Self Publishing Authors:
Your Cover Is the Single Most
Important Factor in Whether Your Novel Will Be a Triumph or a Failure.
Don’t Fuck It Up.
So, you’ve finished your novel. Doing so
took months, maybe years, but you’re finally done. The hard part is over.
Or
so you think.
I
think that we all start here. Just when we’re certain that we’ve finished doing
the real work we realize that there is much more to selling a novel than simply
writing the manuscript. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that writing a
manuscript is perhaps the easiest, certainly not the longest or hardest, part
of successfully producing and marketing a book. If you just got to this point,
wait and see. If you have been here before, or are here now, you know what I
mean.
The
manuscript is done; that is, the first draft is done. Now come the agonizing
months of editing, of finding quality beta readers, later of trying to sell an
agent on your work only to realize that no one is interested in an unproven
manuscript from an unproven author. You soon realize that it takes longer to
edit and sell a book than is does to actually write the thing, and further in
an terrifying moment of clarity you realize that you will have to self publish
your work before anyone will take you seriously.
So
you have to actually edit your manuscript to perfection, yourself. You have to
learn how to format it for epub, for mobi, how to produce a decent PDF. You
have to study the business of publishing and determine which route is best for
you. Do you publish strictly in ebook formats? Do you publish through
Smashwords, LULU, KDP? Do you also publish trade paperbacks? If so, do you use
CreateSpace or another POD? Do you even know what these acronyms stand for? How
do you market your work once it is published?
For
many of us this is all a blur of unfamiliar terms and confusing procedures,
something as authors we would simply like someone else to handle. But alas, in
the new age of publishing all of these decisions are ours to make.
Take
a step back, a breath or two. If you are unfortunate enough to be a smoker, as
I am, maybe do that.
Sure,
self publishing is a nightmare. It is hard. It takes forever and a day.
However,
it also affords us a great deal of control over the presentation and quality of
our work that we would not have in a traditional publishing scenario.
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The
first thing to understand is that you can’t simply sit down after writing a
manuscript and effectively edit it. You have to take some time off, get some
space from your work, before you can regain even a modicum of objectivity.
And
it is what you do during this time that will determine how long it will be
until you work finds its way onto book shelves, or web pages, or kindles and
nooks and ipads, and eventually into the hands of an agent and publisher.
My
advice: Take this time to begin the process of creating a marketable product.
The
first step, or rather a first step,
is to consider your cover.
You
know your novel better than anyone, and as a self publisher you are in complete
control of how your novel will look, whether as a paperback, a hardcover, or an
ebook.
Start
now, when you have the time, before editing consumes you, before your days end
with late nights writing blog posts and your mornings find you sifting through
your inbox and corresponding with hundreds of people whom you are trying with
all your well-articulated might to get to read your work.
I
have found that the process of creating a cover, although itself time consuming
and often tedious, is a welcomed relief from everything else I have to do as a
self publishing author.
Take
your time, try different ideas, get feedback from friends and colleagues.
I’m
sure we’ve all heard the old cliché, “Never judge a book by its cover.” I am
equally sure that to a great extent people in fact do just that, and it is
paramount that we all acknowledge this fact. Today’s self published authors
have about 5 seconds to hook a reader into even looking at our work, just the
time it takes someone to open and close a tab in a browser or scroll past a
thumbnail on whatever vendor site we sell through. If our covers don’t do their
job, if they don’t entice people to take a further look, our prospective
customers are gone, down the page or onto another, never to return.
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The
first thing to understand is that producing a cover is a professional endeavor,
not a hobby or a diversion, and you need
to use the appropriate tools. I’ve spoken with so many would-be self published
authors who either plan to use or have used MS Paint, stricktly, to produce
their covers, and in all honesty this fact is glaringly obvious in the designs
they produce. Get your hands on quality image creation and manipulation
programs. Learn how to use them effectively. I use Adobe Illustrator and Adobe
Photoshop, which I was fortunate enough to already have in my possession.
Although the best solutions, these programs can be quite pricey and well beyond
the means of the average person. There are, however, other options that are
quite good. For image creation (symbols, basic shapes, etc), MS Paint is
actually likely adequate to the task. For image manipulation and design, a free
program like GIMP (http://www.gimp.org) is
an excellent choice; GIMP allows you to work with layers, add filters and
effects, and offers a fairly versatile work environment in which to craft your
design.
I
started with a simple design, incorporating a prominent symbol from my story.
The fonts were rudimentary, the design minimalistic. This was just a
placeholder. I crafted the symbol in Illustrator and put it together in
Photoshop, spending perhaps a total of 45 minutes—I had to learn the programs
as I went.
Sure,
the image represented the scene I wanted to capture; however, the image just
looked corny. It lacked, for want of a better word, gravitas. The colors were washed out; it was confusing for someone
who hadn’t read the novel. The fonts were lackluster, the titles too small.
Most
of all I had neglected to remember one important thing about modern book
covers, perhaps the most important thing: They have to look good as thumbnails,
sometimes as small as 130px wide. This second cover looked like a smudgy mess
of faded color at that size.
At
this point I got serious about making an actual cover. I downloaded new fonts
from sites like Font Squirrel ( http://www.fontsquirrel.com
); I spent hours finding the right ones. I took a step back from my
preconceived notions of what I wanted the cover to be and instead focused on
what the cover could be. I
simplified. I spent time learning more about my software.
I accepted the fact that a cover
cannot have more than four colors, preferably no more than three.
The
results, albeit not perfect, were far better than my earlier attempts,
incorporating elements from the previous two efforts, simplifying some elements
and emphasizing others. I focused on the iconography. This new cover had 7
layers and used maybe 6 different filters (2 for the symbol, 1 for the big
title, and 3 to achieve the effect I wanted for the water in the background).
But
I was still decidedly unsatisfied with the results.
The
fonts looked too outer-spacey (my story has nothing to do with space or space
travel). The colors don’t work together. It lacked other, less easily
identifiable qualities.
This
gave me time to think about what I actually wanted from my cover, and the
results allowed me to better visualize the thing as it would actually exist. I
decided on a preliminary pitch and blurb.
I
then went through a series of redesigns and minor changes (many more than
recorded here). I listened to feedback from friends online and IRL.
I ditched the “Book One”, after people told me that only buying part of a story was a turn-off:
I changed the pitch and blurb; I touched up the coloring:
The
next step, and one that is of paramount importance, was to print the whole
thing out, actual size, on glossy, thick stock. Now, the cover above measures
19’’x 13’’, and of course I was not equipped to print such a large image at
home. I went to a FedEx copy center and paid $3.65 to have it printed, after
which I cut the trim off and folded it at the spine, providing myself with a
good sense of just exactly what the cover would look like on an actual book. It
looked good. Almost. What I noticed, what I would never have been able to see
if I hadn’t printed it, was that the dpi (dots per inch) was not fine enough,
something that did not present itself as a digital image. I then redefined the
image file from 300ppi to 600ppi, arriving at my current cover, which employs
16 layers, and perhaps 25-30 filters.
Presently
I am satisfied with it, although without a doubt it will undergo many changes
before I actually am able to publish the novel. It works as a physical cover;
it is simple enough, with large enough elements, for the front to work as a
small thumbnail.
One
thing that must be remembered is that I did all of this, an hour here and an
hour there, over a couple months. All while I waited for my beta readers to get
back to me with feedback, while I waited to regain some objective distance from
my work, in the interim before I could begin a meaningful edition of the
manuscript.
In
the process I learned that simplicity is best, and that far from being easy it
is quite difficult to communicate a complex idea or feeling with just a few
images. This is a lesson that I’d thought I’d learned a long time ago in my
writing but that I’d somehow forgotten, or at least failed to apply, when I
first approached my cover.
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In
the modern age of publishing, it is the author’s responsibility to effectively
produce, design, and market his/her novel. No one will do these things for you,
and no one will care if you do not succeed.
A
much as we, as authors, don’t want to hear it, the cover of our books is likely
the single most important factor in whether our novels will be triumphs or a
failures, and by extension whether we will become successful authors, whether
legitimate agents will respond to our emails or calls, or perhaps even choose
to contact us. Of course, in the end what matters is the writing. However, without
a proper cover, which is the front line of your marketing strategy, your
brilliant work will likely pass largely unnoticed, condemned to an obscure
existence amidst the (literally) millions of other self published books on
Amazon or Smashwords, or wherever you end up staking your claim.
Don’t fuck it up.
Don’t fuck it up.
Jeffrey Panzer
www.epochtrilogy.com
www.epochtrilogy.com
Excellent post, Jeffrey. Great end-product.
ReplyDeleteJeffrey, that has inspired me to believe that it can be done - thank you !
ReplyDelete