Thanks so much – I really hope you enjoy them.
For the name change – I came to believe that using my initials rather than first and last name was a bit pretentious and silly (not that there’s anything wrong with others doing so, of course!), since I don’t go by my initials in real life, so I decided to go by the name by which my friends and family know me.
Publishers don’t choose cover art lightly, or to attract every reader, hoping to sell thousands. That’s not the aim. They choose from what they know, from experience, will attract the target demographic. In other words, the person they are trying to entice to pick the book up and give it a chance, are those that will love the book. Understandably this is often entirely unrelated to what an author or artist may find most attractive.
My suggestion, if you care about this, is to go to a book store and take note of what best selling books in your genre look like. What colour palettes? What images? What style? Maybe try a cover, for book three, that would fit right in on that shelf, beside those best sellers, without looking amateurish.
Just a suggestion, wishing you great good luck!
Thanks for the suggestion and the good luck!
Broomstick very graciously posted a review in my Café Society post about the book.
Which, expanded, is that “book design is a complex and subtle art/science.” One of the problems with most forms of small-press/self publishing is that the author/publisher doesn’t know how important parts of the process work, and they can’t be learned from how-to books, webinars and other good-intentioned but equally clueless peers.
Cover art, cover design and interior design are deeply deprecated topics in the self-publishing world, often given minimal attention (if not less… if not a sneering dismissal as “unnecessary”) and leading to one more hurdle between reader satisfaction and either immediate or followup sales.
(What’s worse, as I’ve already alluded to, is that the self-publishing world these days is filled with “experts” and opinions that are between laughable and actively damaging to individual publishing efforts. There’s nothing worse, IMVHO, than some “expert” who’s had a few modest successes in a niche and becomes the Great Guru of How To Publish YOUR Book!)
Anyway, yeah, even on Amazon, an appropriate cover design and titling is essential to converting looky-lou and browser visits to sales. A purty pitcher and some WordArt won’t cut it.
Anybody else immediatelythink of this when they saw the book’s title?
Good luck with your sales, iiandyiiii!
Thanks! The Connery SNL thing was very much on my mind when I thought of the title. It’s a satire, and much of it is supposed to be funny, so I decided to keep it.
I’m trying to venture into cover art for self-publishers, just to give them something better than they have. Not expecting to make much money from it, because they don’t have any, just the satisfaction of seeing a decent cover on their book. But the problem is, the authors wouldn’t recognise a good cover if they were sitting having breakfast with it! Convincing them that their blurry snapshot of their seven year old niece with the Comic Sans title put together in MS Word isn’t really suitable for their adventure novel set in the wild woods of the elf kingdom is really hard to do without coming across as insulting and self-serving! So frustrating.
Out of curiosity, what do you mean by “didn’t catch on?” 500 copies sold vs. 2,000 copies sold? I have no experience publishing a novel (yet) so am just curious about ballpark figures.
I’d be very pleased with either of those numbers at this point. Mine are a lot lower – less than 100.
“Self-published” got a bad name back in the day for pretty good reasons - just because some writer discovered the then-tricky process to get his or her ms between two slices of cover didn’t mean they understood all the steps a book takes to get there, so you got Real Books that were terrible in one or most ways.
Now, of course, anyone with an internet connection can “publish their book,” with or without the help of everyone between local co-publishing groups (we useta call 'em writer’s groups, kids) and the E-Z tools of Kindle and Nook. It’s only made the problem worse, but to compensate, most people’s expectations of books have dropped quite a bit, so… win-win, I guess. :rolleyes:
As a professional publication designer, I hit my brick wall of frustration when several friends moved from commercial publishing to small-press/self/POD. These are known names in a big genre, who each had a dozen books on most shelves at any one time, and between being marginalized by their publishers and discovering it can be done independently, moved on. I buy most of their books, out of loyalty and even some remaining interest in their work… but there are some I’ve never read because the interior design, never mind the exterior that can be covered with brown paper, is so eye-bleedingly bad I almost can’t read them.
When I’ve gently suggested I could make their books real pretty like [insert major publisher name here] used to do, they splutter and object and wave their latest kindergarten-art mashup and demand to know what’s wrong with it. It’s not worth sending me the ms to turn around a packaged result to send to their (well-known, biggish-name “independent” publisher) - and at no cost, just because it means I get to read the book a little early and pay back a little to them and the genre - because that publisher and the two or three like it “do just fine” with their absolutely abysmal cover design and interior layout rubberstamps.
I’ve stopped offering. Good luck with the amateurs…
This amateur would jump at the chance for anyone knowledgeable of cover design to take over – I paid good money for the covers of both my books, and I think the artwork is good, but perhaps the overall design was not.
Why don’t you and GuanoLad self-publish an eBook on interior and cover design for amateurs? It would be hugely helpful to have four years of art school condensed into a few major tips that would prevent me from making rookie mistakes in covers and book design.
Isn’t that, effectively, two people lacking experience/success writing a how to book, exactly as Amateur Barbarian, just mentioned, a couple of posts up?
It can be hard to find someone who’s truly qualified, and at a reasonable commission. There are (far far far far far far too) many who think some general graphic-arts skills, even very good ones in other areas, translate to cover and book design. I don’t think it’s too strong to say that there is a contingent of these overreachers… preying on the burgeoning market. I’ve seen a lot of ads and solicitations whose samples are… unconvincing. But they’re real shiny and the sellers talk a good game. I can see why novice writer/publishers fall for their pitches - simple inexperience and lack of informed judgment.
It would be lost in the tsunami of infobabble aimed at the market and user base. There are already so many “how 2” sites, seminars, webinars, books, videos (!) etc. out there, some with good info and many with absolute booshwah, that the kind of sober, rather dull work it would be would appeal only to those who already knew what it contained.
If it’s not too much of an ad, I’m happy to help fellow indy/self publishers with free advice in the threads, a little guidance in PMs and professional assistance at a very modest rate. I’ve done well in small-press publishing and feel a bit of an obligation to keep those sincere and committed about their books on a success track… but I long ago stopped trying to save this world. 
But it would have a great cover and interior design. And it might save Doper self-pubbers from egregious errors.
I think you have to be realistic about your environment.
I have a budget for 2-3 non-library books a month. I have an Amazon wish list of around 150 books. Most of these books are well know writers, have stellar reviews in mainstream press, or come highly recommended from an extremely narrow group of trusted sources. Basically, I know they are going to be good.
So for me to buy a random book, that book has got to somehow convince me that it is better than all 150 books I have waiting on my wish list. And it has very little with which to do that convincing- a title, a cover, a blurb, and maybe rarely a preview.
What I am saying is that self-published books that don’t get the backing of a publisher rarely sell. It’s not a reflection on the book or the author. It’s a reflection of a crowded market.
Do join a critique group. Join one that meets in person, reads and comments. Twenty years ago a friend joined such a group - today, anyone who stuck with it has multiple books in print and an editor and is making a living. In part because they taught each other. In part because they stuck with it learning their craft. And in part because when one person started selling books, they were able to create introductions for the other people in the writers circle.
Now, some people learned they weren’t cut out to write marketable material. They kept their day jobs and some of them continue to write, but not for publication. Writing for publication means, in the words of my friend, being willing to whore out your skills to write what will sell. If you are willing to do that (not everyone is) and have the discipline to learn your craft, it will work.
My friend had, if I recall correctly, five novels written before he sold his sixth - which was a third or forth rewrite. He’s been writing for thirty years, published for twenty, has a dozen or more books in print, does it full time and spends six hours a day writing, and it was only a year ago that his writing would be self supporting - he married well.
I think your covers are pretty decent. And I don’t want to crap on them, as the artist clearly put a lot of work into them (painted covers are beyond my capability, I’m a photo manipulator). Sure, they aren’t professional quality, there’s a very strong air of amateur to them, but they really tried. The typesetting on the cover could be a little clearer, and your name should be a bit bolder, but how your covers look are, in the grand scheme of amateur covers, which range from eye-wateringly awful (1) to almost professional level (9), somewhere around a 5.
Thanks very much, that’s a nice bit of carrot after a whole lot of stick in this thread :). I enjoyed looking at your portfolio – very impressive to my completely untrained eye.
With proper typesetting, design, etc., is the raw artwork on my covers salvageable, in your opinion?
