I love covers.
When I go in the bookstore and browse it’s the interesting covers that often get me to pick a book up from the shelf and browse it. Once I’m browsing the sucker I am halfway to the point of actually picking it up.
E-books are the same way – but different. Cover art is still important – in fact it is damn near critical. It is tougher for e-book covers because you don’t get to see the whole picture. All that you are usually looking at is just a thumbnail image. So sometimes going to grandiose and striving for a really wonderful painterly cover isn’t necessarily the way to go. That picture of a unicorn leading a conga-line of brandy-tippling mutant shrimp across an ocean floor scattered with rare doubloons and giveaways from a thousand K-Tel promotions isn’t necessarily what you want to choose for your next e-book.
You shrink it down to a thumbnail image and that unicorn is most likely going to look like a unicycling French Poodle blowing on a twisted sort of saxaphone.
In my e-books I have worked with several wonderful cover artists.
Peter Francis, a local gent that I met at a Gothic Christmas Festival, did the cover art for my SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME.
I liked this cover. It’s bold and it is simple and it captures the kooky off-beat eeriness of my little novelette. It’s got a kind of old-school EC Cemetery Dance sort of flavor to it that just sort of shrieks out “Bring on the booga-booga!” And, like I said, it shows up nicely in the Amazon thumbnail – which is where most prospective readers are going to be looking at it. The cover was even mentioned in the FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND review. http://famousmonstersoffilmland.com/2012/02/10/book-review-sudden-death-overtime-by-steve-vernon/
Incidentally, Peter is on the look-out for clients. You can contact him at his Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Petes-Gothic-Art/169630223059273
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I’ve also worked with Neil Jackson. who has done the cover work for a couple of my books now. I just had a look at his latest cover and it is definitely a stand-out.
The book is called TATTERDEMON and I won’t tell you much more about it until it comes out just a little later this spring. Until then – try not to drool on the computer screen, would you?
I will let you know that Neil is also on the hunt for his next victim so if you are looking for a good cover artist get in touch with Neil. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Petes-Gothic-Art/169630223059273#!/profile.php?id=788512064&sk=wall
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Lastly, I want to point you towards a great little article on this subject. I already Twittered this article and plunked a link on my Facebook page but I decided to plunk it into my blog entry that I had been meaning to write. Definitely check this link out and you could do worse than actually following that page. There’s always a lot of information there. http://thewritersguidetoepublishing.com/self-publishing-tips-cover-art
If you liked this blog entry you can always do the same. Follow my blog or Twitter a link to it or plunk (that’s a technical term, by the way) a link to my blog on your Facebook page. Or of course you could always be old-fashioned about it and just buy my book. http://www.amazon.com/Sudden-Death-Overtime-ebook/dp/B0077ZR2TS
I’m an old-fashioned kind of gent myself.
yours in storytelling,
Steve Vernon
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