Wednesday 29 May 2013

People DO judge a book by its cover!

 
 
People do judge a book by its cover -
And by its title
 
The title of my first book has gone through a number of incarnations. When I first published in e-book format the title was Barricades – the Road to Les Misérables. Having published, feedback suggested that the inclusion of Les Misérables was something of a two-edged sword. For those readers who disliked the original Les Misérables novel, it would be an immediate kiss of death.
     After some thought, I decided to lose Les Misérables from the title. The novel Barricades stands alone. Some principal characters  are drawn from Victor Hugo’s novel, but there is very little overlap. Also, the writing style is very different. This is not intended as a criticism of Mr Hugo, to whom I owe a great debt, but writing styles – and reader preferences – have changed greatly since Les Misérables was written.
     I finally settled on Barricades – the Journey of Javert. People who know Les Misérables will, hopefully, pick up on the connection. For those who are not familiar with Mr Hugo’s novel, it doesn’t matter. The reader does not need any knowledge of Les Misérables
     For those about to publish with Amazon, a word of warning! If publishing in paperback, it is obviously not easy to change a title, once the publishing process has commenced. But even changing titles on the e-book version is not as straight-forward as it seems. Certainly you can change the title that appears next to your book. Changing the cover of your e-book is also simplicity itself – just upload the new cover, and it will magically appear a few hours later. But when anyone searching for your book enters your title and clicks, the link will display the original title. As far as I can see, the only way to erase that permanently is to unpublish and republish - and that would mean losing all those good reviews and starting from scratch. Learn from my mistakes and give lots of thought to your title before publishing.
      Okay, the title is cast in tablets of stone.  Now for the cover. Most people with some experience and expertise suggested getting a professionally designed cover, but I thought I could design my own. After all, I have Photoshop Elements and I enjoy playing around with drawings and photographs. Since making that decision, I have lost count of the number of cover designs I have tried. My poor friends have been bombarded with endless variations (most with lots of red in them) as I prepare to launch in paperback format.
     My friends have been very patient, but I now realise that for the most part, they have either been guarded in their response, or have told me what I wanted to hear (or maybe I just didn’t hear what they were really telling me). In any case, I settled on a cover that I personally liked, and prepared to go for gold and launch into the world of p-books.
     At this stage – at this late stage, almost the 11th hour – I was very lucky. A new acquaintance offered to design my cover for me at a very reasonable cost. Since the lady in question is a professional designer, I was delighted to accept. She actually used the same original image  - which is great, because it meant I still feel some ownership of and affinity with the cover. But there the resemblance ends. Rachael’s cover is less complicated and ‘busy’, the text is much better and more balanced. The cover design is extended to the spine (which in a bookshop, may be all that people can see). In simple terms, it looks what it is – a professionally designed cover. One of my more outspoken friends summed it up beautifully –
 Thank goodness the lady volunteered her
services to you and the fiery red is no more!
All the evidence suggests that people DO judge a book by its cover, even if they are not conscious of doing so. Unless you are a professional designer or an extremely talented amateur, I would certainly advise trying to get your cover professionally designed. It is something that I will always do in the future.
 Coming shortly, the hardest thing of all. How can self published indie authors effectively promote their books?
 
 

Tuesday 7 May 2013

Learning to Swim

 
 
LEARNING TO SWIM

Within a fairly short time of publishing “Barricades” I realised that just publishing the book was the easy part. What happened? Well, really it is more a case of what didn’t happen! Sales didn’t go viral. The book title wasn’t on everyone’s lips. No one rang to suggest buying the film rights.

 When I’m not being impetuous and impulsive, I can be reasonably intelligent. Thinking about it, I was obviously being incredibly naive. I switched on the objective, logical part of my brain (the boring bit!) and asked myself a few questions.

 1.         Marketing! How do people find this book? It’s my first novel. No one outside my        circle of friends has ever heard of me. Amongst an enormous haystack,   how can  I draw attention to one minute little strand of hay?

 2.         If they do find it, why should they buy it?

 Whilst not ignoring the massive issue of marketing, I decided to focus on the second question first. Some years ago, I put my house on the market, but before doing so I made sure that it was as good as it could be. The antiquated storage heating was removed and central heating installed. Everything was cleaned and tidied (hoping they didn’t open the cupboards!) with a lick or two of paint where needed. The garden looked neater than it had for years.

 I think the same principle can be applied to selling most things, whether it’s a house, or a book. Before people looked at my book, I wanted it to be as good as it could be. But surely, I hear you say, that should be done before publishing? I quite agree – and as far as the book content was concerned, it was done. It was edited, proof-read, spell-checked, proof-read, edited, proof-read ….. Well, you get the picture.

 But I hadn’t attached sufficient importance to other aspects of the book. Using the house analogy again, it was no use cleaning up the house if the garden was overgrown with weeds and the garden fence sagging in all directions. If people weren’t attracted by the exterior, it was quite likely that they would turn around and drive away, without even looking at the house.  Applying the same analogy to my novel, people would have no reason to look more closely at my book, unless they were attracted by the cover and the title.

 The title had already been through several incarnations before I settled on ‘Barricades.’ I was, I decided, pretty happy with that title. The cover was something else again. I have read varying viewpoints as to the importance of cover in e-book or paperback publishing. Some subscribe to the view that it matters less with an e-book because in the first instance you are only looking at a thumbnail image. I’m not so sure of that. In order to test my own reactions, I went onto a site where a large number of thumbnail book covers were displayed – in fact, it was a screen full of thumbnail images. I found that I was sub-consciously looking for certain things before clicking on an image. The trouble with the sub-conscious is that it is precisely that, and I found it difficult to pin down what was – or was not – attracting me.

 So I am going to work on that one. More on covers next time.