Taking a Risk

 Poised on the cliff edge about to take the leap!

No thoughts of suicide - oh no!

Or perhaps only in terms of covers for my e-books. I am about to change three of them.

And I'm changing them to something quite different. to what has gone before. Because I do them myself, I can chop and change as I like  and at no cost to me except in time. And perhaps frustration! Photoshop is not the easiest thing in the world to use.

With earlier attempts at covers I tried to be truthful to the period of the story, and accurate in terms of dress and hair style. Now I am venturing into a more romantic look for my covers. Accuracy will have to take a back seat for a while was I conduct this experiment. If the new covers sell better than the old ones, then a point will have been proved  - to me, at least. 

I am aware that criticism comes from cover artists  but I think have a different POV. This is their business, their profession and they will look for errors in style and execution, of course they will. I would too, in their place. 

But I enjoy doing covers. It gives me hours of pleasure trying things out and lately people have begun sending "Likes "and pleasant comments as the new covers appear. Now if only those comments would turn into sales I should be delighted!

Book Covers

Received my first review for Alba is Mine - 


Vasiliki said on 14th October:

"I didn't know what to expect when I bought this book, and I got a really pleasant surprise. It's packed full of detail with finely drawn, likeable characters and loads of intrigue. The world building/historical detail and description seem to me to be well researched and accurate (I covered a tiny bit of this era during my degree in Archaeology) but the author does not overdo it, keeping a light touch so that the story doesn't get bogged down with it. The writing is very good, and it is well edited so the reader isn't distracted by errors. Overall a very good read, that packs a lot in for the price."

All authors love to get reviews and I'm no exception. This one brightened my day and spurred me on with the writing of my next book. Here's hoping I get many more!

For a little amusement (and because I can't bare to delete them usused!) this is a cover I played around for a while before deciding to ask the very talented Dave Slaney to do a cover for me. His is so obviously better! I used to play arpund with ideas for a cover when I had reached a point in writing or editing when my eyes, or my brain, or both - had begun to glaze over. It was therapeutic but eventually frustrating because I did not have the expertise to get the effect I wanted. I see I even misspelled my own title!



Using different colours and fonts can make or break a cover,  and it is an absorbing process. Some colours fade back, other leap forward. Some fonts are just too - what's the opposite of plain? Beautiful hardly seems the correct word here. Mixing fonts and colours is just a no-no and that shows up well here in my two covers.

 I get the urge to go and take a class in graphic art, but then it all gets too complicated - no where local offers such things but the universities and they are so expensive that the idea just fades away.





No doubt I'll keep tinkering and trying and learning bit by bit. 
I'd really like to know how to fade layers into one another to make a wonderfully sophisticated cover like Dave Slaney.

If I was starting my life over again, I might  have chosen to do graphic art at university.

It's a bit late now! 

A new cover reveal

Had a great birthday yesterday - lunch out at Bradley Hall Gardens (http://www.bradley-gardens.co.uk/) followed by an afternoon walk with Tim where he met a new friend called Lucca and ran himself silly with her in the sunshine. Then dh and I went out for the evening and had a meal at the Black Bull in Corbridge. 1755 is inscribed in wobbly hand carving over a window lintle, and it certainly looks old inside - in a good way!
Our meal was good. Not fancy haute cuisine, but satisfying in a homely way.

One way and another I had a fair amount of  sauvignon blanc over the day, but felt wonderful  on it, both last night and this morning.  It's a good thing I felt OK this morning because I've already been out for a walk in the rain with Tim and it is only 9.30. Its a grey, grey day and fit only for doing lots of work inside. The washing machine is already purring away as I write.

Loaded a new cover onto Magician's Bride yesterday.  I paid money for this one ! so we'll see if it has any effect on sales.  I have two versions; one has no rose petals to signify the romance element. There's also a little less colour throughout, but I went with the more colourful cover. It is growing on me. I like it more and more each time I look at it.

Createspace covers

Trying to  make a cover for my book in Createspace had me tearing my hair for a day or two because I got absolutely nowhere. I had ignored Cover Creator because I'd read somewhere on the internet that CC was crap and produced lousy covers.So there I was trying to load a PDF file and believe me I'm no computer geek. Nothing worked. I decided it would have to be Cover Creator or nothing, and after all this work I wasn't prepared to give up.

I turned to the Cover Creator Community files, and learned that there were many, many cover designs to choose from, and that everything would be formatted for me.
 I chose my design and hopefully uploaded the front cover. It proved remarkably easy, but the title ran off the very edge of the cover by one letter and guess what? I couldn't change it because the file was saved and locked.

Stalemate again. I contemplated going back to the beginning with my original photograph, and actually did half an hour's work on it before deciding it wasn't working as I wanted. The original cover was so much brighter and  well, just better.

Reading the instruction manual for Photoshop persuaded me I could unlock the file so I looked at it again, and had a bright idea. Carefully matching the background cover colour, I painted out the title and reloaded it at a slightly tighter level. I am pleased to report that it works. I loaded the front cover then the back cover and Cover Creator loaded the spine for me. It all looks fine to me. So now we're
on the last lap - check, check and double check before I click the final button. Moral of the story is - don't believe all you read on the internet - and don't give up!

Kindle Covers

They say you can change your book cover on any Kindle title, and I'm wondering about doing it. Sometimes a cover seems good and right for the book, but a year later it seems drab and dreary - definitely not exciting.
So how easy is it to change that cover? I'm looking into it.

When brand new books are published with different covers in different parts of the world, you have to wonder why. The answer has to be that different populations respond to different images, and since the professionals who commission the covers know what they are doing, it would be silly not to take note of how they operate. The cover I did for Victorian Beauty has not caught anyone's imagination. If I changed it, would I change both the cover and the title?

I chose the original title because I was writing about a heroine who was not deemed beautiful after the accident she suffered at the hands of a brutal husband. But it has suddenly dawned on me that no one but me knows that until they have read the book. The irony doesn't work. Why has it taken this long to realise such an obvious fact? (Because authors are too close to their work to see the thing objectively. I can hear you all saying it!)

Melanie and ... Lord Jarrow's Secret might be more intriguing as a title. Certainly it gives a better flavour of the story. And since the title isn't selling terribly well, I have nothing to lose by trying a new cover and a new title if I want to bother fiddling about with it. I could make it a feature of the book in that every so often, the cover changes. If I keep an eye on numbers, I might gain a clue as to how the cover affects sales - if at all!



 When I get this photograph to the right size and shape, it may become the new cover. At least I have no copyright worries, as it is a photograph I took myself. Are the colours more inviting? I think so, yes. Does it need the addition of a figure or does the cover stand well enough without one? Is it the title change that works better than the change of cover? Difficult decisions I need to mull over.

If you have any views, do comment and let me know what you think!