I was working on mock-ups for Amir, the winner of the free cover design contest, when it occurred to me that I should go ahead and create a cover for my sequel, even before it’s finished. That way I can do the same thing that Amir is planning on doing – pin the cover over my desk and use it as the motivation to finish the draft. Also, you guys were amazing in helping me develop the cover for the first book, so I feel comfortable revealing the rough draft and asking you for comments.
So here it is, the mock up for the second installment in Isa Maxwell’s escapades:
This is very rough, with images I have not yet bought, so that’s why the resolution is bad and there are some remnants of Shutterstock watermark – that will improve once I buy and download full-size images. I would love for you to comment on:
Title of the book. Isa continues to be…let’s say “naive” in India, hence the “Indiot”.
The overall concept for the cover.
Using “diamonds” for title.
Making “N” in the title different. I will make it look like empty settings, from which diamonds have been stolen.
Should I put “Isa Maxwell’s escapades” on the title? I kinda like the minimalistic look and that the covers are not too matchy, but everyone seems to love series covers that look like versions of the same and tell you exactly which book in the series it is…
When fourteen-year-old Allen Foster is diagnosed with parasomnia, a sleep disorder evoking vivid nightmares, he begins journaling each haunting dream on the advice of his psychiatrist, keeping the notebook safely hidden in a floorboard — that is until a new family moves into the Maine house. When Rita, the daughter of the new owners, discovers the book and begins experiencing Allen’s old nightmares, she tracks him down in an effort to rid herself of the misery, only to find he has no memory of writing them.
Thank you again to all who have participated, either by submitting a pitch or by voting for your favourite. I will run another contest in August – if you’re interested, sign up for my Don’t Miss It list (see the banner on the right).
I now have the difficult task of reaching deep down, switching my brain from the usual jokey mode, to produce the creepiest and most striking cover this book so justly deserves.
Thank you, everyone, for providing advice and tips on how to get started with MailChimp! It motivated me not only to get my list and signup form organised, but also to finally publish a short story compilation. It’s a collection of three short stories that begin to shed some light on how Isa came to be the character that she is:
What do you think of the cover? I was in a hurry, so will play with the title font more some other time. I found another image of the same model on Shutterstock – and by the way, I found a coupon for 10% off an order online, and it worked! The coupon code is “SS10”, in case you are interested. Anyway, back to This Is Why: this little book is NOT AVAILABLE ANYWHERE else – I will not be publishing it on Amazon, at least not until I come up with another half-dozen or so stories. It is my gift and bait to get you to join my brand new email list :-).
Speaking of which, yay! I already have 6 subscribers! That all happened while I was busy writing this post – and even before I’d made promises of the free stories. Wow, thank you guys so much – and if you didn’t get a copy of This Is Why, let me know, and I will email it to you. I promise not to spam you – the purpose of the list will be to make sure you don’t miss out on time-limited opportunities, like the next free cover giveaway, or a new book going on sale or given away for free. If interested, please click here or on the link at the top of the sidebar – I’m calling it my hush-hush VIP list…
It feels good to join the ranks of marketing gurus…and, as promised, this is how you can do it too:
I’d started by trying to use step by step instructions in this Ultimate Guide to Using Mailchimp and WordPress, but the code for the text widget did not work for me, instead displaying the naked code for all to see. An HTML-fluent person could fix it, but I certainly couldn’t.
So then I’d tried Aniko Carmean’s instructions and they worked beautifully! NOTE: make sure there’s no duplication of quote marks, or anything like that – at first my link sent me to an “oops” page, but I managed to resolve it by removing one duplicated quote mark. Technology…
Just to make sure we’re on the same page, this is what my Text Widget looks like:
Clicking on the link will take you to this signup page. I called it Ana Spoke’s supporters – because that’s what you guys are to me:
I chose to only ask for the email and first name, no last name or anything. As simple as possible. I also didn’t mess with any formatting, because, luckily, the font and color scheme fit nicely with my blog theme. Aniko’s directions do talk about formatting, just in case youre interested.
Next, I had to figure out how to provide the free prequel copy with the signup. At first it was a headache, because I knew which form to use, but could not figure out how to attach a file to it. Luckily, MailChimp has a guide on how to do just that – I can’t post a link for some reason, but just search MailChimp Help for “send a file to new subscribers” and you’re in business. Basically you need to start a “final welcome email”, click on the suggested sentence in a red dash-line box, which opens the editor similar to WP one. Write the message, then highlight the words you want to turn into the link to your file, click on the link icon above (again, so similar to WP), and choose “file” from the pull-down menu. After the user confirms their email subscription, they will receive a confirmation email that looks like this:
Someone suggested setting up the gift in Instafreebie, which I think is a good idea. I’d decided to just send a pdf, as I’m not too worried about the copyright in this instance and wanted to keep things as simple as possible. If you decide to send subscribers a whole book, do look into Instafreebie and let us all know how it works for you.
Speaking of keeping things simple, I’d decided not to use CAPTCHA. I opted for it at first, but then, when I did a test subscription myself (which I highly recommend you do as well), I found it extremely annoying to have to pick which of the collage of photos have pancakes. Please! I wonder how many subscribers I’d lose at that point…
WORD OF CAUTION: apparently by law (CAN-SPAM Act) you’re required to display your physical address in every email and even when people subscribe! You can’t opt out of this requirement – believe me, I’ve tried. The address can be a P.O. Box, but it has to be a valid one, where you can receive mail. For now I’m using a friend’s P.O. Box, and will set up my own this week. You can put a fake address, probably, but why risk a $16,000 fine?
So there you go – it’s possible, relatively easy, and it works! I will keep monitoring the progress and keep you updated, as always. Thank you all so much!
Just a quick post to announce that the contest to win a free cover design has now closed – I have received nine submissions. Please review them carefully below or on the original post and cast your vote (it’s the same polldaddy poll on both pages):
Only one vote per person/computer is allowed. Voting will close on 24 January.
Life at the tail end of the 24th cee is fairly righteous. The advent of Stringtech mere centuries ago revolutionized the world. Hunger and disease are concepts of the past. Free energy is here for the taking of it and mankind enjoys an unprecedented period of largess, peace and growth.
While on vacation in 1927, Hollywood screenwriter Chet Koski and his wife Eveleen, both amateur sleuths, antagonize a divided small town, unravel a kidnapping, discover a timber scandal, and Chet fears his cousin may be a killer. These things happen when finding a head on a grave.
When fourteen-year-old Allen Foster is diagnosed with parasomnia, a sleep disorder evoking vivid nightmares, he begins journaling each haunting dream on the advice of his psychiatrist, keeping the notebook safely hidden in a floorboard — that is until a new family moves into the Maine house. When Rita, the daughter of the new owners, discovers the book and begins experiencing Allen’s old nightmares, she tracks him down in an effort to rid herself of the misery, only to find he has no memory of writing them.
An age old tradition. A few offline cameras. Shadows in the alley.
Lance works in a busy city, watching out for disturbances and things out of the ordinary. He has no idea just out strange things have gotten until he looks into a missing child case and discovers dark secrets in the shadows. Inhuman creatures seem to appear out of nowhere and are devouring the city. And the only way to stop them…is a tradition no one believes in anymore.
It knows your darkest thoughts, your deepest secrets, and your hidden desires. All you need to do; put the puzzle together. Richard and Vivian Cordova discover the puzzle when they move into their newly bought home. One thousand pieces wedge their way between the newlyweds putting their vows and their lives to the test.
Diana, a lonely and neglected, middle age, wife and mother decides to end her loveless marriage of thirty years. On her own for the first time in decades, she struggles to adjust to her new single life, dating and overcoming a devastating diagnosis of mental illness. Can she learn to love herself so she will be ready to find love with the right man or will she continue to get the thrills her illness demands by engaging in increasingly risky behavior? Will she get the help she needs to live a more fulfilling life before her mental illness wins and she decides to commits suicide?
7. The Hiding Place – By J.K.Tevis
The bugs were unmerciful in their quest for food. The ants were the most vicious. Her hiding place was their home and she was an intruder. The dried blood on her feet seemed to have driven them into a feeding frenzy making it look as though she wore a pair of black boots. Even though the earth under her was cool the sun had turned the fallen stones over her into an oven. As she drifted in and out of consciousness she kept remembering her mother’s last words…. “RUN,THEY’RE HERE !”
Joyel is a weapon, a genetically engineered ten year old. When the ruthless faction leader Anson kidnaps Joyel she must fight to save her soul. Anson spends ten years brainwashing her, demanding that she view him as father, embrace a new identity as Joy, and to kill for him. But Joy is determined to be subject to no man.
Cutting is how Joy copes with the years of abuse, etching her hatred of Anson into her skin until the time to mete out revenge has come. Despite her rage, now twenty-year-old Joy struggles to strike out against the man she calls father. Discovering Anson’s plans to restart the genetic program she was spawned from in order to raise an army forces Joy to act. To no longer be a pawn, she must kill Anson and destroy the monster she has become. If she doesn’t, she will never be free.
CHRYSALIS asks which is more important: to know who you are, or to whom you belong?
For Ember Rehksskari, a hated dragon and last princess of a fallen kingdom, there are two kinds of place in the world: those where the people will try to kill her, and those where they’ll try harder. Yet, fleeing from the second to the first, she may just find a third.
The kingdom of Salshira has no interest in hosting a dragon, any dragon, especially not one pursued by the Vohrskrain, but Ean Tavarin, crown prince and engineer extraordinaire, has a plan to make a home for this one…if he can deal with a best friend who wants all dragons dead, a father looking out for the rest of the kingdom, and a romantic interest he didn’t know he had.
It really shouldn’t be this hard to make one damsel safe!
But if Emperor Vohrskrain has anything to say, none of them will be until Ember is dead.
Thanks again for all your warm wishes this week, when I’ve posted my big news – that a paperback version of Shizzle, Inc is finally available on Amazon.
I have mentioned in that post how happy I was with its quality, and a few of you have asked for the photos of the actual book. I’m not a great photographer, so this is the best I can do:
This is only one variation of the finishes you can have – glossy cover (you can choose matte) with cream pages (you can choose white). I don’t have another version to compare, but I’ve found another blog which compares glossy and matte covers.
It feels great – solid, well-made, the same quality you would expect from any bookstore. I really like the paper – it feels great to flip a page or to hold it open, and I’m once again happy with my layout. I was worried that the margins are too small, but it looks fine, again sort of industry-standard.
I’ve ordered 50 copies to gift to my family and to start pushing onto the local bookstores. It will take a month to get here, and yet the shipping cost is still more than $100! My next step is to try and get it into US brick-an-mortar bookstores, if anyone has any advice on how to do that via emails, please let me know!
UPDATE: please review the entries below and then vote for who you think should get a free cover design: Only one vote per person/computer is allowed. Voting will close on 24 January.
Omg, you guys – I had the most genius idea ever. You’ve been so nice and supportive while I’ve been going through the ups and downs of trying to hire not one, but two designers, getting sorely disappointed and then designing both the ecover and the wrap myself. Just to remind you of what I can do, here is the wrap:
A lot of you took the time to comment on the process – thank you again! Several of you have also mentioned hiring me as a designer. To be honest, I don’t want to branch into that – it’s a stressful job, takes a long time, and just thinking of taking somebody’s money and then disappointing them gives me the heebie-jeebies. So I just answered those comments with jokes. Sorry.
But then I had a light bulb moment. Sure, I don’t want another job, and I don’t have the time to create covers for all of you, but I can do one, for free! Then my marketing brain jumped on it, and I came up with an awesome win-win idea: a free contest!
So here it is: until the end of the year, I will accept pitches from anyone who has written a book, or has an idea for one, or wants to publish their NaNoWriMo creation. You don’t have to have the book ready for publication or even written – perhaps having a ready cover hanging over your desk will keep you motivated to finish that dream project?
Here are the rules:
Write a pitch. Imagine that you are submitting your book to an agent – write a blurb/pitch that will hook the reader. Remember, people will vote on it (more on that below).
Post the pitch on your blog or website. If you don’t have one, post it in the comments below.
Let me know about it – in a comment below, with a link to your post.
Make sure to post it any time before midnight on 31 December!
That’s it! After the contest closes, I will create a voting page which will be live during January. Everyone and anyone will get to vote on your pitch. The voting will close on 31 January and the winner will be chosen based on the number of votes – I will stay out of it!
The winner will get the following:
A shot of endorphins at the news of having won a contest.
One custom cover (ebook or paperback wrap, your choice), including:
Up to three initial concepts to choose from (or your concept, developed).
Up to three images from Shutterstock, your choice (regular license, up to 500,000 prints). You get the images to keep.
Detailed design with up to three “fixes” (sorry, I will have to draw a line somewhere!).
Final, layered Photoshop file uploaded to Dropbox – unlike designers, I won’t keep it to myself! This way, if you ever want to tweak a word, or add a “bestselling author” stamp, you can easily do it yourself or get someone local to do it for you.
My relentless perfectionism.
A free value of (according to quotes I got from designers) up to $750!
A special blog post on my site, announcing the final design, with a link to purchase (if available).
That warm, fuzzy feeling of accomplishing a goal.
I hope you are as excited about this as I am! let me know what you think 🙂
Life at the tail end of the 24th cee is fairly righteous. The advent of Stringtech mere centuries ago revolutionized the world. Hunger and disease are concepts of the past. Free energy is here for the taking of it and mankind enjoys an unprecedented period of largess, peace and growth.
While on vacation in 1927, Hollywood screenwriter Chet Koski and his wife Eveleen, both amateur sleuths, antagonize a divided small town, unravel a kidnapping, discover a timber scandal, and Chet fears his cousin may be a killer. These things happen when finding a head on a grave.
When fourteen-year-old Allen Foster is diagnosed with parasomnia, a sleep disorder evoking vivid nightmares, he begins journaling each haunting dream on the advice of his psychiatrist, keeping the notebook safely hidden in a floorboard — that is until a new family moves into the Maine house. When Rita, the daughter of the new owners, discovers the book and begins experiencing Allen’s old nightmares, she tracks him down in an effort to rid herself of the misery, only to find he has no memory of writing them.
An age old tradition. A few offline cameras. Shadows in the alley.
Lance works in a busy city, watching out for disturbances and things out of the ordinary. He has no idea just out strange things have gotten until he looks into a missing child case and discovers dark secrets in the shadows. Inhuman creatures seem to appear out of nowhere and are devouring the city. And the only way to stop them…is a tradition no one believes in anymore.
It knows your darkest thoughts, your deepest secrets, and your hidden desires. All you need to do; put the puzzle together. Richard and Vivian Cordova discover the puzzle when they move into their newly bought home. One thousand pieces wedge their way between the newlyweds putting their vows and their lives to the test.
Diana, a lonely and neglected, middle age, wife and mother decides to end her loveless marriage of thirty years. On her own for the first time in decades, she struggles to adjust to her new single life, dating and overcoming a devastating diagnosis of mental illness. Can she learn to love herself so she will be ready to find love with the right man or will she continue to get the thrills her illness demands by engaging in increasingly risky behavior? Will she get the help she needs to live a more fulfilling life before her mental illness wins and she decides to commits suicide?
7. The Hiding Place – By J.K.Tevis.
The bugs were unmerciful in their quest for food. The ants were the most vicious. Her hiding place was their home and she was an intruder. The dried blood on her feet seemed to have driven them into a feeding frenzy making it look as though she wore a pair of black boots. Even though the earth under her was cool the sun had turned the fallen stones over her into an oven. As she drifted in and out of consciousness she kept remembering her mother’s last words…. “RUN,THEY’RE HERE !”
8. Chrysalis by Sharon Gerdes
Joyel is a weapon, a genetically engineered ten year old. When the ruthless faction leader Anson kidnaps Joyel she must fight to save her soul. Anson spends ten years brainwashing her, demanding that she view him as father, embrace a new identity as Joy, and to kill for him. But Joy is determined to be subject to no man.
Cutting is how Joy copes with the years of abuse, etching her hatred of Anson into her skin until the time to mete out revenge has come. Despite her rage, now twenty-year-old Joy struggles to strike out against the man she calls father. Discovering Anson’s plans to restart the genetic program she was spawned from in order to raise an army forces Joy to act. To no longer be a pawn, she must kill Anson and destroy the monster she has become. If she doesn’t, she will never be free.
CHRYSALIS asks which is more important: to know who you are, or to whom you belong?
For Ember Rehksskari, a hated dragon and last princess of a fallen kingdom, there are two kinds of place in the world: those where the people will try to kill her, and those where they’ll try harder. Yet, fleeing from the second to the first, she may just find a third.
The kingdom of Salshira has no interest in hosting a dragon, any dragon, especially not one pursued by the Vohrskrain, but Ean Tavarin, crown prince and engineer extraordinaire, has a plan to make a home for this one…if he can deal with a best friend who wants all dragons dead, a father looking out for the rest of the kingdom, and a romantic interest he didn’t know he had.
It really shouldn’t be this hard to make one damsel safe!
But if Emperor Vohrskrain has anything to say, none of them will be until Ember is dead.
Just a quick update – I finished fiddling with my cover and uploaded all files to CreateSpace! To remind you, this is what the old cover looked like:
This is what I’d ended up uploading:
The main changes are:
I went back to a gold leaf title – it doesn’t look flash in a thumbnail, and I will probably leave ebook cover as it is – but it makes more sense when printed, improves the illusion that it is the title embossed into the leather cover.
Darkened back half – it looks more dramatic somehow. Hey, matter of preference.
Fiddled endlessly with the rip – see if you can spot the change!
Could not get the quotes on the back to read properly when printed in red – the only drawback of the darker version.
Gave the leather “cover” a more pronounced “spine”.
My photo is smaller and bio wording slightly changed.
I was all set to publish, but unfortunately CreateSpace picked up a major oops on my part – I’d left the ebook ISBNs on the copyright page, instead of the paper version ones. The problem was, I had the document formatted by somebody else and so now it would be an additional cost and a day or two of delays. I couldn’t have that, of course, so, like any old school Russian, I found a workaround. For some reason Adobe would not let me change the text, so the final solution involved extracting the pdf page into Photoshop, finding a close enough font, fixing it up in Photoshop, saving as a pdf and inserting the updated page back to the original pdf. Whew!
There’s another little bit to sort out with CreateSpace – I bought my own barcode, but there was no prompt to upload it, like I thought. I’m now not sure if I’m supposed to add it to the cover myself, or if I will just go with the CreateSpace barcode, even though I have my own ISBN. Aargh!
So now I’m waiting again for CreateSpace to review and approve the files. If I get an email thumbs up tomorrow, I’ll order a proof copy – with expedited shipping, it will be in Australia in 3 business days! This means that if all goes well, the paperback will be available for sale in just about a week! Can’t quite believe it…
Isa Maxwell is an average busty blonde, a recent graduate of a community college, and rap-loving, gun-toting, self-proclaimed badass. More than anything else, Isa wants to be discovered, so that she can solve her financial woes and win back Brad, the love of her life. Thanks to her clumsiness, street smarts, and an unbelievable bit of luck, Isa lands a dream job at Shizzle, Inc. Things start to look up when Mr. Hue, the playboy billionaire owner of Shizzle, Inc takes Isa under his wing. Isa even gets a number of new love interests, but all is not what it seems. In fact, absolutely nothing is what it seems. Can Isa survive the tough world of corporate intrigue and constant looming bodily harm? Or will her efforts be the end of Shizzle, Inc and possibly her life?
First things first, I absolutely adore the cover of this book…
Then, for whatever reason, when the time came to turn the ebook cover into a paperbook cover, I lost my cool. I decided to pay someone to make it better. What kind of pills do doctors prescribe for perfectionism combined with self-doubt?
Anywho, I’d contacted several designers and asked them to turn the existing design into a wrap. They all promptly turned me down, as they would prefer to do one from scratch and ram their ideas down my throat, but then one agreed. I was so excited! I thought it would be easy, too – I had the exact idea in mind, just wanted someone with excellent Photoshop skills, experience, and a keep eye to polish it.
The designer had one go and sent me a jpeg to review. I very politely explained that I wanted the rip to look realistic and that I wanted some kind of a cool treatment to the title. The designer had another go, slapping a stock-standard title font on and making a complete mess of my photo and bio. She finished the email with “let me know if this is good to go”.
I again politely explained that no, it wasn’t “good to go” and made a dot point list of what I wanted changed, attached photos of examples, and even a link to creating a realistic paper rip.
I got back an invoice with a link to download the final file upon payment. I replied that I was not going to pay, unless I had a look at what I was getting. I got a jpeg. Still a mess.
There were a couple more emails back and forth, rapidly decreasing in politeness, and I think we have now parted ways, albeit not so amicably. I have not paid, so I won’t reveal the designer’s name (unless we continue to battle over this). Instead of battling, I did the wrap myself today, in about three hours. Turns out, CreateSpace have a template creator which automatically makes a pdf with exact dimensions for you. Then it’s a matter of dropping in your existing cover layers, extending the background, and adding the blurb and bio. I’ve even bought a new paper rip photo from Shutterstock. What do you think?
Shizzle, Inc has been featured in The Book Designer’s ebook cover design awards! Ok, so I have not actually won anything, but the design was complimented as “striking” and “great attention grabber”! Not bad for the first attempt at a self-designed cover, aye?
As a marketing gimmick, it has not worked – no impact on sales in its first day of being posted. But I did get some valuable feedback, which I will pass onto my paperback cover designer. Yes – I have started throwing more money at the problem. With the work getting crazy over the last couple of weeks, I have enlisted help in getting my book to the printed stage. Fingers crossed it goes well – I will post more details in just a couple of weeks.
Ana Spoke, author 