Transformations

 These last few months I have renewed most of my e-book covers.

The e-covers are easy and I enjoy doing them. Some turn out better than others, but even so, it is a pleasure, and gives me a task to do while I await inspiration as to the story I am supposedly moving forward.

I am finding the paperback covers much harder to change and given the low number of paperbacks sold, I'm wondering if it is worth the hours it takes. Or the frustration, for that matter. Amazon instructions are never harder to interpret than when loading book covers!

On the other hand, I should be able to manage it, given time and patience. 

It is hard to believe that the two boys in the picture are now in their fifties and one is actually having his sixtieth birthday this year! This is one of the many slides dh and I retireved using a film scanner.

Uncertainties

Finally, revision of the Matho trilogy is complete.

I sent it off for re-publishing this morning, and can 

now relax and enjoy the garden, the sunshine and dog walks!

Currently uncertain as to beginning any new writing project. It takes so long to complete, and though there are lots of ideas spinning around in the subconscious nothing  is solidifying into an idea that I am prepared to spend a whole heap of time on. Perhaps I just need a rest, time off to relax. I can always concentrate on marketing and improving covers. 

Recently I put my cover for Silver Season up to Discovering Diamonds Cover critique duo (Cathy Helms and Tamian Wood) and received some really useful comments that have spurred me on to  do something about it. For the moment I'm so relieved at having got the revision off to Kindle that I'm going to relax and enjoy an ice-cream in the sunshine - oh, and watch Rafa go for his 14th Roland Garros championship.

Show don't Tell

These days we are encouraged, as writers, to show and not tell.  I don't dislike it as a writing method; I use it myself, and I enjoy reading it. It involves finding lots of ways to "show" emotions as well as actions, and that can sometimes prove difficult. (As I was writing that sentence I thought if I exchanged "describe" for "show" what would the difference be? Ponder that one for a while!)

Showing involves investing in the feelings of the POV character: how do they feel at any given point in the story? Why do they do what they do? It also involves the POV character noticing how other people react to them, which really becomes the POV character telling what they see. See what I mean?

These thoughts were provoked by something I saw on Pinterest, but I don't think I should copy it here; instead let me give you the link, and you can seek it out yourself. I hope it will help you past those sticky moments when you simply cannot think how to describe your characters feelings.

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/279293614364130262/?lp=true

Essentially what you will see is many lists of how to "show" emotion. I think I shall be coming back to it from time to time!

PS I decided to change the cover of The Craigsmuir Affair as I wasn't happy with the last one. It looked very Victorian, true; but not very appealing and that was borne out by the fact that not one person has bought it since I put that cover up! So here we are, with a new vibrant cover for Spring! I hope you like it!

Covers

Holidays are over and it is back to the usual preoccupations. I've actually lost count of the number of edits I've done on the wip. Possibly the fourth? I'm printing it out for the second time as I complete each chapter, because I am still making changes to the storyline, which makes me think this may be the third edit rther than the fourth. There was such a long gap between writing the first chunk of itan, then abdoning it and coming back to it a couple of years later that I can see where changes are needed, particularly at the latter end of the story.

I have lots of plans for the autumn season. Finish the wip,  of course, but also to renew the covers on my earlier stories, and to do a lot more promotion of them. I was surprised to notice that KENP figures are showing up for the weeks I have been away - and I have done not a jot of PR to earn them! The  Amazon Conference I attended in Newcastle  a few days before going to France made me think about it more closely, and e-mails  received from Mark Dawson have inspired me to try different methods. I can't bring myself to pay his price for the course, though I might have done if I were in my twenties, in full time employment and hoping to make writing my future career, but his ideas are wrth trying.

I spent nearly the whole day yesterday attempting to download a free trial of Adobe Premier Elements yesterday and got so frustrated with it that in the end I uninstalled it. It was a sstruggle to register, took fifteen minutes or so to download and then refused to "play." Kept reverting to passwords time after time. It did not encourage me to buy the product, I must say! So I kept my old software and managed to produce a cover - a supposedly ghost Viking ship to represent the Viking magician who pursues a young girl because her power, aligned to his, will make him enornmously powerful.

Book Cover Blues

Received wisdom  among many authors on the internet is that  a new cover on a book can rejuvenate sales. Perhaps rejuvenate is the wrong word; they say a "better" cover will enable the book to sell better than a mediocre one. This applies  mainly to self-publishing authors like me, since those who have contracts with publishing houses will follow the dictates of the said houses. Authors tell stories of trying three or four covers until the "right" one catches and sales follow. Since I can decide for myself if I want to do a new cover, I thought I would try it.

My book Far After Gold has been out in the world a while, firstly as a paperback with Quaestor 2000 in 2009 and a fairly run of the mill cover taken from one of my photographs od Sandwood Bay in NW Scotland; when Quaestor ceased trading, I re-edited and published on Amazon Kindle in 2012, again with a cover I'd created.

It did fairly well for me, but with the recent drop in Kindle sales across the market (they say everyone is going back to "real" books!) I thought the time was right to experiment. It is hard to define exactly what sort of cover would describe the content of the book; pagan Viking male and Christian girl as slave - will they find happiness? so I centred on the girl's feeling of loneliness and desolation in being taken by marauding Vikings and sold as a slave in Dublin market and came up with the first cover: 

I wasn't entirely happy with it, and among the good comments came the criticisms, so I had a second attempt. Looking at them both side by side like this, I can feel a third attempt coming on!

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! 

Third time lucky

Finally, on the third attempt, Createspace has accepted my covers. Now all I have to do is proof and publish. Was it all worth it? That's doubtful, since as far as I can tell I've sold very few paperback copies of Abduction, and I doubt the sales will suddenly streak up the charts now. It was certainly an interesting exercise getting to know Createspace, and it was a thrill to hold my paperback copy - the sort of thrill I didn't get with the Kindle books I've published. The cover is slightly different; I decided to do away with the "archaic" font on the cover and went for a plain, bolder style and colour in what some will call a sickly greenish-yellow. I may follow suit with the Kindle cover.

I'm also toying with experimenting with a bought cover and using it on Dark Whisky Road, but it is hard to find anything that will suit a Victorian story. Maybe the dark winter days will seduce me into trying to do one of my own - who knows?

Do It on a Layer!

Have made three possible covers for Daisy. The first one is rubbish, the second is better balanced and the third is better still. I'm on a roll now! The thing to remember - which I keep forgetting - is to do each step on a layer. That way I can rectify mistakes and make improvements. I  should enrol on a course and become more proficient at using Photoshop, but probably won't because I only think about covers once or maybe twice a year.

For my third cover I think I had about eight layers, all containing a tiny fragment of the cover. One for the background, one for the foreground figure, one for the banner, one for the title ... initially I tried to do everything on one layer and soon tied myself in knots. I am constantly in awe of the software which is brilliant. I just need a couple of uninterrupted years to learn how to use everything!

I know professionals in the publishing world sneer at amateurs who do book covers, but I don't mind. They have to protect their professional expertise, after all, and I used to feel the same way about library assistants being called librarians. If and if ever I have a book traditionally published, I'll be happy to have a professional cover. Until then, I'll go on trying and do the best I can in my own bumbling way, mostly because I enjoy it. That's why I write stories, too.

Our good weather has vanished, and we're back to wind and rain though not quite so violent or so cold as last month. I have a date with the dentist for a small filling this afternoon, so may not get a lot of work done today.

Thoughts on Hugh Howey's WOOL

Why the peculiar title? The experts keep telling us aspiring writers that a cover is all and the title comes close second in the quest for readers. I galloped through the book - except to eat, sleep and walk Tim - and came to the end slightly puzzled.

First of all - the cover is eye-catching but not informative in my humble opinion. The title is even less informative. Having just finished a book called The Wedding Yarn, which involved a wool shop, I might be forgiven for thinking this new story would be about sheep or knitting or both.  Not at all. The only thing I can see that is relevant to the story is that the powers who run the silo are pulling the wool over everyone's eyes in the hope of keeping them all trapped within its protection. Naughty, and definitely not nice.

But then the alternative is worse. The air outside the silo is toxic. That at least seems to be truthful. So you stay inside or you die. Not a happy alternative. The first two thirds of the book are excellent, with  lots of detail about life in the silo, some doomed people who want to "go outside," and  what the Americans call a kick-ass heroine called Juliette. (Had I been HH, I would have picked a shorter name. Imagine having to type two e's and two t's every time for no apparent gain in pronunciation.)

But the last section seems to unravel (to keep the wool pun going) or else I read too fast and missed important info along the way. The way Lukas guessed what had happened was odd, the way Bernard vanished was doubly odd and we were never told what burn injuries Juliette suffered, or what transpired between her and her father. There was also the curiosity of the kids in the other silo - the oldest was fifteen, yet Solo said he'd been there thirty years on his own. So who conceived and bore the children, brought them up? Who kept the lights running?

Any answers delightfully received!

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!

Editing for Createspace

Still plodding on with editing Matho for Createspace. If I write dialogue with a French accent, I wanted  the character Lennox drop his aitches and I represented this as follows: 'there is nothing 'e will do for you.' Sometime Createspace formatted it perfectly and sometimes it ignored the apostrophe and just printed the letter e. There's probably a reason, but I haven't figured it out. After three tries I rewrote the phrase and did not use a dropped aitch!

Otherwise it seems to be going well. I've removed a lot of unnecessary commas and corrected the occasional missing letter or word, but on the whole things are proceeding well. The trouble with editing is it seems to go on for ever and a day! The book is running out at 104,000 word count and I have the last 60 pages still to do. I've been at it all week, and find I can only do it in relatively short snatches otherwise I start "reading" instead of "checking." Maybe I'll think about paying someone to do it next time. It is not a job I would like to do day in and day out.

The other thing is the temptation to keep on tinkering and phrasing things differently - I hope, in a better and more pleasing way. Once I get this portion of the work done, I will have to think about covers, and for Createspace I need not only a front cover, but a spine and back cover too. Another learning curve to master, and my deadline approaches with a steady beat. I don't think I need a list of chapters formatted for searching, as you do with Kindle, because in a print book that's not possible. I am thinking about including a simple map of the main places. It's OK for me since I live in the area and know where Stirling and Dumbarton, Carlisle and Corbridge are, but  I can't expect everyone else to know.

Titles and covers again

I have my new cover to match the new title on my upcoming release. For better or worse, this is it!

The worst of the double edit is behind me now. There are about six chapters printed out and waiting my attention. I've edited them on screen, but tomorrow I shall edit the print-out and make necessary adjustments. (There always are!) I think by tomorrow night I shall be finished. What a relief!

One thing I've discovered with covers is to get the size right for Amazon Kindle first of all. They recommend 1563x2071, and getting that right after you've worked on illustration can be soul destroying. To get the right size you sometimes need to be able to free up proportion constraints and that, as you can imagine, sends your illustration through the wringer. Dragons come out looking like swans and vice versa.

Colours are important. I want the cover to stand out among all the others, and somehow Black and Red just didn't do it for me this time. It looks fine close up, but viewed among many others, it just faded away, whereas the orange cover still drew the eye.
Well, OK, it drew my eye. 

I hope the dragon head says Viking to everyone who looks at it. The story is a romance, but I didn't want to put a bare-chested man in a fur tunic on the cover. Tell me I'm wrong or old-fashioned if you must, but that sort of cover says to me that there is only romance in the story. My stories have romance, sure, but they also have adventure, death and disaster. The villain certainly gets what he deserves in this one! The hero is Oli, a sixteen-year-old who falls head-over-heels in love with a girl who has rather a lot of problems to solve. Oli was nine years old in my book Far After Gold and his life with Flane and Emer has been fairy easy up until this point. If he wants to win the girl,he has to rise to the challenge and Karli Olafsson is no normal Viking.....
Look out for Viking Magic on Amazon Kindle in the next couple of weeks.

Book Covers

Tom Tivnan has been talking about Book Cover designs as important selling tools. If you want to read the full original article, here’s the link: https://www.thebookseller.com/feature/depth-cover-design.html

Publishers, book shop retailers and authors – including me – are interested in covers. I have jotted down a few notes regarding the psychology behind them and will keep them in mind when I next design a cover. For example, research suggests that human faces on a cover trigger a positive reaction. Pink is popular.  We know little girls like pink, but surely the adult woman outgrows pink?

Neuroscientist Barbara Sahakian, professor of Clinical Neuropsychology at Cambridge University believes  “It’s clear that our instant reaction to a book cover can be the difference between picking a book up and not picking it up.”  In other words, the cover is the first hook to a sale.

There are two sorts of response to a cover. Cold Cognitive Decisions (CCD) are rational ones: no emotional component and no conflicts between rewards and punishment. You might decide between two holiday guides books, or two manuals on how to pass your driving test in a CCD way. CCD take place in the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex, towards the top of the head.

OTOH, Hot Cognitive Decisions (HCD) involve an emotional response, perhaps a conflict between reward and punishment. “In terms of books, it means choosing much more on the basis of appearance,” says Sahakian. “It’s a risk because the reward may be great but so might the punishment. But once we have had an emotional response to a book jacket, it can be hard to resist.” HCD are made in the orbital frontal cortex, right behind the orbit of the eyes, and this emphasises the visual basis of many such decisions. It has close links with the amygdala, the most emotional and primitive part of the brain. “A disturbing or arresting image such as a human face can trigger a powerful fight/flight response in the amygdala.” 

But if the amygdala senses danger, why would we go then go ahead and buy the book? The fact that we do suggests we like a bit of controlled, risk-free excitement. It is why we watch horror films, and read thrillers.

A HC reaction to a book cover may get a customer to pick a book up, but then “cognitive dissonance” can kick in. The blurb and  the opening pages must confirm the initial “hot” response to the cover, or the book goes back on the shelf.

Online research found that 79% of readers said the cover of a book played a decisive role in their decision to purchase. Book cover designers claim it’s never going to be an exact science.

 The novel Before I Go to Sleep has received various covers world-wide. Chck out the link to see some of them: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=book+covers+for+Before+I+go+to+Sleep&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=kF5FUunWBY2d0wXTroCoCw&ved=0CFMQsAQ&biw=1536&bih=708&dpr=1

and decide which would make you pick up and buy the book.

Covers

They say covers are vital for selling books. Any books, anywhere, in whatever format. I suppose if you hit on a good one by accident that's great, but since it's such a subjective thing, how do we know what makes a good cover? And is a good cover a cover that will sell numbers of books? Well, in this case, let's say yes.

Those people in the know say that the average person in a bookshop will decide to buy the book within 10-20 seconds. (I can't say I'm one of them, but I don't disbelieve what they claim) It means the cover has a lot to do with it, and the blurb backs it up. So the cover must be eye-catching, and resonate with something within the average reader to get them to pick it up in the first place. Then the blurb must be short and punchy and relevant - ie give a snapshot idea of what the book is about. (And that is so much easier to say than to achieve!)

Publishers, it is claimed, are appealing to something aspirational in readers, too. They want to be identified with the contents of the book, or to be more precise, what they think the contents might be. They say a good cover alone can sell a book. Indeed the reverse might be true - that readers would buy a book in brown paper if they wanted the story enough. I don't suppose the Potter fans would have refused to buy the latest installment because they didn't like the cover.

I had a look at 50 supposedly iconic book covers today, and found only two that really caught my eye. Would these have been the ones I picked up in the bookshop? Who knows! I loaded the French cover inadvertantly because it was paired with the cover I was aiming for, but the longer I look at it, the more I like it, even though I'm not sure how the title translates. "The men who would not love women?" Anyway, I thought the Dragon Tattoo cover, and the old, classic Clockwork Orange cover, both excellent. and at least one of them has stood the test of time.

Tranquil covers

Tranquil scenes of the North Sea on a summer's day. Temperature 23 degress, no wind and a calm, calm sea.

Dh presented me with a link to a site displaying cover pics of Mills and Boon and how they have changed over the years. Check it out here

The modern covers are not the ones I won't be seen dead buying over the counter - and not under it either! You know the ones I mean. The ones with impossibly handsome men, so handsome that the sensible mind shrieks oh yeah, pull the other one. The ones where the men look as if they need a bra to hold in their rounded pectoral muscles and their abdomens seem painted on. The ones where the female displays wanton limbs with only a scrap of limp muslin preserving her decency...

But even in the examples shown, we have a preponderance of couples lolling around on a bed.

Why do the media people want to give the impression that the stories are all about couples bedding each other?

The ones I have read (OK, yes, I have read some of them - ebooks do provide anonymity! - must be why erotica does so well there - No, really, I choose carefully so that the covers will not make me blush to admit reading them) Well, the ones I have read always have more story than the cover would have you believe. Carefully thought out, well motivated plots about why couples don't make it to bliss at the drop of a hat. But does the cover tell you that? It does not. It tells you Read About Sex Here.

When is the advertising/media world going to get over its preoccupation with sex?

What next?

I've done a swift 48 hour re-run over FAR AFTER GOLD and sent it back to Quaestor.

Found some mistakes, too, even though I thought it was perfect when I sent it off. As I pushed the button that would send it on it's way, my finger lingered...I had the nasty feeling that if I went through it again I'd find even more things to change. But there comes a time when you have to let go. Gulp.

So now I'm thinking about covers. Will it be plain, or with a picture? A headless female in a beautiful costume, or are they old hat now? I've read many of Gregory's but not this one even thought he cover is gorgeous.

Some of the newer historicals do feature the full figure now, though they may be looking at something other than the reader, as in Chadwick's new book, due in October.

Doing the grocery shop in Tesco yesterday I paused by the books section, and the cover that caught my eye was this one - which I hope to read soon.
It is attractive. But I also noticed that many of the books on display had plain covers. In other words, they had plain colours and symbols rather than people or landscapes photographs. I expect the covers I've illustrated are expensive, and perhaps publishers are cutting back on cover costs.

Some research in a big book store is obviously called for, and I shall not resist. It will be a pleasure! Perhaps more importantly, I should be thinking of promotion. I shall. Tomorrow. Honest. I've put a short announcement on Authors and Books blog today, and notified RNA cyber group. That's a start, but I'm sure there's lots more to do. Meanwhile, I've got critiques on one book to attend to, and a rewrite on a second that's gone on hold for a little while. And my friends wonder what it is I do all day apart from watching tennis in the Olympics! Sheesh!