Creating Book Covers

One of the most challenging things about self-publishing my books on Amazon's Kindle was coming up with cover images. I've had quite a few nice comments about mine, and I always give credit to my daughter, Maria. Her artistic vision and tech-skills have been invaluable. Okay, not just invaluable--I really couldn't have done it without her.

I believe a book cover should convey both the category and tone of the book. I kept this in mind when trying to come up with an image for my novel, Easily Amused. The book is a romantic comedy, and the neighborhood where Lola, the main character, resides is central to the story. To show all of this, I came up with the idea of a split cover, with the top half showing Lola's neighborhood and the bottom half giving the impression of a couple standing face to face.

This was the first book I self-released on Kindle, and I was reluctant to spend money on a stock image, not knowing if I'd recoup the cost. To do it on the cheap, I used my digital camera and took photos of a row of houses just blocks from where I live. My husband and I provided the legs. In retrospect, I wish my legs weren't so pale, but otherwise I think it came out okay.

One small point of interest is that the most prominent house, the one on the left, is actually the local funeral home. It was once a private residence, I think. Now it's a last stop.

I had no idea how to merge the images or add the text box--Maria had no problem at all, of course. She's a whiz. With the help of a free site called fotoflexer.com she managed to come up with the final cover:

When it came time to release my next novel, I had no qualms about paying money for a stock image. Based on the sales record of Easily Amused, I was certain I could justify the cost.

I scanned through istockphoto.com and knew as soon as I saw one particular photo it was perfect for my novel, A Scattered Life. The young woman depicted was main character Skyla, as I imagined her, and although it's hard to tell, she's looking at a map. Very fitting for a character who had lived a scattered life growing up, and is now ready to set down roots in small town Wisconsin.

I gave Maria the image and told her what to do. She would not listen. That girl has a mind of her own, let me tell you. Luckily for me, her idea was 100 times better than mine and the resulting cover was beautiful:

For my latest book, a young adult novel, I imagined a cover showing a teenage girl standing near a chain link fence. The image would literally represent a scene in the book and metaphorically stand for the main character's feeling of being stuck.

I looked through the stock photo websites but didn't come across a photo I was happy with. I could see it in my mind's eye, I just couldn't find it. And then I had an aha! moment when I realized I had a teenage girl right in my own family. I also owned a digital camera, and chain link fences aren't that rare in my neck of the woods. I could easily come up with my own photo. I only had one problem: daughter Maria had gone off to college.

It was only a small problem, though, because the following weekend we were scheduled to drive up to hear her sing in an afternoon choir concert. Over the phone I asked if she'd be willing to pose for a photo that day, and she agreed.

So we went to her concert, Greg, my mom, and me. The singing was great, blah, blah, etc. and so on, and afterward she had to go back to the dorm to change her clothes. While we were waiting all I could think was come on, come on, we're losing our light, like I was Steven Spielberg or something. Finally she came out to the car and I was fidgeting with my camera ready to find the nearest chain link fence and get the show on the road, but as it turned out, Maria was not going to do this on campus.

So we drove around Oshkosh, Wisconsin looking for a chain link fence, me with a knot in my stomach because the sun was going down in fast motion like I'd never seen before. Finally my husband spotted a fence and made a quick right turn into the parking lot of some industrial complex.

I have to backtrack here and tell you that I am not known for my photography skills. Still, I thought if I took dozens of shots I'd be able to get at least one good one. I didn't want to show her face, both for privacy purposes and also to leave it up to the reader to provide their own mental image.

I started taking pictures and Greg pulled out his camera and took some as well. I wondered why he was bothering, when clearly I had it covered, but when you've been married as long as I have, you learn to just let things go.

I took this shot.




See how it's kind of washed out and the composition is terrible? All of mine turned out that way. Or they were blurry. Meanwhile, Greg took so many good ones, it was hard to choose.

We wound up picking the one below. Maria added texture to the photo so it looked more like a painting than a photo. Nice effect.




Originally the title was supposed to be Waiting For My Real Life to Begin. I liked the title a lot. It's also the title of a song, and it conveys that feeling you often get in life. You always think that once the youngest is out of diapers, things will be easier, or when you have a different job, you'll be happier. Speaking from personal experience, it's easy to feel like we're just one step away from where we want to be.

The problem with the title is that it was just too long. And hard to remember.

I had a terrible time coming up with an alternate title. Nothing seemed to work. Then one day my older son Charlie said something about his life being "on hold."
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"That's it!" I said. "Life on hold is the perfect title for my book."

And he said, "Why are you always copying me?"
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Always copying him? Really. Okay, I did get Easily Amused from an anecdote he told me about a high school friend, but I would hardly say I'm always copying him. Plus, it's not like he was going to use any of these clever phrases himself, so what of it.
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This is the finished cover for Life on Hold. Pretty cool, don't you think?






I have three other books on Amazon: Lies I Told My Children, Favorite, and Celia and the Fairies. In my next blog entry, I'll talk about how those cover images came to be.
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Happy New Year!

Karen

Jeff Bezos Is Still My Hero

I first posted the blog entry below at the end of October, then removed it a few hours later when I heard it was going to be aired on NPR's Lake Effect program. Now that the radio segment has run and enough time has elapsed, it's safe to put up again.

NPR titled it, How We Read Now.

When I first heard about electronic book readers a few years ago, I put them in the same category as video games, TIVO and iPods. Good for other people, but definitely not for me.
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Where books were concerned, I was old school. In my youth, I was the kid curled up under the covers with a book and flashlight, the one who earned the most gold stars by out reading all my fourth-grade classmates, the girl who looked forward to library visits like they were trips to the candy store. I loved the feel of a book in my hand, the sinking into another world with every turn of the page, the satisfied feeling I got when closing the cover after finishing a great story. How could reading off a screen compete with that?
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Then someone I knew bought a Kindle, Amazon’s version of the e-book reader. This woman loved her Kindle, and I mean loved--all capital letters and many exclamation points. She enthusiastically expounded on all the wonderful features: being able to change font size at will, the ability to download books, at any time, for less cost than a paperback. The Kindle didn’t need to be near a computer or phone, it had no monthly fee, and you could sample a few chapters for free without obligation. I conceded that for her, it sounded like a good thing.
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What I didn’t realize then was that the Kindle would be life changing for me.
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Besides being an avid reader, I’m also a writer. I’ve had success publishing essays and feature articles in national magazines, newspapers and anthologies. But my greatest desire, since childhood, was to be the author of books, especially novels. And I did write novels. Pretty good novels too, if I say so myself.
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So good, that on two occasions, a reputable literary agent offered to send out my manuscripts to editors at major publishing houses. Writers who have gone through the submission process know this story well. My version of it included encouraging emails, phone calls telling me an editor loved it and would be presenting it at an editorial meeting, and a slew of sleepless nights anticipating the joy of having readers connect with my novels. The way my submission story ended was not unusual, though I didn’t know it at the time. There were a few close calls and lots of nice compliments, but ultimately no one offered me a book contract.
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 Disappointing doesn’t begin to cover it.
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I was crushed. I loved writing fiction. I thrilled in creating whole worlds solely from my imagination, and never ceased to be delighted when a story took an unexpected turn. As much as I loved the writing of novels, that wasn’t enough. I wanted other people to read them. Art is meant to be shared. Composers want their music heard and painters want their work displayed in galleries. Writers aren’t any different.
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But I had been rejected. More than once. Many, many times, if the truth be told. And frankly, I was a little disheartened with the whole process. I wanted to get the writing joy back, so I took a break from trying to get published traditionally for awhile.
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I thought that was that, until I learned Amazon was allowing unpublished authors to sell their work as electronic book downloads. The writer would set their own price, create the cover art, write the description and voila!--they had their own Amazon page just like any traditionally published author. There was no upfront cost, but Amazon did take sixty-five percent of the take.
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It seemed a fair deal. At that point I had several years’ worth of novels sitting on my hard drive, read by no one and generating not one red cent. Other self-published authors were selling the Kindle version of their books with some success and even the ones who weren’t successful were ahead of me. At least their books were out there.
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So I took the plunge and joined the legions of self-professed “indie” authors. I designed covers with the help of my teenage daughter, set the price low to entice readers, and uploaded a novel and collection of humorous essays. Then I waited, but not for long. Within hours of my book page going live, I got a sale. “Sixty-three cents,” I told my husband, with a grin. And that was just the beginning.
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Over the next few weeks the sales grew exponentially until my books ranked among bestselling authors. “Who are all these people buying your books?” my mother wondered. I honestly didn’t know. What I did know was that I loved every single one of them. And even though I knew I shouldn’t have favorites, I especially loved the ones who left good reviews and sent me positive emails. My new best friends. They loved my books, they wanted more. So two months after my initial foray, I released another Kindle novel to similar results. I’d found my readers.
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Without realizing it, my timing was good. I had started my Kindle experiment in the early stages of a revolution, the advent of e-book technology, which is shaking up the publishing world in the same way the music industry was affected by Apple's iPod and iTunes.
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Right now multiple companies are competing to position themselves as the predominant e-book reader. I don’t know who the winner will be, but I do know this is the future. Not that long ago cell phones seemed pricey and unnecessary for most people, and now everyone, including kids on bikes, are using them. E-books are headed the same way.
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A few weeks ago I got a Kindle, mostly because I felt a little hypocritical having people buy my books in a format I couldn’t even access. I wanted to see what they were seeing, and experience it firsthand. And you know what? An electronic book reader is not a book. I know this, and yet if the story is engrossing enough, I can completely forget I’m not reading a printed page. I love changing the font size at will and slipping a whole library into my purse. The other day I met a friend for coffee and brought my Kindle along. I showed her all the features including the text- to-speech option. “It talks?” she said, delighted. And then wistfully, “This would have been so wonderful for my mom. She loved to read, but at the end her vision was so bad she really couldn’t.”
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So I’m a convert. Yes, it was a circuitous path started solely for selfish reasons, but I still think I should get credit for being open-minded. Once a die-hard, paper-only book lover, and now I’ve seen the light. I’m convinced electronic book readers will make reading and book buying easier in the same way computers have made writing easier. Books aren’t going to go away, thank goodness, but we will have more format choices. And more choices lead to more reading.
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As far as I’m concerned, that’s good for readers and writers everywhere.

We Have a Winner!

As promised, we have a winner in the "Win Cowboy & Wills Contest!" Thanks to everyone who left a comment.

Just to walk you through the process: I wrote the names of each contestant on the back of old business cards, then folded them twice so they'd be consistent in size.

Lacking a Stormy Kromer, I instead used this hat to draw from. It's kind of an Indiana Jones-type fedora. When my husband departed for work this morning he left behind both this hat and his bullwhip, which was thoughtful, since I needed the hat for the drawing.

I'm not sure what I'll use the bullwhip for, but you may not want to cross me.


I dropped in the names, stirred them around, and without looking, reached in.....

And drew Jess's name! Yay, Jess, you won a free book! I'll make every effort to get it to you before Christmas, so if you want to use it as a gift, you'll be covered.

Jess, please email me your mailing address and I'll get it out as soon as possible. Thanks, everyone!

Cowboy & Wills / Win a book!

Finally, a blog entry that's not all about me. Will wonders never cease?

This post is long overdue. Several weeks ago I received an email asking if I'd like to receive a copy of a memoir titled Cowboy & Wills to review on my blog. The person who contacted me was part of the book's promotional team. She thought I'd enjoy it since I'd previously blogged about a similar book.

Cowboy & Wills did sound like my kind of book. I love a well written memoir. And one about a smart, adorable little boy, an energetic golden retriever, and a devoted mother who would not give up on her child? A winning combination in my opinion.

In the interest of full disclosure, copies of this book were sent to me for free, for the purpose of reading and reviewing, and for use as promotional giveaways. I was clear that I would not review it if I didn't like it.

I agreed to do this at the end of October, and as promised the books arrived promptly. And then I didn't read the book for ages because (fill in lame excuses here). After awhile it felt like unfinished homework. The box kept staring at me, making me feel guilty and I wondered why I agreed to do this.

And then I read it. In two days. And when I wasn't reading the book I was thinking about it. It was that good.

Cowboy and Wills by Monica Holloway

They say it takes a village to raise a child and Wills, diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at age 3, had that village. He was surrounded by caring people--his parents, beloved aunt, therapist and teachers. All of them were devoted to helping him deal with his hypersensitivity to noise, crowds and new events. Heartbreakingly, the very things most children love--birthday parties, meeting new people, and playing with other kids--were overwhelmingly difficult for Wills. Despite the efforts of his village, life was still daunting for Wills.

Then when Wills turned six, puppy Cowboy Carol Lawrence joined the family changing their lives forever.

From the jacket flap: Like all dynamic duos, Cowboy and Wills complement each other perfectly. Wills is cautious, fastidious, and irresistibly tenderhearted. Cowboy, a rambunctious golden retriever, is overeager, affectionate, and impulsive. And from the moment Cowboy enters their lives, Monica see her son step a littler farther into the world.

This is a heartwarming story that was touching and funny. If you're looking for a Christmas gift for that hard-to-buy-for friend or relative, keep this book in mind.

And now, I get to look generous by passing on a copy to one of you. Some lucky reader of this blog will win Cowboy & Wills. And it's not the copy I read either--this is a brand new hardcover.

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Here's how you can win: Just leave a comment after this blog post. How easy is that? Any comment will do, even just a "hello." After a week I will throw all the names into a hat and pick a winner. Then, and this is the tricky part, check back one week from today, which will be Monday, December 14th, to see if that person is you. At that point I'll need the chosen one to email me their address so I can mail the package to their house. If you're not willing to give me your address, it's probably not a good idea to enter.

If you're related to me, you can't enter. Sorry, family of mine. Anyone else is eligible, even if you live outside of the United States.

Good luck!

Karen

Entertainment Weekly!

I promise my next blog post will not be all about me. Seriously, I promise. I'm starting to feel very self-absorbed with all this good news lately.

Luckily, my family brings me down to earth when I get a little too thrilled with myself. There's nothing like a fifteen-year-old asking, "Why do you always wear that coat?" to put a person in their place.

However, if you'll just indulge me one more time, this latest bit of excitement is really cool. Entertainment Weekly online mentioned my film option.

And now I'm off to write out some bills and do some laundry, because the life of a writer is a very exciting one.

Later,


Karen