Reworking the Covers (Again)

Time to revisit those book covers...

Back when I started publishing my books, I had decided that they would have to pay for themselves. This meant that I wouldn’t spend any money on advertisements, promotions, or even professionally made covers until the books netted me enough royalties to pay for them. (The only investment I would make was time - writing, editing, and making my own unprofessional covers.) A bit of a Catch-22, but so far, I’ve stuck to it, and now that I’m five months in, I realize that despite (and hopefully not because of) my self-made sub-par covers, my books have actually sold enough copies to justify some professional help.

However, still being on a tight budget, my main problem is that in order to maintain artistic continuity, I would need custom jobs on all five books at once. While I certainly know that there are no free meals in this world, I’m in no position to be spending hundreds of dollars per cover.

Thus I went to KBoards (formerly Kindle Boards) and started a thread asking for recommendations from other authors on good (but cheap) cover designers. The great thing about KBoards is how absolutely helpful they are - I was instantly swamped with recommendations. Some replied to the thread, some PMed me, some sent emails.

And so I spent several hours going through portfolios filled with quality book covers, many of which I really liked. However, when it comes to the specific look and feel that I want with my books, I didn’t want to use photo-manipulation style covers, as beautiful as they are.

I realized that what I really needed was an illustrator more than a cover designer, and that, unfortunately, took me way over budget.

Yet, as I looked through the many cover artists websites, I discovered that many of them were self-taught through trial and error (or so they say in their about pages.) And that got me thinking and wondering... could I too?

Thus, though I felt guilty about refusing good advice (especially after I specifically asked for it) I am nevertheless going to stick to self-made covers for now. I may eventually crack and hire a professional illustrator, but in the meantime, I’ve decided to teach myself as much as I can about graphic designing. (Hey, I taught myself how to write, I can certainly learn how to manipulate graphics.) 

Over the last few days, using GIMP (the poor man’s Photoshop), I managed to add more layered images, lighting effects and such to my existing covers. 

Though still far from the quality of professional covers, considering that my first covers looked like this...

and now they look like this...

...it’s definitely improvement.

I hope this isn’t too bad for the time being. And as I learn more, I’ll make more changes. In the world of self-publishing, this is part of the fun too.

My Last Free Promotion

At just shy of the 1000 downloads mark, my latest (and possibly last) free promotion of Wild-bown has come to an end.

 

The download numbers this time were far better than my last, thanks largely to several paid advertisements including BookGorilla, KindleBoards, and a number of book blogs. Why pay money to advertise a free book? To get more readers on to the series, of course! And though 1000 isn’t exactly record-breaking, especially since many people don’t seem to get around to reading free books anyway, nevertheless I am hopeful that this promotion will bear some fruit in the not-too-distant future.

 

As I plan on expanding my books into B&N and other venues, I probably won’t be able to host another free promotion on Amazon’s KDP Select, but I still hope to do 99-cent discount promotions every once in a while.

 

Meanwhile, sales are still plodding along at a slow but steady pace, and I am once again filled with gratitude toward the increasing number of readers who are willing to take a chance with an unknown author like myself.

 

 

 

Sean Endress's Reviews of my Pentalogy

I have just read and smiled manically at Sean Endress’s Amazon.com review of my fifth and last PSIONIC book, Guardian Angel. After Laura of Between the Leaves, Mr. Endress is only the second reviewer to go through and review my entire series.

 

As always, I make it a professional rule never to comment on the specific points of any review, be it glowing praise or harsh criticism, but I wanted to take a moment here to express my gratitude to Mr. Endress for his time and amazingly fast work.

 

Mr. Endress apparently doesn’t have a book review blog (though he should considering the quality of his reviews) so I can’t link to it from this site, but all of his reviews are up on Amazon.com. (Sean’s review page on Amazon.com here.)

 

I had discovered Mr. Endress almost entirely accidentally: His was the top review (as in voted most-helpful) of another author’s book that was linked to Wild-born in the “customers who bought this also bought” list. Reading it and a few of his many other reviews, I decided that it would be worth it to try getting him to review my books. Contacting him, I got a prompt yes, and things just blasted off from there. Many reviewers literally take weeks to review one book. Mr. Endress reviewed all five of mine in a week plus two days.

 

Furthermore, the fact that Mr. Endress seems to devour books faster than a paper shredder doesn’t keep him from noticing the finer points of the stories or from spotting the typos embedded in the manuscripts. I too have serious typo-allergies, so I am quite grateful to him for pointing these out to me in our email exchanges.

 

Though far from unfair, Mr. Endress wasn’t as merciful in his star ratings as Laura had been: He is the first reviewer to give me a three-star (which would classify as a negative review on Amazon) for The Tower. But even when he was less than entirely impressed with my story, his polite candor and careful details made his reviews both satisfying and read-worthy. I am grateful for short liked-it/hated-it reviews too, but I prefer to hear what a reader liked and didn’t like. Thus, with all of Mr. Endress’s reviews, again, while I appreciated the stars, I was much more interested in his comments, and I hope my future readers do see all of his reviews.

 

Again, a big thank-you to Sean Endress and to all of my readers and reviewers.

Wild-born Free Promotion Coming Up

Three-day free promotion coming up next month: May 8th to May 10th.

My previous free promotion, despite having been featured on a number of book sites, didn’t go so well. It was a weekend promo back in March, and it yielded far fewer downloads than my first two promotions early this year which I hadn’t announced at all.

So apparently being featured on free book sites just isn’t enough. Or perhaps Wild-born has already reached just about everyone out there that downloads free books and would be interested in this one. That is a distinct possibility, but nevertheless I’m going to give this book one more push just to make sure.

This time I’m going with a weekday promotion. The idea, which I got from senior authors on the KDP Forums, was to run a long promotion through the week leading up to the weekend. It would ideally be a five-day promotion, but I only have three days left this term so I will have to make do with that.

Another important difference this time is that I’m going with a few paid promotions. This is actually a pretty big step for me.

When I started publishing this series back in December 2012, I had just one rule regarding finances: the books would have to pay their own way. Whether it be professionally designed covers (which are still pending) or paid advertising of any kind, I would only spend a portion of the money that the books have already made. It was a blatant Catch-22, but I realize now that it has sorted itself out: the books have already netted enough in sales to justify some paid services.

I still don’t have enough reviews to qualify for some of the larger sites, but I have managed to get a spot reserved on BookGorilla and a number of Kindle promotional sites. Premium advertising spot prices ranged from $5 to $50, and all together it adds up to a fair sum, but still less than half of what my books made last month, so that’s not too bad.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to reach more readers with this promotion. At least I hope to do better than my last count of 200...

Make or break, this will most likely be my final free promotion for my Psionic Pentalogy. I will be using up my last three days on KDP Select, and once my term expires in early-June, I’ll probably leave KDP Select to sell on B&N and other book sellers.

Taking Things Slowly

An unexpected week of high winds and heavy rain has all but obliterated the cherry blossoms here in Japan. It seems that global weather patterns are increasingly erratic every year. It made little difference to me, as I’ve been in bed for almost a week with a high fever and mild inability to stand up. Whatever it was, I’m pretty much over it now, but as the gusts of wind pummel my windows and gently rock my 30-year-old house, I am perfectly content to stay indoors for another day or two.

Feeling in a mildly artistic mood, I sat down to look over my book covers one more time. I know I should get professional help with them to make them more visually appealing, and perhaps I will someday or someday soon. For now, I wanted to do something about my title texts, which were bland and unattractive.

So I fiddled with some graphics programs (with what little know-how I have) to make the following changes:

Before:

 After:

I like the gradient colors, which make the text seem a little less flat. Not a major difference, I’m aware. It’s still rather bland, but hopefully not as bad as before. It’s the best I can do right now in my diminished capacity... no, that’s just an excuse. It’s probably the best I can do without paying for professional help.

Still thinking about it.

As March Ends

So the cherry trees are in full bloom, which is of course beautiful, but I'm not about to post a photograph here. Here in Tokyo, it seems that more people are busy taking cell-phone photos of the flowers than actually looking at them, as if we didn't already have enough amateur photos of blooming cherry trees to last us till the end of time. Even professional photos rarely do these trees justice anyway.

March isn't just for hanami and hay fever, though.

Spring is always a season of restlessness. Perhaps it is a part of our animal nature, the desire to start something new, to make something happen. Now that we have had enough time to forget our New Year's Resolutions, it is a time of happy anticipation or cautious dread of the real year to come.

What will 2013 be like? Come next December, how will we look back upon it?

Kristine’s Review of Wild-born

My second book-blogger review of Wild-born is in! This one comes from Kristine Schwartz of The Schwartz Reviews. Read it in full here.

I first learned about Kristine back in February. A writer on the KDP forum had recommended her as a fair and honest book reviewer, and I immediately sent along my request. Swamped with other review requests, it took awhile for Kristine to get around to mine, but her review was well worth the wait. (She also helped me advertise my last free promotion on her facebook page. Thanks again!)

Kristine’s review style always deals with both positive and negative aspects of any book, and as I writer, I am entirely grateful for both. On principle, I do not comment on reviews (positive or negative) but it is always a good feeling when a review ends with the line, “I look forward to reading the next book.”

I too look forward to following Kristine’s blog.