I thought I’d forego my usual Saturday Re-Blog and pitch my newest short story endeavor—Friday Story Bazaar—a new Tale every Friday, until I think I’ve written enough to publish another book…
Cover by Jane Darnton Watson
And, because on Saturdays I publish the same Tales on Wattpad, I’ll share that link, where it’s simply called Story Bazaar…
So far, there are 25 Tales, of no specific genre—a real mixed bag of story-forms…
Cover by Jane Darnton Watson
So that’s the newest story endeavor; but, I also have 33 Fantasy short stories at the link Friday Fantasy that are also on Wattpad as Strange Fantasies and available as a book on Amazon (cheap, $.99…).
Plus, the left side-bar has more of my writings that are freely downloadable (a Novel, a Poetry Book, a Fable, and an Essay about Words…) — if you’re on your phone, you’ll have to use your general “Menu” button and find something like “Request Desktop Site” to see the left side-bar :-)
Plus, going to my site on Lulu, will let you download two more free books—a compilation of Spiritual Writings and a book made from my previous Blog…
I’m not sure if authors really need professional artist/designers for their covers; mostly because I’m not sure what exactly makes a cover “good”.
I may like how it looks but that doesn’t mean others will…
I may be extremely attracted to the cover of a book; but, I may not like the story inside, at all…
Some folks might say a traditional publisher knows exactly the right cover for every book they publish.
Please, go talk to about a dozen authors who were traditionally published—you should find at least one who hated the cover they got…
I’m very sure there’s no readily accessible data for the books the big houses have produced that had “bad” covers…
In the realm of Self-publishing, there are all the self-styled “gurus” who demand you must keep your reader in mind when designing a cover…
Hmmm…
Perhaps a writer locked into a certain genre might “know” who reads their books; but, I tend to doubt if any author could guess the range of folks who could love their books; not to mention, like their covers…
Rafaela is the Art Director at the Scottish independent publisher, Canongate.
The first statement that jumped out at me was this quote from Rafaela:
“There’s always an element of surprise and unpredictability regarding what draws people to covers, which is partly why each title gets the same amount of care and attention regardless of author or sales expectations.”
So, a professional cover designer admits the response of readers to covers has elements of surprise and unpredictability…
If you end up designing the cover for a book (or, consulting with someone about the design), this quote from Rafaela bears attention:
“I often have a very clear vision for the book and what it can achieve from the outset—finding the essence of the story through a small detail or unusual angle, and executing it in a style right for the audience whilst remaining distinctive.”
O.K., small details and unusual angles might help create a “good” cover; but, again, there is the wild uncertainty in the phrase, “…a style right for the audience…”—please, if someone out there knows exactly how to determine the definable characteristics of any particular book’s audience, my email address is in the blurb after this post………
You might enjoy reading the full interview; but, I will bring the video at the end of the article over here, since it shows a book cover that Totally blows my mind…
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And, Strange Fantasies—but, this one is still in separate posts (unless you want to spend $.99 at Amazon :-)
Oh, the image for this post is a word cloud of Notes from An Alien—95 words that show up at least three times in the book—(the bigger the word the more times it was used)…
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Notes from An Alien 