me a break I was a 6th grader from a small town in Ct. in the 70’s). I dropped $.95 of my hard earned paper route money to get it. Once I read that though I started hunting up more stuff by Heinlein. This seems to indicate that recognizing a “Brand” (mainly the author, but sometimes the publisher like Baen today or Tor or Ace in the past) is my main means of selection. For new authors most strongly its word of mouth from people I know (or at least who I trust, I came to Sarah’s site via instapundit not knowing she wrote scifi and saw the books in the sidebar).
In the Ebook world for me keeping the price low ($3-5) helps . I’m willing to risk $3 on something totally new (heck that’s a nice cup of coffee in North Shore Ma.), but somehow $7-9 is daunting (which is only a lousy meal at a MacDonalds, so I don’t know why I balk). I’m willing to spend more for a known quantity especially if its something new.
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But every fan had to be hooked that first time. Else we’d all be selling to a tiny circle of friends and family.
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Here’s the cover I mentioned above:
The tone of the book is darker (much darker in one story) than the earlier ones, so that had a bit of influence on the design.
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You’re one of the people whose covers I ALWAYS envy.
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Thank you, but all credit goes to the guys at IndieBookLauncher and a few artists from Dreamstime. I just help with ideas. They do the hard work.
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I find I have to keep volume in mind for covers, as in: how many works are going to feature in a series (which need to resemble each other at the series-brand level).
I went with a surrealist I found on the stock photos sites who did (A) really cool fantasy surrealist paintings, and (B) had lots and lots of them available. Series 1 will end up with 4 novels, 2 mini-story collections, 1 big story collection, and 10-12 stories/novellas.
That’s about 20 background images. There’s no way I could afford to do that with a designer, especially for the minor works. Examples: http://www.amazon.com/Karen-Myers/e/B009NWS4KO/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
Serving this sort of quantity is a real issue for me. Each series will probably have this sort of problem, and it’s not easy finding someone prolific on the stockphoto sites that I like well enough.
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I don’t recall if I mentioned this before, Karen, but your covers remind me of the boxed set of the Chronicles of Narnia from the 1970s. Also very surrealist, but (like yours) really working well with the stories.
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I know this is probably a horribly unhip and philistine viewpoint, but I read books for their content. I give a crap what the cover looks like, and in fact since I do a good deal of reading via Kindle, I rarely look at covers. I had read my way all the way through the Discworld books before I ever got a glance at any of the covers, which I thought were childrens books until I saw the titles.
You write. I’ll let my imagination paint the pictures.
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Oh, yeah. I’m like you. which is why the whole marketing through cover things is so difficult and had to be won step by step.
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You’re evil! First you really get me started writing, and now I’m doing covers to boot!
What’s coming next? Designing custom fonts? Noooo!!!!!
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My son does that for fun.
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Stop. Just…. stop! Lol….
Century. Bold. Italic. It’s good enough, dagnabit!
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Oh, just put the second book in the Future Tech series I’m writing up on KDP. Again, thank you for being an inspirational example!
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“Some things you learn by doing.”
Yep. My covers are about to get _another_ facelift.
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When you can afford it, take the Dean cover conference. It’s worth it.
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Oh, I can afford it, I just can’t find the _time_! How’d it get to be October already?
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One second at a time, just as it always keeps slipping away on me, too. Come back here, time! Stop running!
Cue: Rush’s time Stand Still.
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Tell me about it. Time is killing me. But the workshop is worth it.
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If I were to write books for a living, I think I would have every book cover contain the classical image of Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl.. You could dress them in different clothes and give them different weapons based on the books, but make them naked. Then everyone who has ever been in a Mexican restaurant will have a sense of recognition and you can just photoshop in pasties and a loincloth or jeans and hat or camo bikini and tactical black shorts, and insert swords, sixguns, AR’s, or magic wands based on what kind of book it is.
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Personally, Michael Whelan’s covers are what drew me into SF when I was a kid, and some of those images are *still* in my mind decades later.
Anecdote: I’ve released four CDs. One used a clever photograph upward of a sculpture at the Hirshorn museum. One was a collage of words (that worked thematically with the title), and one was a pastiche of the “four black heavy lines” style a la “Let it Be”, but with photos of pets. However, the best was a commissioned piece from a local comic book artist – that is the one which still gets comments and a lot of appreciation from fans years later.
So would approaching a comic book (or other type of) artist be a possibility?
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I confess that I probably (initially) bought those Lancer Conan collections for the Frank Frazetta covers. And I was sorely tempted to pick up the mid-Seventies Ballantine reissues of the Tarzan books for their Neal Adams covers.
Which raises the question: did anybody buy Molly Hatchet albums for the music?
I think we can agree that there are limits on the amount of material sold by such covers.
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Personally I search every other day on my phone for kindle books. I search so much that the first thing I notice are the covers then the titles. If I see a cover I like I click on it and check out what it’s about. Just like I use to do in a bookstore. But when it comes to buying I’m more worried about how the first ten pages read then anything else. I hate the cover on the first and second Monster Hunters books but Larry’s writing sucked me in and then brought me to places like this.
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