In search for the best book cover

For a number of reasons, including the fact I'm taking a cover art class this week, I've been thinking about book covers and what it takes for a cover to help make a sale. You always hear the expression "don't judge a book by its cover", but the truth is most people do look at a cover and decide if the book looks like it might be worth exploring.

The first thing someone sees is the cover, sometimes even before the title of a book. The cover is supposed to make a promise about the story. Is it humorous, serious, romantic, or suspenseful? Even before someone reads the blurb the cover should tell them something.

I have this one title that I wrote a long time ago, and have now published twice with two different publishers and have just put up for sale on preorder through Amazon and Apple. It is a contemporary romance novel called "Christmas With Sarah".

This is the blurb:

A family together at Christmastime—there couldn’t be a more perfect holiday scene. But for wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur Greg Wilcox and his daughter Sarah, one thing is missing—a woman to help wrap the gifts, bake the cookies and fill that emptiness in their hearts and home. Greg and Sarah both think Molly would be the perfect addition to their family, but they have to convince Molly first. 

Big Sur artist Molly Anders remembers the Christmases of her past, baking cookies and decorating a tree. More than anything she’d love to have a holiday like that with Sarah. Trouble is, she doesn’t want a man in her life as shiftless as Greg seems to be, especially as he stirs something in her that she isn’t sure she wants resurrected. 

Circumstances have pulled them together and led them into love but it will take trust and the spirit of the season for them to get what they really want for Christmas—a family.

So what do we know about this story? It has a little girl, a loving and probably sexy father, and a young woman who loves the child and is reluctant to get involved with the father. It is a holiday story and we can guess it has a happy ending. Something that isn't in the blurb is that the story is relatively light-hearted. Not quite a comedy but there is humor in it. That's something that it would be nice to see reflected in the cover.

So here are the two covers that this story had in the past.

The first cover was with Zumaya publishing. It featured a cute little girl and a Christmas tree, and over all wasn't a bad cover. I liked the blue background and the font used for the title and author name was very Christmasy. I'm not sure the cover said enough about the humor in the story though.

The next cover was with Cerridwen Press, which was an imprint of Ellora's Cave and what became their "Blush" line of non-erotic stories. Again we have the Christmas tree and this time I have a motorcycle helmet with Molly's name on it, something that shows up in the story. Again, not a bad cover, but the drab color of the cover always bothered me as it just didn't seem to scream light-hearted romance. 

So when I got the rights back to Christmas With Sarah, I wanted a cover that "popped" with color and that would make it clear this was a humorous romance. So after a chat with my favorite cover artist, this is what I got:

Okay, there is nothing drab about this. The green of her dress, the gold of the lettering, and warm colors of the background make me love this cover. And now I have her expression with its mischievous smile to provide that sense of humor that neither of the previous covers had. I had my artist dress my hero in his leather jacket as that provided a nice contrast with the fancy party dress, again hinting at some of the conflict in the story. This cover does a much better job of telling people about the story and it has one additional feature.

This looks like a romance cover.

I'm really happy with my new cover and the fact that once again Christmas With Sarah will be available for this upcoming holiday season. 

It is currently available for preorder at Apple and Amazon and will be released everywhere on October 25. I've got it priced at $2.99 for the next couple of weeks.

Tell me what you think about these covers.

Cheers, Janet

Shrinky Dink Book Cover charms – a craft project

This month I want to talk about a project I did last year for the RT Booklovers convention, specifically for the Intergalactic Bar and Grille. This is a special party put on by a group of science fiction romance authors led by the amazing Linnea Sinclair where we have all sorts of give-aways and prizes. 

Originally I made batches of these to be wine charms but these little ½ x ¾ inch plastic charms can be used for earrings and necklaces as well. They are lightweight, durable, and colorful enough to attract attention, perfect for book signings.

To start you need an ink-jet printer, a paper hole punch, scissors or a paper cutter, and a computer program that will allow you to manipulate images including size, brightness, and contrast. I use Adobe Fireworks, and Microsoft Word to make the printable template, but equivalent programs abound.

Finally you need the Shrinky Dink printable plastic. Sometimes you can find this at your local craft stores but I bought mine directly from the company’s online store: http://www.shrinkydinks.com. Here is a direct link to the kind of plastic you need. This is “Shrinky Dinks for Ink Jet Printers”.

Each package has six sheets and using my template I can make 18 charms per sheet, so unless you are doing 250 for a conference give-away one package will should be sufficient. You will probably waste at least one sheet in trying to get everything perfect.

First step is to size, rotate, and fade out the book cover image. Since the plastic shrinks to 1/9 it’s original size, fading the image will make it look normal once shrunk. I prefer to use at least a 300 DPI resolution cover to start. The first thing I do is size the cover to 1.5 inches wide, leaving the height proportional. Covers can have slightly different dimensions but this gives a height between 2.25 and 2.5 inches depending on the cover. I then turn the cover 90 degrees clockwise so it is lying on its side, top to the right.

I then adjust the brightness and up the contrast. In Fireworks this is under Filters, Adjust Brightness/Contrast. I up the brightness to 72%, and contrast 11%, then save the modified cover image.

Original cover

Cover rotated and faded

I created a template of cells with three columns of six rows using the label tool in Word. In each cell goes one cover. I use the same template to create a backside for the charms. It could be the same cover, making two sided cover charms, but it is difficult to get the charms lined up exactly right, so I recommend using a logo of some sort instead, possibly with your website URL on it. Then if the back and front aren’t perfectly lined up it won’t be quite as obvious.

Now we print the images, first on paper to make sure everything looks great and that when you staple the back sheet to the front sheet you don’t have too much in the way of borders and when cut they will match up. You want a fairly wide space at the top of the cover to punch the ¼ inch hole.

Now print the front page of the plastic. Make sure your printer has plenty of ink since this does take a fair amount of ink (a hidden cost for this project) and you don’t want to run short on a color and ruin a page of the plastic.

Let the plastic cool before turning it over and printing the backside. That will allow the ink to completely dry without smearing. Also make sure to turn the plastic page so that the tops of the backside images line up with the tops of the cover images. Practice on paper first.

Once the plastic is cool, cut apart the charms. I used a paper cutter but if you are careful scissors will work. Make sure to leave as much space as possible at the top of each charm so you can punch the ¼ inch hole. This has to be done before shrinking.

Now we get to the best part, the shrinking of the plastic. The plastic comes with instructions that include using a piece of brown paper (like from a shopping bag) to cover the bottom of the pan, and baking until completely flat (about 3-5 minutes). Just make sure there aren’t any wrinkles in the paper as they can transfer to the melted plastic. Parchment paper works even better. I set my toaster oven for about 325 degrees and did six at a time. You want space between them so they don’t fall onto each other during the twisting and turning. I put a video of this process on Youtube

Once the plastic has cooled they are ready for use. For wine charms we used 1 inch silver earring hoops and small link rings.

Let me know what you think!
Cheers,
Janet Miller/Cricket Starr

More cover mania

Last month I talked about covers and getting the perfect one for a book. This month I want to continue this theme in talking about the covers for the Gaian books I'm re-releasing next month. The books are Beloved Enemy and Beloved Traveler, and I wanted to make sure the new covers both enticed people to investigate the books and accurately reflected the contents as well.

When working with a cover artist it is very important that you spend a little time deciding what kind of cover you want. In this case I wanted covers that made it obvious these were science fiction romances, with space-themed backgrounds and couples that looked like the characters in the books. Knowing what I wanted made the process much easier.

For example if the characters are young, as in Beloved Enemy, you want them to look young. Since the heroine is spaceship pilot who has been stranded on a deserted planet for a while, then I wanted her cover image to not be wearing a lot of makeup. To me, this cover reflects well both the characters of Meagan and Kavath, but also says something about their relationship. He's reluctant to get into a relationship with her while she's a bit sassy about the whole thing. You can see that by the way they are posed.

For the second book, Beloved Traveler, the characters are older, and the images my cover artist picked showed that. Jack and Meagan have been through a lot in their lives and are reluctant to become involved, but can't resist the pull they feel towards each other. The passion they find is obvious in this cover. Again I think this cover reflects well who these characters are and their relationship.

In both covers the science fiction aspects are obvious, a strange planet in the first cover, a space ship control deck in the second.

In the cover for Promises To Keep,  the book I currently have for sale, the space theme is shown by the planet, stars, and space ship in the background.

To make the books all seem within the same series, the fonts are the same, my name is at the top, and the series name is in large letters at the bottom. There is no mistaking that these three books are related to each other.

Maybe you can't always judge a book by its cover, but if the cover is any good, it should be able to say something about the book.

So, anyone else have any covers to share?

Cheers,
Janet Miller

And the subject is Editors

It is Valentine’s Day and I get to demonstrate my love for some of the best people in my writing life... My editors!

I love editors. Maybe it is because I’ve had the privilege of working with some really great editors, and maybe it is because I know what happens when you don’t have an editor working with you, but the fact remains, I love editors.

An editor is often the first person to read something I’ve written. I don’t have critique buddies anymore, and when I submit something to one of my usual publishing houses, that is often the first time I get feedback on something I’ve been working my butt off on. So when they say they really like my work, I get that validation I’ve been looking for.

The other reason I love editors is that editors make my work better. I’m a better storyteller than I am a grammarian. I think I know where the commas go but I don’t always get them in the right place. Editors frequently do know these mysterious things. They also can point out things like your hero has neglected to tell the heroine how he feels about her anywhere in the book. Or in chapter five the heroine tells the hero she loves him, and then two chapters later is still questioning her feelings. Editors catch the boo-boos I tend to make.

Now don’t get me wrong. A good knowledgeable critique buddy can do the same thing, but it is the editor’s job to make your work as good as possible.

Also editors can advise on covers and on titles. Here we have the cover for my upcoming Gaian book, Beloved Stranger. This is the third version of the cover because while I liked the first version, there were changes my editor and I felt were needed. I love how they even got the wristbands my characters wear when they are married into the cover.

I have another editor who I just sold a new Hollywood After Dark book to, and she’s advised me to shorten the title to make it snappier. In thinking about it, that’s a good idea so I went with it.

By the time Beloved Stranger is out the door it will be a well-edited book with a great cover and should find an appreciative audience. And it will be because I had an editor on my side.

How about the rest of you? Can I get some more love for editors here? What do you love about editors?

Cover Art

One of the joys of going Indie published is the cover art is yours to choose. You can design it yourself if you have any graphic arts talent. Or, if you are like me and have none, you can hire someone to do it.

I checked a lot of cover artists before going with Elaina Lee, For the Muse Design Her covers had a dreamy effect to them that I really liked. Almost dream-like.

I sent her a blurb of my story, a description of the couple in the story, and things I knew I wanted on the cover; the couple, a divorce decree, and a cabin in a storm in the woods.

She got back to me right away with a cover. I was sure the divorce decree would be the hard thing to find for the cover but she let me know it was the cabin. All the ones she found were happy and sunny, not storm-drenched like my story. But, she did find one and sent me this cover.

While it was gorgeous the font of the title was just wrong. I didn't like that the two words of the title were in different fonts, way different fonts and I really like the author name below the title.

So I shot her an email and requested some changes. (Yeah, the awesome part of being Indie) We emailed back and forth a few times just to check we were on the same page. Was I happy with the couple she found? Yes! Although they are younger than my 40 year old couple in the book, I liked their look. What font was I looking for? Slightly fancy, but not as fancy as the Interrupted on this cover.

She was so nice to let me know she was in the process of moving and packing but still my cover was ready in a couple of days. And here is the final cover for Divorce, Interrupted.

I totally love it and feel it fits the story perfectly. So, this week I will be an Indie Author and thrilled so far with every step of the process. Hopefully, I will still feel that way after a weekend of formatting for Amazon, Pubit, and Smashwords. LOL

Jill James