We All Judge a Book by Its Cover!

I’m fooling around with a new cover concept for A Cup of Pending. I don’t see any other authors doing this for books they’ve already released, but I figure if it needs fixing, it needs fixing. I’m not sure that mine does need fixing actually, but I’m at that awkward stage where I second guess every decision regarding the book because that’s just my nature. Writing is a lonely occupation, fraught with peril for those lacking supreme confidence or a fully developed sense of entitlement.

I’ve heard that something like 67% of readers buy books based on the cover. They do this in spite of the ancient advice against it. It seems to be a natural inclination. I figure most of the rest of the people buying books are personal friends and family of the author. It pays, in other words, to have the best cover imaginable at any given time.

I Am a Professional, Dammit!

Knowing these stats, there are plenty of experts around who advise indie authors like me to get our covers designed by a professional. This is probably good advice if you can afford it.

I was almost a professional cover artist myself once. It didn’t take, but that’s because the author I was doing business with was even cheaper and more demanding than I am. I’m putting the results of that fiasco up here, so you can judge for yourself whether I have any talent for the job.

The author took exception to this image because he thought the guy on the spotter scope was too high and was likely to get his cap shot off if he didn’t duck. Maybe so. I don’t know as much about combat as I do about accounting, for instance, but it did occur to me that 1) if I made the guy put his head down, we wouldn’t be able to see him in the picture, and 2) the guys in the stock photo I used to cobble this cover together are actual soldiers. Presumably, they know more about sniping than they do about accounting. What I’m saying is, the author should have taken that particular issue up with the guys in the picture rather than with me.

None of this would have bothered me much except that the author had already beat me up over the price I wanted to charge him. I thought the price I quoted was fair and competitive, but I’d agreed, after our exchange, to do it for considerably less because it was my first cover job and I didn’t have any real credentials at the time. After the deep discounting, I didn’t have a lot of interest in going back and forth multiple times to satisfy his notion of proper angles and soldierly accuracy. I took a pass on the work, lost a couple of days work, and gave up $100 of potential revenue. Somewhere along the way, it dawned on me that if I had written a novel about Green Berets, I would have been proud to have this cover. Feel free to send money if you agree. Or . . .

If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it with your friends and acquaintances by clicking on one of the social media buttons below. I aim to please . . . aim, get it? . . . No? Hint: look at the second book cover again. LOL. But seriously, you can help me expand my audience, and that’s got to be way better than combat.

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