Why I fired my cover designer

Getting a Kindle lead me on a familiar path:


Steven's path of technology adoption

Find and fall in love with a technology (I found the internet in 1994; I discovered blogging and podcasting in 2006)
Learn how to use it (in 1994 I taught myself to build webpages in HTML; 2006 saw me launch a blog and two podcasts)
Make a business from it (I started building websites for companies; I became one of Australia's first full time social media consultants)

Generally I've been there a little too early. Selling websites in Hong Kong in 1994 was hard. Client meetings started with "So what is this thing you're calling the 'World Wide Web'?" Social media in Sydney in 2006 wasn't much better. "So what's the difference between a blog and a wiki?"

The Kindle doesn't feel too early, however. We're right on the cusp of an overthrow: writers will no longer be prevented from publishing because they don't have money or distribution. Their consuming ambition to get their creativity out there and in the hands of readers will drive them to learn self-publishing. Readers, who will choose convenience and the path of least resistance in reading as in every part of their lives, will fill each others' Christmas stockings with Kindles and other e-readers.

So I got onboard

Last year I wanted to see how that felt for me so I decided to publish something myself to test the system. Part of finding and falling in love with the Kindle for me had been learning to push it. I'd set up some scripts on my Mac to send documents to the Kindle automatically, converting them to a proper ebook format where possible. I'd also learned to get newspaper subscriptions for free. I wrote Kindle Automation for the Mac, a short book teaching others to do the same.

Choosing an unqualified cover designer

In learning to build websites, I'd learned to get around Photoshop and, because this was just an experiment, I wasn't going to pay a cover designer to work on a book that might never sell any copies, let alone enough to pay someone else.

Kindle Automation for the Mac did sell some copies but I could tell from the search traffic to my website that it was selling mostly to people who found it by searching for "free Kindle newspapers". I took the hint and wrote Kindle for Newspapers, Magazines and Blogs, a guide to getting free newspapers and magazines on your Kindle whether you're on a Mac or a PC. Again, it was just an experiment and I made myself a cover.

This went on. I published two Sydney self-guided walks, The Rocks Self-Guided Walking Tour and Sydney Opera House and Botanic Gardens. These were book versions of audio guides I'd written for Audible so they were… just experiments.

In keeping with my pattern — fall in love with technology, show other people how to use it — I wrote Kindle Formatting, my guide to the best way to format for the Kindle; followed by In-Book Promotion, a short guide to using the e-reader's built-in features to sell your book.

All just testing the waters of course, not quite certain enough to take my own advice and become a self-publishing house.
You're fired

These books led to my running seminars at the Sydney Writers' Centre and elsewhere, talking to authors about how to get their ebooks published. At some point along the way, the penny dropped:

You are not experimenting anymore
You are not a cover designer so…
You're fired

The designer I chose to replace me

It was time to hand over to a pro and I chose Andrew Brown, who had made the cover for Catherine Ryan Howard's Results Not Typical.

Andrew has now made covers for three of my books and two online courses that I'll be telling you more about soon (even sooner, if you're a subscriber). He's also working on a cover for my upcoming travel book, Hot Silver – Crossing Australia on the Indian Pacific and I'd like him to do the artwork for the Taleist 2012 Self-Publishing Survey (not that he knows that yet).

Have a look at the before and afters on these books and tell me whether you think I was right to fire myself.
Before





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After

I took the opportunity of a new cover and the decision to publish in paperback with CreateSpace to turn Kindle Formatting into How to Format Perfect Kindle Books.

With this cover Andrew and I set the brand for all my Kindle how-to titles. Yes, I'm a brand now Also it keeps the cost down because Andrew isn't re-inventing the wheel with each new book in the series and his fees reflect that.

In-Book Promotion is a lighter title, much thinner and involves less work on the part of the reader so I really liked Andrew's suggestion of an eye-catching pink, which gives a nod to the book being less substantial.

Back to (almost) the beginning… Kindle for Newspapers, Magazines and Blogs was my second book and thanks to a continuing demand for free newspapers and magazines continues to be one of my best selling.

With this cover in particular, I'm still experimenting: Will a new, smarter and less "home made" cover lead to more sales, perhaps because it gives potential readers a signal that quality lies within, that the inside is not as amateurish as the outside used to look? I will report back.

I'll be writing soon about how I worked with Andrew but in the meantime I'd love to know your thoughts, not just on my covers but on covers generally. Do you judge a book by its cover? Have you had your own cover designed by a professional or what do you do?