Monthly Archives: May 2010
Getting the most from your eBook cover
Covers really do sell books, no doubt about it. And if you’re going to self-publish, your cover is something you really will need to consider carefully. Okay, it’s understood that if the content isn’t any good, sales will dry up. But how do you get people to take a look at all? That’s the job of the visual attractiveness of your cover.
Lesson 1: Try to match your cover to the content
If your book is a romance then a well-muscled young fellow with his shirt off is all the go. Despite the fact that he’s wearing a kilt – the rugged type. This seems to be fine in spite of the level of eroticism which seems to be conveyed by the pose taken up by our protagonists on said cover. I’m sure you get my drift. If they’re all over each other and/or a lot of her flesh is threatening to spill, it’s likely to be spicy. Science fiction is often signalled by space ships, crime by noir settings under lamp posts and such. My hist fic, ‘Die a Dry Death’, is a dark story of a shipwreck and its aftermath. What better cover than a wave-tossed ship?
Do you have to send those signals? Not if you’re really well known. These days, Terry Pratchett re-releases have minimal covers. Everybody knows his name. But back then when we were first discovering him, his covers were cartoons filled with the characters who people the Discworld. You knew it would be different and you knew it would be funny. So to answer the question, yes, I think you do.
Lesson 2: Get the colours right
What will stand out among the hundreds of other books? ‘Die a Dry Death’ has a red title, designed to attract the eye against that stark sky. Contrast is the key. Make sure you can read the words from across a crowded bookstore. Or at least invoke ‘hmmm, that’s interesting.’ Test some variations on your friends.
Lesson 3: The title is part of the cover
This one is especially true of eBooks. You have a very small canvas. I suspect that if Philip K. Dick were to publish his book ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ for Kindle, he may well consider changing the title to ‘Bladerunner’.
In my case, when I decided to publish what was then known as ‘The Iron Admiral’ I gave deep thought to changing the title. Not only because readers told me it wasn’t just about him. I tossed around options and finally agreed to ‘Standoff’. That one word signals what the book is about in more ways than one, but at its core, the plot revolves around a political standoff.
Here are a few versions of ‘The Iron Admiral’ evolving into ‘Standoff’.
This was my first try for the book’s debut on Authonomy. It was called ‘The Iron Admiral’ and I wanted to convey the idea that this is SF. But it doesn’t tell you much apart from the genre.
Then I took up an offer to create a more professional cover for me. This is the result. A weird spaceship flying over a planet – clearly SF, space opera. But this time we also have the series name and the font used is a bit more interesting and eye-catching.
Notice the title has been done in black on a deep pink. It’s much easier to read than red on black, as I did on my version.
How to self-publish for Kindle
Or at least, this is how I did it.Before you take the step – are you sure you want to do this? At the moment your chances of rivalling Terry Pratchett or Dan Brown are rather better by following the traditional publishing route. But if you’ve done your best, burnt your bridges and still want your Opus out there for the world to see, this is one road to take. Increasingly, having self-published isn’t seen as quite the stigma it used to be. Especially among those who write books. I’ve read a number of books written by fellow authors which were rejected by traditional publishers but that I would certainly part with my hard-earned to own. Hopefully, some of them will come out between covers but for now, I’m happy to read on-screen.
If you take this route, don’t expect to make your first million overnight. You’ll be self-publishing your book. Which means marketing. People don’t buy books they don’t know about so if you can bundle your book with those of other people, you may be able to make a bigger splash in the internet pond. But you’ll be lucky to give serious competition to the likes of Allen & Unwin or Harper Collins.
You’ve made the big decision
First things first. Don’t blunder about making the mistakes everybody makes. Find out from somebody else who’s been there and done that. My starting point was a free ebook by Edward C. Patterson. Are You Still Submitting Your Work to a Traditional Publisher? Easy to read and understand, it’s full of great tips. So… things to consider before you go down this road.
Do you have a Kindle?
It doesn’t matter; you can download Kindle for PC from Amazon for free. Here’s the link.
Now then, let’s check a few things off.
Is your book ready?
Has it been beta-read and torn apart by critical readers? Not your best friend or your latest paramour. The most disinterested parties you can manage who do read the genre. Don’t even think about loading a first draft. Remember that café where you had that lousy cup of coffee? You don’t go back there, do you? So what do you think will happen if somebody downloads your book and finds it’s not up to standard?
Has it been copy-edited within an inch of its life?
I don’t know about you, but spelling and grammar errors slap me right between the eyes when I read. ‘It’s’ when it should be ‘its’; their, there, they’re; incorrectly punctuated dialogue. Some of you may think it’s pedantic. I think it’s clear communication. At the end of the day, of course, it’s up to you, the author. Just keep remembering that lousy cup of coffee at the café you don’t go to. I hope you noticed the examples I used. Spell-check is a grate tool – but it sure doesn’t cover everything. Oops. Great tool. If you can afford to pay a copy editor, so much the better. I didn’t, but I have a number of pedantic friends.
Beta-read, edited, ready to go?
Download Mobipocket’s reader and ebook creator software. Sure, you don’t have to; Amazon will import Word files. But this allows you to create output for other e-platforms and you can check your results before you load to Amazon. One thing I discovered – while Amazon will allow you to load things like drop-caps into a Kindle document, Mobipocket’s creator software doesn’t translate a drop-cap properly. But then, Mobipocket creates output for other platforms as well as kindle – iPhone, iPad, Sony Reader etc.
Write your sales pitch
We’ve all had to do this; pitch a book in a query. But I found with the kindle, you don’t have as much space as you’d have even in a query. I cut mine down several times and worked hard at making the pitch attractive to a reader. People can actually ‘try before they buy’ with kindle – and the chunk they can download is quite substantial. But even so, they have to want to do it, don’t they? So do this one very, very carefully. Remember, you want to suck them in, not tell them the story. This is mine. I’m not saying it’s perfect – or even particularly good. But in 75 words it sets the scene, sketches the stakes, hints at the romance and the problem. Hopefully, the punters will at least take a look. And then shell out their money.
On an obscure planet between the mighty Ptorix Empire and its smaller Human neighbour 3,000 Ptorix miners are slaughtered—and the Human Confederacy Starfleet is blamed. As the spectre of interspecies war solidifies into a horrible reality, the fate of the Galaxy depends on an unlikely alliance between the Fleet’s charismatic young Grand Admiral Saahren and brilliant Ptorix-loving systems engineer Allysha Marten. The only problem is she has her own private reasons for despising Saahren.
All set?
Not yet, you’re not.
Don’t post without the all-important cover.
But I’ll talk about that next time.
