Everyone gather ‘round. I want to show you something awesome but I feel like it needs a little bit of an explanation first. So, pull up a seat and get comfy because here we go.
Every day I learn something new about being an indie author. EVERY DAY. And here’s the thing - indies wear a lot of hats. One of the biggest of those hats is the marketing one. Think of it like a sombrero. I even have a background in business (MBA) and, while the marketing side intrigues me and I love it, I am still figuring it all out. It also takes way too much time and pulls me away from actually writing. But that’s beside the point
Here’s where I’m going with this: COVERS.
Covers are SO important to get right. With a single glance, they should give the reader a pretty good idea about what’s going to be found inside. And something interesting is that what works for traditionally published books is not the same as what works for indie-published books (go look at some and you will see the differences). For The Counterbalance (my first-ever book), I hadn’t done a ton of research on what should be on the cover of a book in my genre (New Adult Urban Fantasy). I just wanted what I wanted (as we do). And it turned out gorgeous. It’s not standard for the genre, but it still draws people in. The right people? Well, you tell me.
Moving on to cover two, I worked with the same talented artist and made another pretty cover. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it is one that wanders a little bit into YA territory. Not necessarily a bad thing, but my characters are technically a little too old to be considered YA. While I might have some YA themes, I like that my characters don’t have to ask parental permission to save the world (you know, if they had parents / parents who are not Victoria).
Now, here we are at present day and I’m working on the cover for book three. Due to scheduling issues, I had to work with a new artist (ahhh!). I picked one that was as close to Van’s style as I could find, but I was worried about making sure the art matched (rightly so). Anyway, what she came up with for book three was utterly gorgeous and is so on point for the genre, but… not AT ALL like book two. Yikes, right?
Nah.
After thinking about it for a while, I decided that maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing. One thing led to another and now? Well, we’ve got a new design for book two AND the other one ready to be revealed for book three. Doing this will help me find the right audience and sell more books. And don’t worry too much if you’ve already bought book two—that just makes yours a special collector’s edition. Plus, I’m still going to keep that art around for swag and merch because it’s so pretty. If you’ve already got the ebook and want the new ebook cover when it comes out, you can ask Amazon to update your ebook to the latest version and they will do so. Annnnyway, I’m going to make all these changes but I wanted you all to be the first to know. Thanks for reading!
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you hate it when authors change their covers? Would you like to see what we’ve been working on? Show/tell me your favorite covers from other authors. What style are you most drawn to? The kind with people? Just words? Illustrated vs photos? Is there anything that turns you off a cover?
TLDR: I’m releasing a new cover for Being Remade (book two). Here it is!
