Getcher books right here!

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Morning, ladies and germs. I hope your festivities yesterday were pleasant. I had the chance to meet a couple of Our Beloved Hostess’s fans and hang out in an air-conditioned hotel, and the Oyster Wife and Minion #4 arrived at the Oysterhaus while I was off committing commerce and Staying Out of the Way. Life is pretty awesome.

We have several entries this week, especially since we lost last week’s post to technical difficulties. So go buy books, enjoy them, and if you’re anywhere near Salt Lake City today, do drop by the Westercon dealers room and say hello. Lots of books to buy there, too! As always, future entries can (and should!) be sent to my email. Happy reading!

Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster

Mercenary Wordsmith, Electron Herder, and Henchman to the Stars

Michael A. Hooten

Wizard’s Heir

A Bard Without a Star, Book 1

Gwydion ap Don is a talented harpist, and a known rogue. But his Uncle Math sees something more: a young man with the magical talent to succeed him as Lord Gwynedd. But to learn magic, Gwydion will also have to learn self-control, duty, honor, and the martial arts. He’s not sure which will be the hardest. And when his training in magic begins in earnest, his whole world will change, as well as how he sees himself.

Based on the ancient Welsh myths from the Mabinogion, but set in the world of Cricket’s Song, this new series looks at one of the three great bards of Glencairck, Gwydion. But long before he became a great bard, he had to learn how to be a good man. This is the story of how his uncle tries to temper him into a leader, and a suitable heir.

Sam Schall

Vengeance from Ashes

Honor and Duty Book 1

First, they took away her command. Then they took away her freedom. But they couldn’t take away her duty and honor. Now they want her back.

Captain Ashlyn Shaw has survived two years in a brutal military prison. Now those who betrayed her are offering the chance for freedom. All she has to do is trust them not to betray her and her people again. If she can do that, and if she can survive the war that looms on the horizon, she can reclaim her life and get the vengeance she’s dreamed of for so long.

But only if she can forget the betrayal and do her duty.

Walt Pimbley

Golf Cart Blues

A foursome from Fordo (Iran’s nuclear bomb research center) take a breather on the links, where they discover that Commies make poor caddies. When Mossad shows up to play through, things get dicey.

Cedar Sanderson

Plant Life

A science fiction novella of exploration and first contact. A quartet of planetary scouts make a startling discovery on an uninhabited planet. If a being can appear human and act human, how alien is it? When an entire planet has a voice, what does it speak for? The scouting team is left with a dilemma, a person to protect from those who want to experiment on her, and a revelation about the world they introduced to humanity.

Free until July 7th!

Ellie Ferguson

Hunter’s Home

Hunter’s Moon Book 3

They say you can never go home. That’s something CJ Reamer has long believed. So, when her father suddenly appears on her doorstep, demanding she return home to Montana to “do her duty”, she has other plans. Montana hasn’t been home for a long time, almost as long as Benjamin Franklin Reamer quit being her father. Dallas is now her home and it’s where her heart is. The only problem is her father doesn’t like taking “no” for an answer.

When her lover and mate is shot and she learns those responsible come from her birth pride and clan, CJ has no choice but to return to the home she left so long ago. At least she won’t be going alone. Clan alphas Matt and Finn Kincade aren’t about to take any risks where their friend is concerned. Nor is her mate, Rafe Walkinghorse, going to let her go without him.

Going home means digging up painful memories and family secrets. But will it also mean death – or worse – for CJ and her friends?

60 thoughts on “Getcher books right here!”

  1. I think most of us would agree writing good SFF requires sharp perceptions. Since these covers here (and so many others) almost qualify as “worst of,” it reflects poorly on the artistic judgment of the author. It might be a better idea to have a one-color cover, the simplest possible type, and some art that is little more than a logo in the center, to at least cut one’s losses. It didn’t hurt The Hunger Games books and is cheaper.

    Like

    1. One color covers don’t sell. As for artistic judgement — they’re many of them no worse than the ones of traditional publishing. And also don’t know till you know how hard it is to get art. And if you do one-color with logo, a) don’t compare to Hunger Games, which got hyper pushed. b) you have to be better with typography and most of us aren’t. Cover designs you hire will do “literary” covers, because that’s where they worked for years.
      Good covers are eye of the beholder. I try to make mine as good as I can, but you know… some people with the WORST covers I’ve seen are selling like crazy, so — shrug.

      Like

    3. Sure, Fail, mock me for my cover… I see how you are. Actually, Sarah and I, and Dorothy Grant, have been running workshops and articles for a while now on improving cover design and helping Indies to improve in this arena. As for this particular cover of mine, it was made a couple of years ago, and I haven’t the time, or frankly, the inclination to change it. The fractal art is no worse than others.

      The authors often don’t know what they can do better. We’re teaching them, slowly. Can we improve? Certainly. No one stops learning until they are dead.

      Like

        1. Thanks. I have been repressing certain responses of a political nature and your comment makes it increasingly difficult to maintain such restraint.

          Our current president “ain’t dead yet!”

          Like

          1. Well, college freshmen at 0815 on an overcast May morning with a classroom temperature of 80 degrees F and 90% humidity do greatly resemble the not-quite-walking dead. Their instructress wasn’t too far behind.

            Like

    4. Honestly, Fail, I’ve been looking at this stuff pretty intently for the last year, including seeing good books not do well because of bad covers. For indie-published books, with their limited(!!) promo budgets, you really need several things: the title etc has to be visible in a Kindle thumb, it needs to be vivid, and it needs to signal genre — porn needs a nearly-naked woman, romance needs something painting-ish, SF/F needs science or action.

      All of these covers have that.

      The sort of cover you’re talking about works best on something literary, or that has such a reputation that it not longer needs to find readers who’ve never heard of it. That’s not these.

      But thanks for playing.

      Like

        1. As requested, here’s what I think of what you actually wrote.

          I think most of us would agree writing good SFF requires sharp perceptions.

          No, not really. It requires skill, persistence, and continually working at making a better experience for the reader. For example, I have poor eyesight, poor hearing, and a nearly-defunct sense of smell, but I can collaborate with an artist to create great genre-specific covers, and my ad copy is fairly decent.

          Since these covers here (and so many others) almost qualify as “worst of,”…

          Having spent a great deal of time researching covers, both trad pub and indie, for the specific genres I am tracking (not just the genres in which we are publishing), I congratulate you, sir, on your ability to avoid many of the sub-top-100-in-category covers that lets you rank these near the bottom.

          Now, if you’re trying to point out that some won’t look great in full trade paperback size, others won’t look great at 60×100 pixel thumbnail, and the shorts don’t clearly signal their genre, why then, yes, I agree. However, sweeping criticism across the board is pointless and inapplicable.

          …it reflects poorly on the artistic judgment of the author.

          No, not really. It may reflect poorly on that particular story, but does not reflect poorly on the author themselves. I assure you, authors do not have legions of former fans saying “I trusted Larry Correia to deliver a great story until his latest release had a cover that looked terrible in thumbnail!” Readers are fairly straightforward consumers: either they get the sample after viewing cover and blurb, or they tend to forget the item exists. Change the cover art, and you’ll get readers who think the story was just published, and didn’t exist before.

          It might be a better idea to have a one-color cover, the simplest possible type, and some art that is little more than a logo in the center…

          It might, it might not. Which genre are you signalling when you create this cover? If you have an abstract icon, then you’re relying entirely on typography to carry the genre, subgenre, and what the book’s about. This is possible, and is one of the standard treatments in thriller and horror. It is far, far harder to convey in science fiction, fantasy, and epic fantasy (GRRM’s branding required a multi-million dollar push to make this effective, as did Collin’s Hunger Games series). Mystery strongly depends on the subgenre; this is impossible to functionally pull off in cozies, for example, and without multi-million dollar PR campaigns and push, does not work in romance. (There’s a reason the only two well-known series to pull this off are Twilight and 50 Shades. It’s because this treatment does not attract readers in and of itself, but only serves as an icon to anchor a widespread marketing campaign. There is nothing inherent in the Nike Swoosh design to make people go “Oh, good sports shoes!” – but after enough money has been spent, people can look at the design and tie it to the advertising and marketing campaigns and the perceptions those have created.)

          …to at least cut one’s losses. It didn’t hurt The Hunger Games books and is cheaper.

          Covert art demands a ROI – a return on the investment of money and time. If Peter writes a short story that will fall in the $0.99 to $1.99 price range, we’d be foolish to spend $45,000 on cover art and design. Similarly, for a novella that will net her seventy cents per sale when it’s at full price, designing an iconic piece of art, commissioning it, and designing a new cover with it will run between $250 to $720. (I know. I’ve priced it out. You can run covers up to $12K, but for artists and designers working with the indie market, that’s a fairly standard range for a custom cover with custom art.)

          She could do it for less, but she would be trading her time – which is less time she could be writing the next novel, with its much higher ROI. She’s already cut her losses by leaving this cover up and accepting the lower sales.

          Like

          1. The fact you think Martin needed branding and one of the greatest all-time logos in advertising history could’ve been pretty much anything tells me all I need to know about your expertise. What writer doesn’t understand Martin is the best epic fantasy writer of his generation, even if you only count the first 3 of his series?

            And I meant sharp perceptions as in smarts, not hearing and eyesight.

            Here’s a good exercise – for everybody. Go stare at the ’60s Ace Paperback editions of Edgar Rice Burroughs. When you understand those pointy letters is the greatest use of typography in our genre of that generation, then consider yourself educated.

            AND I AM NOT ADVOCATING USING ICONS!!! Please read my comments before responding to them. Better part of valor ring a bell? If you can’t paint, you can’t use a painting. That is not advocating icons. It’s using perfume to hide a bad smell.

            Like

            1. Actually I was going to point out that if you were comparing these covers to 60’s ERB covers (since that is when Sarah said you stopped reading SFF) yeah, they leave a little to be desired. But then so do most all the trad pub covers these days. They used pay the money necessary to actually get that quality of artist, otherwise I couldn’t tell you a thing about 90+% of the covers on the books I own (and those are dead tree, off hand I couldn’t tell you a thing about the covers of a SINGLE ebook I own, because I never look at them). Having never read Martin, I can’t comment on your claim to his being the best epic fantasy writer of his generation. Honestly nothing anyone has ever said about his books has did anything to make me want to change that. He has three series, really? Not something you could tell by glancing at his covers, they all look enough alike that I didn’t realize he had enough books out for three series. Which yes is a successful branding job (just not successful and causing me to pick up his books) you can tell it is a GRRM as soon as you catch sight of the cover, just as if you see a black cover with orangey-red writing you know it is Baen and probably David Weber, both are successful branding. Branding doesn’t mean that the brand means anything, it just means instant recognition. Which requires either one of two things (usually, but not always, both) either a successful, well known author with multiple books out (with an obvious similarity in covers) or a very large outlay of advertising cash used to continually bring the same image/brand into the view of potential buyers.

              And yes Martin needed branding, without it I would never have guessed that his books were fantasy, by the covers. (well unless I looked on the spine, where they said, Fantasy)

              Like

              1. When Martin’s series came out in 1996 it had traditional fantasy cover art and was marketed to genre readers. Martin was a genre writer and had been for years. He was not known outside of fandom. His series spread through word of mouth, not massive promotion. Those promotions came much later. There was no expectation the series would turn into the monster it did. Martin had been slaving in the trenches for years with no special recognition, even inside his own genre. Martin had also been writing TV for years, and his HBO series almost certainly happened because of his connections.

                Like

      2. Charlie,

        Speaking of limited promo budget, thank you very much for running the book plug Friday feature! I hope you’re seeing some great traffic and good ad revenue from that, because we authors/marketers for authors really appreciate the opportunity to hawk our wares before the eyes of a crowd that has good overlap with our target market!

        Like

        1. Depends on the subgenre of romance. Some require shirtless male torso, some require clothed male & half-nekkid female, some require nekkid male & female head & upper torso, some actually do better with clothed male, some with fully clothed woman in ball gowns. (I suspect, but am not savvy enough about the genre to know for certain, that the clothing level of the models relates to the, ah, “steaminess” of the book.)

          Like

          1. Well my knowledge of it stems mainly from staring at the covers in the rack at the checkout line, while the person in front of me sees what will go on their EBT card and what will not, how much the stuff that will not costs, how much cash they have, how much of that they are willing to spend, what they are willing to do without if they cannot buy it on their EBT card. And oh, can they have two packs of Marlboro Lights? They’ll put them on their visa. You need photo ID? Hold on, let me see if I got it with me.

            So yes, I have plenty of time to look at pictures of a well defined male torso, and wonder if that denotes that the hero is actually a manly hero, or if it is false advertising and he is actually a non-heroic, metrosexual male main character, like the PC police claim to prefer.

            Like

          1. I get the impression they can get by with a man’s butt in a pair of tight blue jeans … say, mid-thigh to middle ribs although broad shoulders are often included, especially if they can slip a pair of fireman’s braces on him, in which case skin is optional.

            I am not sure whether VPL is permitted but expect tidy-whiteys are flat out. Anybody know which sells better, boxers or briefs?

            Like

  2. Gee, Fail. I guess my readers didn’t get your memo because my books are selling just fine. As for the Hunger Games, as well as 50 Shades, it wasn’t the cover but the mega dollars of push the publishers put into the books that sold them.

    Like

      2. Between 50 shades and Twilight, I am SO tired of all the black-white-red on black-background covers plastered over the ends of the rows at the bookstores. At least all the historical romance covers have color and some variety in the women’s costumes.

        Like

    2. I’m pretty sure some mid-’60s paperback called The Naughty Tutor from Lesbos had better cover art, but y’never know what people like when they’re out by the cee-ment pond.

      Like

      1. I so love when folks can only come by and insult. Especially when they apparently don’t understand what is selling and what isn’t when it comes to both e and print books.

        Like

          1. I read China Mieville’s latest piece of floating icebergs in the sky boredom at Tor and N.K. Jemisin’s latest piece of trash at Clarkesworld. If that’d been what I had as a kid I never would’ve read INSIDE SFF.

            OH NO OUR ECOLOGY IS ATTACKING US!!! RUN, CHINA, RUN! AND HERE COME THE BIRDS!! The icecap is floating and melting at us!!!! “MANKIND you are dinks,” said the iceberg.

            Actually there aren’t any birds but it could’ve used some.

            What those two don’t know about telling an interesting story could sink an aircraft carrier from sheer dead weight. But they write well so there’s that.

            It’s amazing when Heinlein’s “Goldfish Bowl” from 1942 and Kornbluth’s “The Silly Season” from 1950 look more progressive than the progressives. Gee, Heinlein’s story is only 3/4 of a century ago and they all hate Heinlein for being an old-fashioned toxic racist.

            Like

        2. I looked at the Peter Grant covers and they look okay. If I came to insult why aren’t I insulting those? I don’t know you or him. However your cover literally has less class than a Paul Rader Beacon Paperbacks cover for 4th rate lesbian stories from the ’60s. That was my honest first reaction when I saw it. That is not an insult. Saying someone is a fat pig is an insult. Back scratching a terrible cover isn’t a critique either; it’s the other side of an insult. “OH, that looks just fine, dear.”

          Rader’s dead but he still has fans and his site sells prints cuz when that guy wanted to he could paint. If you had a Rader cover and didn’t have such a terrible use of typography I’d have better things to say, which is true of all good expressions of cover design as opposed to bad. So why put it on me?

          If you want me to use child psychology good news/bad news/good news like “Gee, Fail,” like suburban banshee suggested let me know. It won’t change the cover but it might comb over your feelings enough to not realize how bad it is. Why did you use italics? Do you even know? Anytime the answer is “it looked good” that’s a wrong answer in typography. I’m not sure how much I can spin covers that should be destroyed and completely done over. And that futura-type font on some of your others. The nicest thing a typography teacher would say is “Please don’t ever do that again.” Forget friends. Unless they’re honest enough to say “That stinks” and have a degree in cover design forget ’em.

          People are willfully mistaking what I’m saying. “Cut your losses” means hide your weaknesses, not “don’t do genre-appropriate art.” If you don’t know typography, and you know you don’t, default to nothing. That is not saying don’t use typography as it is meant to be used. Simple is better than bad, because simple at least has a chance to be elegant. So no, I wasn’t ADVOCATING logos. I don’t like logos. But I’ll use one before a stick figure or awful painting.

          AND EVERYONE STOP USING ITALICS!!!

          Like

          1. Fail, maybe we would all take you seriously if you showed some expertise in the areas you seek to critique. Or maybe if you’d simply write a coherent comment where folks could tell who you were responding to. Me, I’ll take the covers I have and judge how good they are by how well my books sell and, looking at my latest statements, they are selling pretty darned well.

            And what is your hangup with italics? It is an accepted way of indicating you are quoting text. If you want to yell about something, yell about folks using all caps. Oh, way, you won’t do that because it is you doing so.

            Like

            1. I thought he was complaining about people using italics on book covers, but going back and looking at them, Cedar’s is the only one that looks like it might be italics, and with that font it is hard to tell. So maybe he is complaining about it in comments. Which I actually like, because it is easy to see what is being quoted. I just never use it myself because I don’t know HTML (or whatever they call it) and it is easier for me to just hit a ” ” than to go look up online how to make something appear in italics.

              Like

            2. I am specifically talking about using large font italics in titles and author’s names on book covers – not anywhere else.

              Like

  3. Actually, a lot of “saucy” books back in the 1950’s and 1960’s had excellently painted cover art; both because the artists really liked being able to show more human form than normal, and because publishers had a lot of excellent, thoroughly trained artists in their stable of cover artists. If you didn’t want to do abstracts and you wanted to make money with your art, you went into illustration and covers.

    And how do I know this, being a pure-hearted American girl?

    Pulp conventions. Dealers also sell a lot of old paperbacks, including non-genre and including saucy ones. You can also see a fair amount about this on blogs and Tumblrs that focus on old-school cover art.

    Like

    1. Oh yeah, but see — we have to follow what the field is doing. Romances nowadays do photos (unless historical, and sometimes even then.) In fact, I keep running into (in my el-cheapo art sites) covers they have used.

      If you do a painted cover on a romance, people think it’s a reissue of OLD stuff. It’s like, you know, when someone suggested I just use historical paintings for musketeers. Sure, I can do that, but then everyone assumes it’s a reissue from Gutenberg and if it’s more than 99c it ain’t gonna sell, and even then, unless it’s one of the big, well known books, it won’t sell much.
      We’re constrained by where the major publishers have gone, and what attracts in thumb nail.

      Like

      1. Yep, people always have to follow what the field is doing in their genre. It’s like putting a non-standard address on your letter or your email, and expecting it still to get there. Ain’t gonna work.

        Like

      2. And (as I found out with the most recent cover), not all art works when you try and turn it into a cover. I had what I thought would be great, and what my cover designer thought with a bit of trimming and shifting would work, but the artist said “too much!” And he’s right, when you step back for the thumbnail and with lettering on top. So the result is simplified, still effective, but not quite what I had my heart set on. And that’s fine. It works, it fits the series look, and it gave me some ideas for the next cover. I can say this much, it won’t be based on the “battle-by-the-yard” painting I had in mind!

        Like

        1. Oh, yes. It’s amazing how busy a background can suddenly become when you try to plop stuff on it.

          Like

  4. 1. There is always room for improvement with covers. But telling people that all their covers stink tends to set up people’s backs. The usual rule for persuasive criticism is praise/criticism/praise, in that order.

    2. Cover design is a great way to make money, if you have a good eye and software and art!

    3. You gotta have more than one color, or it looks too cheap and ripoff-y. Even Amazon’s free covers are more than one color, these days.

    4. I know darned well that my cover for Volume I of my translation of Commentary on the Apocalypse stinks, but I also know that it is less odoriferous than it used to be! The top half looks nice and academic and religious, which is what a translation of a medieval Bible commentary should look like. If I could only figure out how to make the bottom half look good and be visible, I’d be in business.

    So feel free to give _me_ suggestions, Fail Burton!

    (Preferably things that can be implemented in Amazon’s free cover generator, ’cause I have no Photoshop and I can’t make GIMP work. And MS Paint is too grainy. I may be able to make the Libre Office versions of Powerpoint or Word work, possibly.)

    5. On the bright side, I’m up to Book 8 in first pass translation of the Commentary, even though I’m not quite done with Book 3 (the first half of Volume II) in the rewrite and editing stage. I keep finding more references that none of the critical editions have caught. (Including extremely obvious _Virgil_ quotes. I expect myself not to know them, because I didn’t get a real classical education; but sheesh, how do three generations of really good scholars miss it??? I am disappointed.)

    Like

    1. Suburban — I work on an OLD copy of JASC paintshop (they actually too functionality away in new versions) which you can get for under $40 on ebay. Might consider to play around with? You can do everything including print type setting.
      And good on you on your work.

      Like

    2. Well, I’m not Fail, but I can give you a direction to contemplate. First, go to your “What customers buy after viewing this item.” Now, on that item, look at their also-bought. That tells you what else falls in your target market’s reading list, and gives you a general slate of covers from which to draw general design principles for your target genre.

      Second, you’re using three fonts on the cover. Easiest way to make a cover look more professional is to limit yourself, even with a cover blurb, to no more than two fonts, and one (with bold and italics as necessary) is often better yet. Also, red on gray is poor contrast, and with the font size and choice, becomes hard to read even at the item page size.

      Like

      1. “Well, I’m not Fail…”
        Should be “well, I’m no Fail…” ;-) Fixed it for you.
        Also, people reading this should know that Dorothy has put together an excellent short series of posts on Covers and Blurbs at her blog. I’ll be featuring it on my blog Monday if you want all the links in one place. I also have a few posts about layout for both covers and interior formatting on my blog.

        Like

        1. Oh, great, nothing like “I’m’a gonna tell everyone!” to make me feel pressured to actually finish a post for every line on the list of things to talk about. (there’s only, um, seven items left?)

          Like

    3. Your cover looks fine. I disagree you went a typeface too far. The first is the title, which is a font which reflects the content. As for the second, usually I say never – and I mean NEVER – us italics unless you know exactly why you’re doing it. However with the use of the word “Commentary” italics is justified, maybe even called for, and in any event shouldn’t be the same font as the title. The third is a no nonsense use of a font appropriate with the author’s name. If you’re worried it doesn’t show too well simply make the background lighter.

      Like

  5. Thanks from the heart, Oyster, for taking the time on this holiday weekend to give us a leg up. Nice of you!

    And swell of Sarah to make the space. Very grateful to you.

    And it’s cool some guy comes and slags our covers – it sure got more eyes on them!

    Hope you all had a fine Independence Day.

    Like

  6. Read about half way. Fail Burton hijacked the thread being a know it all and general jackass. Didn’t finish reading.

    Like

  7. Praise/criticism/praise isn’t really to soothe the hurty feelings. (Though it helps.) It’s to reinforce the bits you like, while encouraging work on the other bits.

    – Say what you like
    – Say what you don’t like
    – Say, “Don’t panic and stop doing the good things!”

    Like

Comments are closed.