Judging books by their covers

My first book cover effort - shamelessly echoing
a cover I spotted in a book store!

I confess I have an artistic streak. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not claiming to be any good – I just have a need for self-expression that occasionally goes beyond the printed word.

In my past life I designed newspapers and magazines, and frequently created the kind of symmetry and modular layouts that helped make reading a daily joy for readers. These are the sort of design skills no one ever notices because they take it for granted that the paper or magazine always looked this good and were this easy to read. Maybe I should have been a graphic designer. Or not.

My second stab - a bit more academic!
And not quite 'on the money'. Yet.

So what does this have to do with publishing?

Nearing the completion of my first self-published book I decided to have a stab at designing the book’s cover. I had seen some covers that I really liked and set my mind to replicating a couple of them – an eye-catching tabloid-style of cover with block colours and arresting images, and a darker more academic effort. I've included both in this post.

If it was any good, I reasoned, I would have saved myself some money and added an extra string to my bow (writer, editor AND book designer!). As it was, it really wasn’t very good at all - but at the time I thought it was Magnificent! Genius! A Work of Art! That was until I showed a graphic designer friend Tim Hartridge who politely considered it. He never said ‘Oh sweet Jesus this is an abomination!’, but he did design something much, much better.

I’m not above sharing my book cover boo-boos for a few reasons:

1. To show you that yes, of course it is possible to design your cover (it might even rock - or not).

2. Creating your own cover can occasionally help a graphic designer with their brief (however in this case it really didn’t).

3. Graphic designers always do it much, much better!

In the book-buying world, books are often largely judged on the quality of their covers. While we prefer to think intellectual rigour and well-crafted writing triumphs when it comes to selling books, just as frequently readers will walk out of a bookshop with a so-so written mass-market novel that caught their eye because of the pretty pictures and flowery fonts. Yes, really.

When you produce a book for publication there are many steps to refining and polishing the raw product before it is ready to be shared with the world – and this includes how the words are arranged on the page, and the front and back cover.

If you’re smart you will hire and editor to pick up all of your mistakes – and there will be many, no matter how clever and careful a writer you are.

And if you’re really smart, after spending so much time and energy writing, and then having your work professionally edited, you will make another really important investment. You will hire someone to create a whiz-bang cover for your book. A traffic-stopping ‘look at me’ cover of epic proportions you would be proud to hang as a poster on your wall – or in a bookshop window.

Many graphic designers offer additional services such as laying out the inside of the book, the creation of book marks, flyers and website design to create a strong connection between your marketing materials and your book.

This doesn’t have to cost a lot. There are a lot of people offering cheap book covers – even cheaper if you’re publishing only in the e-book format. However if you’re publishing a book I’d recommend at this stage to pay for covers in all formats.

Graphic designers will often present you with several concepts but you can save a lot of time by indicating the type of cover you want - whether you do this by referring them to book covers you like, or have a stab at designing something is up to you.

Paying for the services of a good graphic designer is part and parcel of investing in yourself, and getting your readers to invest some time in getting to know your writing.

Professional intervention results in the final cover!
An eye-catching X-Files-ish effort. Spooky!

By RR with No comments

Self-publishing in Australia

When I wrote my first book, a school textbook, it was all very straightforward – I penned the words and someone else sculpted them into a more pleasing form, found illustrations to support what I was saying and pulled it all together in a nice, shiny little package called a book.

Many were printed and found homes far and wide in libraries and schools across Australia. As it was a commissioned project, it was a reasonably pain-free endeavor. I was paid a small up-front sum for my work and registered with the Australian Public Lending Scheme (PLR), which pays authors a royalty every time someone borrows one of their books (a worthy scheme that has paid me in excess of $6000 since my first book was printed).

Fast forward five years and my second co-written book, Australian Big Cats: An Unnatural History of Panthers – a tome on folklore, and a labour of love – had been pitched to four mainstream publishing houses without any interest.

I could have persevered or found an agent but, as a former journalist, and one with newspaper layout experience, I was actually itching to give self-publishing a go. I was confident I could pull together a book every bit as readable and eye-catching as any mainstream tome – I just needed to find out how to do it.

And rather than bore you in real time as to how all that happened, I’ll give it to you in a nutshell – I researched all of the self-publishing avenues available and eventually jumped on board with Lightning Source, creating a company name to give me entre to the printing company’s vast resources.

Next I found myself a talented graphic designer. I’m afraid when it comes to books, looks count far more than they should – and I was desperately passionate that my book should be up there in the supermodel stakes. Fortunately a good friend of mine also happened to be a gun graphic designer, and his cover would later prove to be a key selling point.

While project-managing the book’s layout and cover, I bought an ISBN and a domain name and taught myself how to build a basic website using templates from the iWeb program on my (Apple) iMac computer, which previously worked with the Apple.com server to host my website. This hosting facility no longer exists and I have been forced to bone up further on website building and hosting.

The site - www.australianbigcats.com.au - went live with the book cover image and a giant countdown clock, and I began to promote it in chat groups and blogs across the web. The marketing of the book had begun in earnest and it hadn’t even seen a printing press! (I’ll talk more about the marketing side of things in a future post.)

Around the same time I created a Facebook page for the book, which now boasts more than 500 fans (not bad for a niche book!). Incidentally, the website has now received more than 17,600 visits.
With the help of my graphic designer we uploaded the book cover image and content to Lightning Source and waited two weeks or thereabouts for the formatting to take place at their end.

At that time Lightning Source had no presence in Australia so I had to source a local digital printer to print an initial run of 500 books for in-store distribution. Altogether we printed 850 books before making the decision – based on cost, time and distribution - to print solely through Lightning Source.

This had the added attraction of being ‘print on demand’, meaning we wouldn’t have to fill our house with boxes of books – instead, they would be printed as they were ordered by readers from various online bookstores.

Two years on and sales are steady and, thanks to the Lightning Source set-up, I sit back and wait for the money to roll in while I work on other projects.

At present I’m contemplating an e-book version of our book – how quaint! I hear some of you cry – but we have had our reasons for holding off, both marketing and software-related.

We’ve also since re-published a book, Savage Shadow: The Search for the Australian Cougar, on behalf of another late author’s family using the same method – another labour of love with a similarly brilliant cover (if we do say so ourselves) – so time has been finite between work and…I want to say ‘play’, but really it’s more work! I’m also considering a permanent price drop to further encourage sales.

I wouldn’t want you to think our printing projects haven’t been without stumbling blocks – there have been plenty! They have included formatting errors requiring subsequent uploads, undetected editing errors, missing stock, poorly printed books (it does happen), booksellers slow to pay for sold stock (thus holding up the financing of subsequent local print runs), distribution issues and various other gremlins.

But it has been a fantastic experience, and one I will most definitely repeat. Having already trod the path twice, I will be more prepared for the next project and, with the burgeoning popularity of e-readers and e-books, in a much better position to reach potential future readers.

Self-publishing isn’t a river of gold for everyone, but it is a fantastic opportunity for would-be publishers and authors.

The best advice I can give is if you want to be taken seriously and attract readers, then spend the time and money to bring your manuscript up to scratch, and present your final product in the best possible light. That means hiring editors to polish your prose, and graphic designers to work their magic with your book's layout and cover. And becoming your own project manager/marketing manager.

Your readers will love you, booksellers will be bowled over by you, and maybe, if it’s the sort of luck you’re after, an agent or mainstream publisher will fall in love with you too!

By RR with No comments