Aspiring Writers Info: Can you sell a book by its cover? Mais oui --
Over at the How to Write Shop. Lori Devoti talks about her experiences with changing around covers to fit the audience she wants to reach. Her advice? Take off the author and editor hat and put on the ad hat. You need to sell the sizzle, not the steak.

Maybe this is what I need to do -- change the covers for my Nualas. But to what?
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Published on October 12, 2011 15:16 • 60 views
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message 1: by Estara (last edited Oct 15, 2011 06:22am) (new)
Oct 15, 2011 06:11am

Estara Here's my impression: I called up the pages for the books at Amazon and the problem seems to me the font thinness, the blurbs in addition and maybe even the fact that you took the whole original cover as the basis. From what I can see with ebooks, that are less likely to be shown on screen in the size of even a mmpb book cover, you need high contrast.

I tried to annotate my impressions in these pictures.
Unlimited Free Image and File Hosting at MediaFire

As an interim attempt it might be good to change the title font but keep the high contrast and cut the covers more to where the action is - the dark blue sky isn't all that necessary.

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Click through to see the original resolution.

Ilona Andrews did a really good intro post on what is important in cover design for ebooks here:
http://www.ilona-andrews.com/2011/09/...

Here are some post on her quest for the Silver Shark cover
http://www.ilona-andrews.com/2011/08/...
http://www.ilona-andrews.com/2011/09/...
http://www.ilona-andrews.com/2011/09/...


message 2: by Katharine (new)
Oct 16, 2011 11:32am

Katharine Kimbriel These are good suggestions, Estara. I've got to leave town to go deal with family things, but when I get back, I'll see if I can get a friend to help with cover tweaking. If I give her the covers and we're just cropping, maybe I can afford her!

It's all promo for Don, either way. I was thinking the moons at the top of FoN might make a better cover for Hidden Fires, or the 3 moons and arch alone from FS. People admire the cover of HF, but it doesn't seen to be a selling cover.


message 3: by Estara (new)
Oct 16, 2011 11:52am

Estara I read about your going out of town, but I wanted to respond while I still remembered to do so ^^ - and I think fiddling with great artwork as a basis is something you can do - from what I understand Amazon lets you experiment with various covers, at least an online friend of mine does so with her short stories.

And the more readable font is really important! You would just have to monitor your sales figures closely when you change stuff, so you could see what worked.


message 4: by Katharine (new)
Oct 16, 2011 12:18pm

Katharine Kimbriel I was worried about how dark the fonts ended up being, but I went with the friend who designed it.


message 5: by Estara (new)
Oct 16, 2011 12:22pm

Estara I think as print book covers they would be perfect the way they are, really.


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Katharine Eliska Kimbriel
I've noticed that I am using Goodreads more than any other "social site" with the exception of Live Journal, so I thought I'd try making it unique (not downlinked from LJ, as I've done with Facebook a...more
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