Judging A Book By It's Cover. The Evolution Of An eBook Cover

-Mark Barry

I always wanted to write a football hooligan novel. 

Most Americans would never have heard of the pastime which dominated male culture in Cities across Great Britain in the seventies and eighties, but the hobby was pretty widespread. 

I was actively involved in my younger days and had a resource to draw from.

In November and December last year I put together 60k novel on er, off-field activities at Notts County Football Club, in Nottingham, England - the oldest football league club in the world. 

Then, after getting the bug bigtime, and discovering a talent for fast writing, I started writing other books and before you know it, I had four, one planned and a publishing company. 

Trouble is, while I can write a storm, I am an idiot when it comes to Art.

 I have to say that I have no artistic talent whatsoever. 

CSE Grade 5 Art in 1980. 

My Art teacher, the glamourous but waspish Mrs Dowell, in the days when these things were allowed, humiliated me in front of 25 other children by laughing at my publicly displayed effort. 

And that was that with my aspirations to paint landscapes in Sherwood Forest.

UV "Kent Cover" Version One Feb 2012

So when it came to covers, I was worried. 

Then, I thought, how difficult can this BE in a world of technology! With all the packages available, you too can be Picasso, a Renoir, a David Bailey.

So in February this year, I travelled to Kent and started designing the five covers.

Using Open Office Draw, Google and a notepad and pen, I came up with the above for the football hooligan novel.  

At the time, I wanted a pseudonym for the book - hence, Simon Haddow. (Shadow - Mask - Geddit?) 

This is a photograph of some West Ham fans taunting Millwall supporters stretched a bit in a Cubist, Twilight Zone, dreamlike state

When I showed him the finished product on my now defunct website, a friend asked me where I got the photograph. 

I said Google. 

He then went into a ten minute rage about copyright (being a top photographer and graphic designer.)

I never gave it a second thought. I thought Google Images was a public access thing. 

It took me about a day for my friend Kelly and I to design the above, choose the colours, the fonts and all that - and ten seconds to delete it.

Version II didn;t take too long. As Trainer (Sneaker) Culture  was a key aspect of the football hooligan scene in the eighties, I decided - indeed, became fixated - upon the notion of using a sneaker on the front. It seemed to say everything to me. 

Ultra Violence "Diadora Plain" Version II March 2012

I took a photograph of one of my trainers, a Diadora Borg Elite with Gold Epaulettes, and messed about with it on Open Office. 

Notice that the font layout and texture is the same as Version 1. Just different colours.

A week later, I was on the treadmill in my local gym and my trainer came up to me and told me he'd seen all the new covers on the website. He asked me what I'd used to design them. I told him. Open Office. Great JPEG conversion reliability.

Well, he went quiet. 

A lovely young lad called Adam. Top notch gamer. Has a Solid State hard drive and that.  Knows Java. I like to think he's a good friend of mine and as I plodded along at 8k an hour, I realised he didn't like the covers but he was far too nice to tell me. 

Not just the Ultra Violence one. 

All of them.

Gulp. Launch date for the books coming up like a bullet train in open country and five new covers to design.

Version 3 below is my attempt at a Seventies "Reader's Digest" approach. A thematic branding in trendy black and white, with a stark bottle green afterflash. I like the symbolic flash of red.

All five look identical to this. I loved the big green number and I quite like the aesthetic combination of grey and green. I used Word. 

I spent an entire week doing this and I couldn't wait to put the five covers on the website.

UV "Fifty Shades of Grey" Version III April 2012

I did so.

Sales went through the floor. 

That's where Dawn Smith of Dark Dawn Creations got involved.

In my short time on the Amazon Forum, I met Dawn. 

Early June. None of my books were selling. My friend and close associate, Kelly, had feedback that my covers were unappealing. 

As I have never bought a book in my entire life (and I have a sneaky collection of around a thousand), based on its cover, I didn't think that a cover made a jot of difference.

Maybe when I was about to starve, I would see the error of my ways.

One night in early June, Dawn advertised on the forum as a cover designer saying she had slots available. 

It was just too good to be true. I e-mailed her straight away and she got straight back to me. I asked her to assess my covers and she said she would.

Well. 

She didn't mince her words. I was chastened.

And with that, I was the last customer to get a deal.

Together, on Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo e-mail, Dawn and I worked on the five covers. 

Here's Version 4.

UV "County Road" Version IV June 2012

I took the photograph of Notts County's Meadow Lane stadium one afternoon in mid June. 

The guy in the hat is a Random from one of the Stock sites. 

I had never heard of Stock, but I had heard of multi thousand pound lawsuits by now and I won't make that mistake again. 

The bloody ball is Dawn's idea. 

All my books have my name in this format - based on Stephen King's First Edition hardback "Skeleton Crew", in solid block letters. Dawn came up with the colours for the title and I added the red graffiti idea. 

In all, it took us about eight nights/days - there are 8 hours between the UK and Arizona - to produce six covers (including one newly written book). 

Dawn suggested I drop the Green Wizard branding as it was fatally flawed after my abortive launch. I did so, with heavy heart, though only temporarily, and the brand has helped the marketing in other ways.

You can see them all in the photo folder of Green Wizard Publishing on Facebook or on Dawn's website.

Together, Dark Dawn Creations and Green Wizard Publishing are working on the paperback cover designs (UV is already out). I can honestly say that visiting the Amazon forum - a battleground if there ever was one - that afternoon was one of the most important (and lucky) decisions I've ever made. 

Thanks, Dawn!!

Mark Barry

Green Wizard

Find Mark at: 

Green Wizard Publishing Facebook

The Wizards Cauldron

The Independent Paperback Bookshop

Mark Barry has become a good friend in our months of planning and co-conspiring, and I look forward to seeing his dreams come to fruition. As the founder of Dark Dawn Creations I have helped many authors get the cover they desire cheaper than they could have imagined, and I have gained many friends. I will help any one, regardless of budget or genre. Stop by my website and drop me a line, I'm always here to help. 

Til next time, may your muse be at your side, and your writing the light that guides you. 

Dawn

WOW, Shame On You Apple

photo courtesy of adamr and freedigitalphotos.net

   I really didn't think that a company as big as Apple would need to engage in price fixing. Although I do believe that the publishing companies entering such agreements are more to blame here. It all stems from the fact that Amazon has always had the lowest price on books. Even before e readers I would buy my books from Amazon. Sure I may have had to pay a little extra for shipping, but it still didn't compare to the prices I would pay in the book store.

   Publishers were getting tired of Amazon selling their books at a discounted price. Along comes the Apple I pad. Apple, signs contracts with said fed up publishers driving up the price of eBooks over night. Bad for consumers of big six books, but in my eyes, good for self publishers. Why you ask, because as long as big six books were out of consumers price range, Indies stood a chance.

   I know what it sounds like, but consider for a minute what would you, as a consumer buy. If your favorite author just released a new book but it was at a price that just didn't seem reasonable, would you buy it? Say that while you are looking up said book on the same page there is another book that looks really interesting at a fraction of the price. Would you buy it? While I am a self publisher I am also a consumer of eBooks. I have passed up many a book because I couldn't see my self paying such a price. Instead I have turned to others to get my dose of fantasy.

   Will the Apple lawsuit and subsequent price reductions evolve as I fear? I can not say for sure. Am I worried, maybe just a little. In truth I hope that Indie books will benefit from the coming changes. I hope that my assumption is so far of the mark I'm eating my words in six months. I had also hoped that I would have sold a hundred copies of Crimson Fury by now too. Only time will tell what the future holds, until then,
May your muse be at your side and your writing the light that guides you.
Dawn

Note Worthy Releases

Great eBooks, Fabulous Indie Authors

  

    A self published author needs to explore every avenue possible when marketing their books. My blogger followers that have been with me from the beginning have seen me feature self published books before on this blog. Now every one will be in for a special treat. I'm sure most of you have noticed the new tab at the top of the page. This will be where you can find these great authors and their books. ( This blog needs a new page like I need a new piercing I know). But just so every one can see what I have in mind, I'm rolling out the first few in this new venture today. With out further adieu, your featured Indie authors this week:

Dragon Fire

Pedro L. Alvarez

Description:

In a land where kings and magic rule, a farmer’s son and a princess who dreams of becoming a knight are born under the same moon; together they take a stand and forever change the course of their world.

When Delcan is born, he is brought back from the brink of death by a wizard who proclaims him to be the prophecies come to life – the commoner who would unseat the tyrannical king, Orsak. At the age of nineteen, searching for a way to break free from the mundane life of farming, Delcan becomes a champion in the tournament that will make him a squire in the service of the King.

When Delcan discovers his father's secret past as a knight himself, his life as a squire suddenly becomes complicated. When he falls in love with Princess Aria, it turns deadly.
Dragon Fire is a coming-of-age tale set in a world where the young have no hope and the old no longer believe in magic.

Dragon Fire has everything you'd expect from a fantasy tale, with none of the clichés.

 Available through Amazon.com Amazon.uk and Smashwords




                                                             

The Wizard Murders

Sean McDevitt

 

  

Description: The year is 1981. A small California town is rocked by a series of seemingly random -and increasingly violent- murders. An aging detective tries to capture the elusive killer- but with so few clues, can anyone stop the killing?

                                                                           

                                                                     

   Additional background and Bio provided by the author.

Sean McDevitt is a filmmaker, videographer, actor and -thanks to Amazon- published author.

His brand new full-length fictional crime novel, titled "THE WIZARD MURDERS", is now available for Amazon Kindle. It is a project that he has worked on -in one form or another- for nearly 30 years.

He is also the author of "The Velvet Sofa," which is based upon a never-before-published short story written by the author's late father, Dr. Steven J. McDevitt.

"The Wizard Murders" was actually first conceived in the early 80s, when Procter & Gamble was the unfortunate target of a completely unfounded rumor- that the company's "moon and stars" logo was somehow related to Satanism. (Actually, the rumormongers couldn't keep it straight; it was either Satanism, or the Unification Church.) McDevitt couldn't for a moment believe that an internationally recognized company would do something so completely insane- stamp all of its products with a "Satanic" symbol. Even if it were true, he thought, Who would do such a thing? A maniac, that's who! And thus, the idea of "The Wizard Murders," with its use of a bizarre symbol left at murderous crime scenes, was born.

                                               

Available through Amazon.com

 

Playing Fields

Karen Stillwagon

 

 Description

   Caught with his hands in the cookie jar... well, almost. When a woman suspects the man in her life of infidelity, it’s Cassidy Fields he needs to be on the watch for. As a very specialized private investigator, she’ll study her subject then turn all her womanly wiles on him to see if he’ll stray. 98% of the time they do. But when Cassidy’s brother is murdered and the lead cop on the case is one of her unfaithful victims, will he block Cassidy from finding the truth? As secret after secret is unveiled, can Cassidy hide just who her brother was from her mother? Will the cop she once caught in the act turn her eye and catch her? Find out in Playing Fields.

   Bio provided by the author.

Karen was raised on the beautiful coast of Oregon. As far back as she can remember she was writing stories, and if she wasn't writing she was reading.

Karen has always been an artist, but took it a step further and went back to school at Southwestern Community College, in Coos Bay, Oregon. After receiving her AA, she moved to Monmouth and continued at Western Oregon University. In 2000 she received her Bachelor's Degree, majoring in Art with a minor in Literature.
Her love the writing grew during her college days until she finally decided it was time to share her stories. Amazon has opened a door to the wonderful world of writing and publishing and she can continue on with her journey.

Karen now lives in Roy, Washington with her husband and two daughters. She spends her days in her art studio writing.

 Available through Amazon.com