A “QUIRKY, DELICIOUS” NOVEL DESERVES A QUIRKY & DELICIOUS COVER …: Status as @ September 2012 

“Quirky, delicious, finely wrought literary fiction I highly recommend for fans of Annie Proulx, Anne Tyler and Audrey Niffenegger.” I can’t believe Joni Rodgers, of New York Times multiple bestsellers fame said something so nice about The Good Cemetery Guide!

She had lots of nice things to say… but one big negative. Joni thought the cover was ‘butt ugly’ (Oh dear!).  Aluta Continua!

The latest… “Quirky, delicious” cover!

So a new version of The Good Cemetery Guide cover replaces the previous version. Actually, it’s not so much ‘new’ as revamped so that the thumbnail works better (title and author’s name clearer) and a new background colour with a more romantic feel to it. So, hopefully enough changes to identify it as romance-suspense or literary fiction. I realise more and more how important it is to find your audience… and that’s where strong genre branding helps.

Lesson 1 Learnt: Do as much as you can yourself. The chances are good you’ll prefer it to what other people will do for your book. And at least you can only blame yourself!

Lesson 2 Learnt: It’s no good blaming the cover designer; you have to know what you want. I’ve gone back to the original cover design with the hearse which I still like. It just didn’t work so good for a thumbnail. I hope it’s better now, but after several quite different cover designer experiences, I realise with hindsight that cover design, like most things, is not a straight line between two points but rather a journey over hills and vales on a zig-zag path…

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PRETTY HEARSES & E-BOOK COVERS: COVER DIARY:  Status as @ June 2012 

I promised myself no regrets or rancour – just to move on and learn from my cover adventures. What I didn’t quite get starting out is that choosing a new cover is a bit like most things in life. Perfection is rare and it usually comes at a price.

“The Good Cemetery Guide” – e-Book cover designer added special font to improve thumbnail legibility

The e-Book cover design for The Good Cemetery Guide, was severely constrained by budgetary considerations. The best piece of advice I can offer with hindsight is to take a more measured approach to the selection of the cover designer. I couldn’t afford the professional cover designer I wanted so I swung over to the other extreme and went for the first cover designer recommended on a fellow writer’s blog, figuring the cover looked professional and the service was cheap. There are all kinds of caveats to this impetuous approach. 1) Does the cover designer have (any) e-Book cover experience?

“All The Pretty Hearses” – vivid and original

2) Have you checked the e-Book covers they have done and do they make your heart miss a beat? 3) Do the e-Book covers work as thumbnails? In other words is the title and your author’s name clearly legible, as well as the background image? If not, move on to another cover designer. 4) Have you checked the e-Book distributor you want to use (as well as others you don’t plan to use) for a list of recommended cover designers? The cover designers on these lists are usually VERY experienced at doing e-Book covers (what you are looking for, remember?) which means they work quickly and effectively to your brief and hence offer their services at a reasonable rate.

“Heaven in a Hearse” – sexy and attractive

5) Do you have a clear brief/idea of what you want? Make no mistake, if you don’t it’s probably going to be a long protracted process. 6) Is there a particular image/photo you want on the cover? For example, in the case of The Good Cemetery Guide I’d had the idea of a hearse for ages. If so, do your research beforehand, get the necessary permission to use it (in my case involved negotiations), and make sure you have the picture ready to go. The alternative is that the cover designer sources the picture and you take the knock of their higher fees, the fee for usage of the source image, and the additional time impact on your cover design project. 7) Can’t make up your mind as to which cover direction to go?  Know any book clubs you can approach? Why not do a mini survey amongst readers to see what they think? Don’t expect one cover to stand out as the clear winner.

“Inherent Vice” – Pynchon found the Cadillac photo

In my case it was almost a tie between three different covers. In the end I went with a favourite, the hearse cover, (that put me in good company with other pretty hearses as you can see from these examples) but we eventually used another design layout and concept because the hearse photo owner didn’t want the beautiful Cadillac hearse to look scratched or as if it suffered from a fungal infestation … Understandable. 8) Are you going to self-publish a Print on Demand (POD) version some day? Prepare the back cover as well in this case because that way you’ll have it ready and looking exactly like your e-Book cover. 9) And you thought that figuring out the formatting requirements for your e-Book was tough? Wait until you try to figure out the cover requirements. E-Book distributor instructions are frequently confusing and not detailed enough for authors who aren’t familiar with graphics packages. Enrol yourself on community forums and don’t be shy. But remember, if you’ve appointed an e-Book experienced cover designer familiar with YOUR distributor (Amazon Kindle & Smashwords in my case) then they prepare the covers for you with exactly the right pixel dimensions etc. 10) What image design software do you use? I have Corel Paint Shop Pro. My designer had Adobe Photoshop. Guess what? Source files created on the one piece of software can’t necessarily be edited by the other. Quite a revelation to the average uninitiated control freak writer. 11) Have you given any thought to what files you want at the end of the project, how many cover designs are included, how many changes/modifications are allowed in the standard fee, and whether all designs belong to you, or only the one you eventually select?  A simple written agreement can be very useful to clarify expectations up front. Remember, cheap is as cheap does…

“The View from a Hearse” – pinked-up version

LESSON 1: FIND AN EXPERIENCED
E-BOOK COVER DESIGNER! Yes, I am yelling, because this will save you lots of time,money and heart-ache. Trust me on this one.

LESSON 2: If the thumbnail doesn’t work, the e-Book cover doesn’t work.

LESSON 3: Accept that it won’t be perfect this time round (if it isn’t) and aim to improve it in the future. There’s no shelf life on an e-Book! You can always improve it later.

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RESEARCH: ONE BOOK MANY COVERS 

I have a bit of an obsession I have to admit to – call it Covers OCD.

In the days when I read every Famous Five book that Enid Blyton ever wrote I never thought about covers consciously. But looking fondly at the old friends I kept I notice now they all have a colourful cover; a certain look that tells me what’s awaiting me; never-ending adventure stories where nothing too bad is going to happen. Not much later Classic and Superhero comics started arrived in boxes, rescued by my father from the paper mill’s waste-paper depot where they were destined to be pulped into bagasse. Maybe that’s where it started; the first awareness of dramatic cover design.

Anyway, to cut a long story short. I strongly disliked the first published cover of my first novel The Good Cemetery Guide, changed from a quirky/arty (in my view) pink and red hearse artwork to a funereal white lily jacket which proved to be oddly popular with many readers.  Now I have the opportunity to do exactly what I want and while it’s liberating it’s harder than I thought. So I’ve started a Covers topic which I’ll add to as time goes on with useful links and information gleaned.

17 March 2012: Stumbled upon an interesting article on Createspace Community about the importance of genre when selecting a cover. Seems obvious, no? But it isn’t, as I’ve discovered. People have all kinds of subjective reasons for why they like or dislike covers (myself included). In the end it has to be about book sales. Which cover will attract the attention of online readers so word-of-mouth and good reviews will exponentially attract other online readers?

That’s what finally helped me decide on the new cover for the new e-book and POD version of The Good Cemetery Guide. I decided to listen to the experts. Thoughtful insightful people in the book business took the time to choose one cover above all others using terms like ‘genre-appropriate’. It wasn’t the cover that got the most votes in my little market research exercise; sometimes the minority view prevails, especially if it’s based on more experience and knowledge about what drives book sales.