Is Your Book Cover A Stinker?

I know I’ve had a lot of posts lately about my books, but I promise I have a bacon post coming up.

*** BACON ***

If you are a man reading this, please comment as to if that word caused some type of reaction within you. I’d like to know for my research.

Today, I want to talk about book covers. I’m not an expert, and for as many times as I’ve changed my covers, I am definitely not the person to be giving you advice.

The look of a cover is not a deal breaker for me, but some definitely pull me in more than others. I do like when a cover gives me an idea about the book – at least the genre. I saw a lovely cover recently that gave the impression of being a memoir, both via the title and the soft abstract style of the design. I was surprised to read the blurb and discover it was a romantic comedy.

I know my covers don’t follow the rules of the experts. They wouldn’t like the font, the placement of my name, or the fact that they are on the “busy” side. They would be critical of my using a clichéd pink theme for chick lit. I don’t care. I wanted pink covers, and I was going to have them.

It was my idea to have Susan in gym clothes with a racquet in Florida. I thought racquetball would play a strong role in all of the books, but it doesn’t. It isn’t even the main theme of Sunshine Hunter.

After the fifth book was published, I knew it was time to make the first one free. Then it hit me – change the cover again! I sent this note to my niece: “You won’t believe this, but I want to go back to Sunshine Hunter. I think the sports theme is keeping people from giving the book a chance.”

The book is chick lit first. There is a mystery, a little romance, and some humor. Having a racquet on the cover was definitely giving the wrong impression. I think I realized this several months back, but I didn’t act on the nagging feelings.

The book went free at Barnes & Noble on February 20. The cover change showed up the next morning. I saw later that the book was promptly listed by two Nook Facebook sites, and the downloads at Barnes & Noble started right away. I didn’t know it at the time, but sales of the other books in the series started the very next day.

I truly believe that changing the cover on Sunshine Hunter to a cuter, more girly cover representing Chick Lit made a huge difference in people choosing to download the book or not. To all of the over 20,000 people who have downloaded the book so far – thank you! Thank you to everyone who has read their download, and another big thank you if you have chosen to read more of Susan’s (mis)adventures. I’m grateful and appreciative.

Bacon post coming up. I promise!

Have you always loved your book cover? Have you had any nagging feelings about it? Have you changed your cover, and if so, how many times? I know I’m not alone in this.

OH MY GOSH!

Hello, my lovely blogging friends!

It is very hard for me to step out of the blogosphere, but I have been on a self-imposed two-week blog hiatus, because I simply must take care of my work-from-home business and a few other important things. I’ll be taking time this weekend to park myself at your blogs to see what I’ve missed … but I do know that Zen is giving up chocolate. 🙂

However, I had to drop everything and pop in today, because I’m squealing, and excited, and if I don’t share this with someone other than my dog, I will burst!

Amazon was fantastic to work with when I asked to have the price of Sunshine Hunter set to free. I wrote directly to KDP and pleaded my case. We had a short series of emails back and forth, and the price was lowered to permanently free this past Monday night – only four days after my initial inquiry.

Sometimes it takes me a little while to figure things out. I looked at my Amazon sales figures yesterday and a few sales for Sunshine Hunter trickled in. I checked this morning, and the numbers were the same. I wondered if I would see any bump due to free downloads. Well, silly me! About an hour ago, I finally realized if I scrolled to the right while looking at my sales report, I would see the free downloads in the very last column. LOL! They are already in the thousands!

The next thought bubble above my head was, “I wonder if this affects my ranking?”

Oh my gosh!! It does! But I had to look at it a couple of times. Was that my book? #1 under Women Sleuths? Susan isn’t a very good sleuth, but until chick-lit/mystery is a first choice, she ends up where the book sites want her.  And #45 under romance!

Here, I’ll click the link and show you what you’ll see (at least as of noon today):

Squee!! Next to J.D. Robb!!  LOL!!

Thanks for letting me gush. I have no idea what will ever happen with these crazy Susan Hunter books, but today is a day that makes me want to run outside and yell as loud as I can to anyone who will listen, “I’m number one on Amazon!”

Whacky Formatting and A Sales Report

When I published my books, I checked crucial formats that came out of Smashwords’ meatgrinder. Everything looked good in html, pdf, and epub. It wasn’t until I later downloaded Kindle for PC that I saw the first book (Sunshine Hunter) in the the mobi format for Kindle was pretty whack. There were quite a few pages in italics and several sections in bold. Even as I go back and look at my formatting, I can’t find these gremlins. The only solution would be to go nuclear by removing all formatting with Notepad and redo the formatting.

Then I would have to REPUBLISH! Oh.my.gosh! I am not sending that book up again. Especially since it’s fine everywhere but the mobi file, and most people would buy that format directly from Amazon anyway.

I didn’t use Smashwords for distribution on Amazon, so the books I uploaded there don’t have any of those irritations. At least one has some crazy big chapter headings, and a few other minor issues, but nothing to warrant republishing.

When I’m finished with my fourth book, I’m going to strip out all the formatting and get rid of any gremlins. I probably won’t need to do it as I think I’m getting better at using Word, but I do NOT want to go running and screaming down that republishing road again. I’d rather take the extra time and make sure everything is right.

On a separate note, we are day three into our ten-day vacation at home … and we are already exhausted. 🙂 We love having our house guest and other visitors, but aren’t used to activity all day long. I’ve tried to sneak a little time away at the computer, but haven’t been very successful. One of our visitors works at a Starbucks in Texas, and I slipped some business cards to her with my first book and my website advertised on them. She said she will make sure to tell her co-workers and friends about the books. Every little bit helps.

It will be a while before I find out if any books have sold at Barnes & Noble. I don’t have any way to know until they report to Smashwords. To my knowledge, since the first book was published on Smashwords and Amazon on May 12, my sales through June have been 38 books. This pleases me because I read where one successful self-publisher had only made about seven dollars in their first six months of self-publishing, and they had more books than I do. Things took off later for them.

I don’t know if my books will ever “take off,” but I like when I see that a purchase is made on the first book, and then a day or two later, purchases show up simultaneously on the second and third. I like to think someone liked the first book and has come back to grab the next two. Hopefully, they will grab the fourth as well.