Nothing about indie publishing is simple. Making your own cover art is actively difficult.
You can create acceptable cover art, but it takes a lot of trial and error, and some good feedback helps. I had help through the first rounds of this, and now have replacement cover art for:
- TALES FROM THE LONGVIEW Episode 1: Enter the Death Circus
- TALES FROM THE LONGVIEW Episode 2: The Selling of Suzee Delight,
and NEW cover are in the new series style for - TALES FROM THE LONGVIEW Episode 3: The Philosopher Gambit
I finally managed to make the covers all obviously science fiction, but kept the personal aspect with characters, and figured out a way to keep my original titles for the first two stories while coming up with a new title for the third that did not hit readers with my episode main character’s name before they were ready. Bashtyk Nokyd will now be IN the story, but not spelled out on the cover.
Like the covers Holly, especially the ones for episode 1 and 2. Good presentation and artwork on book covers is so important for catching a reader’s eye if they are unfamiliar with the author. Also the new episode 2 cover gives a much better idea of what the story is about, compared to the earlier version. 🙂
Yes! Very nice!
These covers are really good. Fantastic work Holly!
Thank you. I’m learning.
Love the new covers, and the new title of episode three! Looking forward to the next three episodes for sure.
NOTE TO HOLLY: I went to Amazon and tossed the series title “Tales From the Longview” into the search bar. Nothing came back that was relevant to your books. I’m not certain if there’s a specific spot to denote series names in the forms when you upload the books, but might be worth looking in to that. I’d guess most people who are searching for the next episode will search by series name or author name. If they search by author, all the episodes will show up (along with every other book you’ve written). But the series name search returned lots of random crap on my page. YMMV, just thought you might want to know if you didn’t already. ;D
Disregard my note. Apparently it’s only returning the wrong stuff if I type in the word Longview as two words. I’m sorry, it’s late and I guess I can’t read/type lol. Love the new covers still. 😀
Thanks on both the note and the following. I appreciated you checking. I’m VERY glad it turned out not to be an issue.
Oooh … I LOVE these covers Holly!
😀 Thank you. That’s the reaction I’m hoping for. All the feedback I got helped me to get here.
Holly, I like the cover changes for the series. And the change in the title for the 3rd episode is wonderful; vague enough to catch the attention, but mysterious enough with the “gambit” to intrigue the potential reader. Gambits are always fascinating and intricate. Terrific!
The comment I got from the reader who looked at “Bashtyk Nokyd” in the original title and told me it looked unpronounceable reminded me of one of the classic rules of WRITING cover copy, which is this: “Don’t stick anything on the cover that you have to be there personally to explain.”
That was a valuable piece of criticism.
Ah, but this is also one of the beautiful advantages of being indie. You can change the covers until you hit it on the button. These are wonderful :).
My favourite on the revamped covers is cover 3 because I love your spaceship design, it reminded me slightly of the bug ship that they used in an episode of star trek voyager.
Thanks. I put together all the comments I got from my previous versions and spent a long time figuring out how to address the various objections raised, with the objective being to make the best possible covers.
“Best possible” is relative, of course, but I’m happy enough with these to call them done, and get to work on the re-releases of Episodes 1 and 2 while my copyeditor goes over Episode 3.
I like these! Much more intriguing than most indie sci-fi covers I see. #2 especially looks more….approachable…? to me.
yeah! The Title “The Selling of Suzee Delight” is back. 😀 I liked the human Focus. I’m glad that the title and the cover is not as generic as the former Versions.
Love them! 🙂