Before I launched my titles on kindle, I kept reading how crucial
it was to have good professional cover designs for the book. Amazon is my shop window and the first thing
people see is the cover design. If they
like it, hopefully they click on the thumbnail to find out more about the book. If they see it has some good reviews then
they might scroll down to look at the book description. Then, hopefully, they will click to look
inside, or download the free sample. The
overall aim is to get the reader to buy – not easy when they have so much
choice! I studied best selling books,
and also the popular titles in my category (horse and pony stories for teens)
to see what other writers did.
I played about with some stock images myself before contacting the
designer I now work with. I’d recently
had some A6 cards printed to promote my author talks and was introduced to
stock photo image sites, where you pay to use an image you like. What a revelation!
So I chose a few images I liked and then played with some typefaces. I soon realised that I was not the right
person to create the cover – and it was a lot harder than I imagined!
The designer I chose to collaborate with was someone I had previously
worked with, on other design and marketing projects, so I knew we could work
together. However, he had not designed
either print or digital book covers before, so this was a first for both of us.
We had a meeting where I spread out many of my existing backlist paperback
books on the floor and outlined what I wanted my new covers to do, and what they
should evoke. I also stressed that I
wanted the trilogy to work as a unit, and to have a recognisable “branding” which
I believed could be achieved from the typography. We looked at the stock images I had chosen,
then Klaus went off and started work.
I have to say that when he emailed me the first pic, which I was first
saw on my blackberry phone, I nearly cried with emotion. I loved it!
With the whole set of 3 titles, I especially like the way the font
choice links them, and also the silhouettes, which I had specified, and the white constant of the orb moon and sun
which also connects them. My favourite
is the 3rd title, Matty and the Racehorse Rescue. I think the dark
blue background combined with the lightning by the jumping horse, and the subtle
rain beating down, really creates the
perfect atmosphere for the story.
Despite my long history of being traditionally published, I had
never, for any of my many titles, been consulted about the book covers, which
is standard practice unless you are a big name author. In
some cases this resulted in a cover photograph which made it clear that no-one
involved in the process had read the book or been given an accurate brief, since
both the horse and the girl looked completely unlike the descriptions in the
book, ie your character is blonde but there is a dark haired girl on the cover, with a chestnut horse when the heroine’s horse is grey.
Some covers I had liked, but many I didn’t, and since they are the first
thing people see when thinking about buying a book, you feel helpless and frustrated
if you feel the cover doesn’t do it justice. I have also worked in the Sales team
of a major publishing house and the sales reps, when they visited the book
stores, usually sold the titles on the basis of the proof copy of the cover design
before the book even existed.
So for me the most satisfying aspect of the indie publishing experience
has been the element of choice and control over every aspect of the book’s production.
What about lessons learned from the process? We had a few issues around the resolution of
the images but the beauty of publishing to kindle is that you can go back and
change things as many times as you like until you are happy with the result. I have
realised that there are downfalls to using stock photos. The one I chose for the first title, Matty and the Moonlight Horse, was a horse silhouetted
by moonlight. I loved it – and so do other authors! Only 24 hours after I had
launched the book, I came across another writer who had also used the design
for a book with a similar title! I felt
my stomach lurch. Bad luck or what? When I had calmed down and compared the two,
I could see that Klaus had sufficiently tailored his design (adding and
subtracting elements) to differentiate the two, but the similarities were still
apparent. Next time, I won’t be using
stock photos. I have found an amazing
artist and think I will make a bigger financial investment and have original illustrations
in the designs. This, luckily, wasn’t
such an issue for the next 2 titles in the series. I had seen a photo I liked for the cover
concept for Matty and the Problem Ponies, but the girl in the photo was too old, with long hair, and the horse too big. So
Klaus worked to change that.
He says, “I think the hardest bit is finding suitable images to start with.
The Problem Ponies was tricky. I think I’ve
got about 40 layers in Photoshop where I've merged water and ripples and shadows and
highlights and girl and hair and so on! For The Racehorse Rescue, in the end I
had to find an actual image of someone and trace round freehand in
Photoshop and fill with colour to make silhouette.”
Because of my strong belief in the importance of the cover design,
I have given the designer a credit both in the kindle edition of the book, as
expected, but also on my book description on Amazon. And everywhere else I publicise
the books. I have not noticed any other writers who have done this.
(In fact, with a series of mini short story collections for adults I currently have on kindle, the business model I am using to work with the designer is a 50/50 royalty
split.)
