Monday, June 19, 2017

Same Stories, New Presentation

Book covers are hard to make. Or rather, good book covers are hard to make. Do you want to know why? It isn’t because I have the artistic skills of a suitcase. Or because I was designing book covers for about eight years before I even learned about the rule of thirds. It doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that I use ancient software that crashes all the time because I don’t want to relearn how to do anything. I’ll tell you why it’s hard.

Define good.

Go ahead, I’ll give you a minute.

What makes a book cover a good book cover? You might say it’s a cover that makes someone want to read the book. Not necessarily. A book cover can’t appeal to just anyone. It has to appeal to the same people who will enjoy the story on the inside. If you’d laugh or cry at all the parts I want you to laugh or cry but can’t get past the cover, then I have a problem. If the cover makes you read my book and then write a painful review about how the story made you want to gag, that’s not exactly working for me either.

Right now I’m reading Fire & Ice by Mary Connealy. I would never have picked up this book based on the cover. It has a giant face on the cover. I never like people on covers because they never look like the main characters they’re supposed to look like. Sometimes it’s just because I know the people are models. Sometimes it’s because they don’t look like the characters they’re supposed to look like. In this case the main character is described as having curly hair and hazel eyes. The woman on the cover has straight hair and blue eyes. I get a twinge of irritation every time those descriptions pop up to remind me the cover doesn’t match. But if I get around to writing a review for the book, I won’t mention the cover. I only mention it now to point out that I’m willing to bet Mary Connealy also has fans who think the cover is wonderful.

Good means different things to different people, even people who like the same books. Sometimes a variety of opinions is a beautiful thing. And sometimes, when it comes to book covers, it’s kind of annoying.

I’m trying again to define good for one of my own covers. I wrote Meet Cute in 2013. It’s a collection of short stories that have always been intended as free samples. Lately, far fewer people have been downloading the freebies. I know this is partially because the marketplace is swamped with other freebies. I can’t help but wonder if it is also because I was stubborn on the cover.

People told me it wasn’t good before I released it. But I liked it. I’ve had plenty of complaints since. I’m trying to replace it now to see what happens. This is an experiment to see if more people like the new cover. It doesn’t have anything to do with me admitting I was wrong about the old one. I can’t be wrong about an opinion. And neither are the people giving me conflicting opinions on which redesign is better. We’re all right, and that isn’t helping me at all.