First, here is what both covers looked like before:
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| If I was being kind I would call it pleasant. |
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| May I present the dullest title font ever seen on a book cover... |
They were better than they were, oh GOD yes (exhibit A & B here and here), but they aren't right and definitely wouldn't sell based on these covers. Looking at the covers from the perspective of a customer, I wouldn't buy them so why would I expect anyone else to? I thought I would break down a little further the ideas and 'changes' both covers have been through in the last couple of weeks:
CHANGES: A SHORT STORY COLLECTION
I had approximately 50,000 ideas for this cover and approximately 50,000 of these ideas were absolutely useless. I started going down a direction I got excited about here:
...but by the time it started to look like this:
...I knew it was time to move on.
I then played around with the font that I had used on the WEIGHTING TO LIVE cover a bit more. At first, I really wanted to keep all four images I had used on the original cover but as time (and desperation) went on, I thought it might be better to just have one powerful image that might hook a reader opposed to four possibly confusing and messy ones. To me, the feather was the most interesting out of the four so I started there and after a little while I had this cover:
I really liked it but felt the feather disappeared into the light-coloured background somewhat. Next, and I have no idea how it happened, an accidental click on the cover coloured the whole page black and turned into a breakthrough. Against the feather, I felt the black was really striking. Because I wanted to continue the same colour theme as WEIGHTING TO LIVE, I made the font the light grey/lilac and ended up with this:
To me, it was simple but exciting and felt it would (hopefully) make a reader curious about what was going on inside the damn thing. I added the writing in orange to the bottom to continue the colour theme and hey presto! Here is my final (again, we think) cover for CHANGES:
SIXTEEN MONTHS
Unlike CHANGES, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with this cover. First I thought about 'tarting up' the calendar theme that I was already using but after getting bored of the sight of it, I realised that if I am bored working on the idea, someone isn't exactly going to say 'Oh darling, I am so bored by this cover, let's buy it IMMEDIATELY!'. With that, it was scrapped quicker than you can say RIVETED. Here are a couple of my attempts at flogging a dead horse:
After that debacle, I thought about using a single image for the cover like CHANGES but when that didn't work, I knew it was (again) time to move onto the next (non-existent) idea.
One thing that did come out of those lack-luster attempts was the fact that I absolutely loved the orange colour next to the black of CHANGES and the lilac/grey of WEIGHTING TO LIVE. An idea out of nowhere then came to me about using different fonts in black against an orange background and after 10 minutes of tinkering, I had this:
I emailed it to my mum and her reply was this: 'Love, love, love it and love the chosen passages. Well done. Sold!
I then spent a couple of days working on different versions using really polished, professional-looking fonts, faffing about with the positioning of the title and other bits and bobs ... but nothing looked as effective as that first mock-up cover I made in 10 minutes. In the end, and after a lot more faffing, all I did was shift up two quotes and move the title slightly over to the right on the blasted mock-up cover I made in 10 minutes. There were also a couple of gaps between the different quotes so I decided to add in some more words that I will leave for you to find yourself:
The new covers will be going up in the next week or so and this time they have me really excited. Here are the three covers together:
In semi-related news, my light-bulb has been tested severely but is still on. I think I have just got to the point of no return which is exciting, daunting, wonderful and scary all at the same time. I want to do this and I can't go back because there is nothing to go back to. I have been at home with my mum for a few days as I have the week off from work and it's been utter bliss and really given my mind total clarity about what I want - if someone was to ask me right at this moment What do you want to do? I would say without a moment's hesitation, I want to work for myself. I am working damn hard to make that happen and achieve it doing the things I love....
Right, you get no pictures in a post for a while then ALL THE PICTURES so I think that's enough for one day...
Until next time.
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