SitRep Saturday: One Good Cowboy and Book Covers

I actually did get a little bit done this week on One Good Cowboy. I did about a page and a half of editing, wrote out several pages of meta, and redesigned the book cover.

It needed some work since the story is no longer a novelette.

In that vein, in order to prepare my work for upload to AllRomance (a goal I had for the week, a goal I completely missed), I did a little bit of work to the cover for Cass Gets Her Kicks, too.

I felt like the cover needed a little more information for potential readers. 

The Cowboy Next Door also needs some cover work, and I hope to add taglines to the covers of both Please, Sir and Better with You before I upload to AllRomance.

Self-publishing is a learn-as-you-go business, no matter how much research you do beforehand, but I really enjoy the experience I get these days.

SitRep Saturday: Cass Gets Her Kicks & Vampire WIP

So that is Cass's new cover. It took me several days of searching through stock photos to find a nice, sexy photo that wasn't of a stick-thin model. Cass is thirty-two, not nineteen, and she just came out of a messy divorce after years of infertility issues. She has a few extra pounds. I like the girl in this photo. She looks normal. The angle of her body is so pretty to me. Plus, she looks hot. And she's clothed. I spent a lot of time looking at book covers for women's erotica books, and I think I recreated the same feel. I feel like I did, anyway. I still love my original book cover, but I think this one is more eye-catching and more likely to sell copies of the book.

It has already worked at least once. Well, twice if you count the sample downloaded at Smashwords.

In other news, I'm only about 75% done with the fourth chapter action-draft of the vampire story. The good news is that I feel like the current rewrite is a much stronger, overall better story than the original draft. The bad news is that I'm about four and a quarter chapters behind where I wanted to be. I need to get cracking.

Self-Publishing: Cover Image Resources

If you're selling a book, it needs a cover. People like pictures. (Or paintings. Or crudely-drawn, suggestive sketches. Whatever.) If you're a talented visual artist--like my dad, who is a fantastic photographer; or my friend Kelsey, who is an amazing painter--then good for you! You don't need to hire an artist or buy stock photos. But if you're like me, stock photography websites are going to be your new best friends.

Freestockimages.net has a resource page with a list of free stock photo websites. The list is pretty good, complete with comments on content and quality.

I like Dreamstime.com the best. Specifically, I like their free photo section. These images are royalty-free and free for use online. They're also free for commercial use for up to 10,000 copies. The free images section is enormous. It's where I got my cover photo for The Cowboy Next Door and where I got the photos for the original mock-ups of Cass Gets Her Kicks. I love the place.

A genre-specific option is RomanceNovelCovers.com, where you can even get premade covers. I'm not sure I would ever use a premade cover, but it's nice to know that option is available. (I wanted to link you to the premade covers, but as of this writing, the site seems to be having some problems.)

RazzDazzStock.com is a stock photo website geared specifically toward the publishing industry. Like RNC, they also have premade covers.

Whichever site you use, even if you do a search on Google or Flickr or something, be sure that you read the terms of use. Give credit. Pay for the photo of necessary. (Industry standard seems to be about $10 for royalty-free use up to a certain number of copies sold.) Don't steal. Seriously. Not only is that bad manners, but you don't need a lawsuit on your hands.

Self-Publishing: Judge Me By My Cover, Do You?

We've all heard that old idiom. You know the one. The fact is that books are judged by their covers, and now, with bookselling happening online, books are judged by thumbnail-sized digital images representing what may or may not be an actual cover. 

You need a great cover. You can't just skate by on your superior writing skills. No one is going to click on your link if your cover doesn't catch their attention. Ideally, you'll hire a professional cover designer. (Might I suggest my friend Kelsey and her company?) But what if you can't afford them? What if you decide to DIY your book cover? I have some tips for you. 

Look at covers for similar books. 

Go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble and check out the top ten best-selling books in whatever genre your book is. Look at the book covers as thumbnails and as full-size images. What do you like? What grabs you? What don't you like? I recently spent some time on Harlequin's website looking at Blaze book covers, since the story I'm currently working on has the same sort of feel as those books. You can do the same at other publishers' websites.

Read graphic design and book cover review blogs. 

If you're not visually inclined, reading graphic design blogs can be daunting. Those wacky artists talk about all sorts of things I don't really understand. Read them anyway. It's the same as any other research; Google any terms you don't understand. You will eventually absorb some information and figure out how to use what you learn. As for book cover review blogs, I like Your Cover Uncovered, even though it's relatively new. 

How-to guides on graphic design are good for you.

Read about things like how color affects people and which fonts are a bad idea. Watch things like how to design a book cover. I'm not saying be a copycat. I'm saying learn something. 

Download free photo editing software.

I use Photoscape. It's not as sophisticated as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, but it's pretty good. I've heard good things about Picasa, too. (My father is a photographer and he uses Picasa when he's away from Photoshop.) After you download it, play with it. A lot. Watch tutorials. Share what you create with people who will give you their opinions, and listen to those opinions. Get better.

Use royalty-free images.

Back when I was designing the cover for Cass, I Googled "free royalty free images." (I ended up creating the neon heart shape on my own. Please don't ask me how, it was a fluke and I doubt I could ever recreate it.) I ended up finding Dreamstime, a website with an enormous free stock image library. Their prices are reasonable ($10 per image seems to be industry standard); I may actually end up buying an image for the next book cover. Just be sure you read the terms of service. At Dreamstime, you can use free images for up to 10,000 sales, and paid images for 500,000 sales; online use is unlimited. Don't forget to give credit where credit is due on your copyright page.