I opted for impressionistic digital paintings of the lead characters. That took some thinking as unlike many writers (from what I read), I didn't visualize faces for them other than the description of features. I never imagined a movie star to play the part. Digital painting though, being something I began doing a few years back, seemed like a good amalgamation of my skills and the books...
Amazingly it turned out-- my paintings were not considered good enough by many readers at the forums-- most especially when a book is by an indie author and the cover not created by a professional graphics artist! They assume if the cover doesn't look like they are most used to seeing (i.e. photographic), it means the book will be no good and they won't go further!
After I adjusted to the shock-- okay not so much shock, I began to think what to do about it. There is the option of buying stock photos. They are out there, and they look just like the ones you would see in the store-- they actually pretty near are the ones. They are not very expensive.
Where marketing is a business all of it's own, one I know little about, I am open to whatever it takes to interest a reader enough to give my stories a chance. Well maybe not quite anything.
It turns out there is a Fabio of today, and you see him on covers everywhere from those in publishing houses to those from indie writers. Buying a cover already put together and putting your own title on it doesn't take a lot of professional skills, but it evidently is more impressive to some readers.
It's not hard to see why this particular model is so popular. You can buy a photo of him doing pretty much anything, dressed in costume, with women of all types in all sorts of poses... He's handsome, tough looking, all muscle and appears every bit the part of a hero-- if your hero type is a better looking, young Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger. The thing is I wanted to write stories about real people-- good looking but not many of them movie star handsome. I didn't want the kind of bodies that came from steroids or spending hours at a gym with weights. I favor wiry muscles myself. That is soooo not in.
Some readers said they liked objects which means like a champagne glass and rose-- or a tree... but definitely photographic looking. Okay, I can do the photos... and if my son didn't know I was using him, I actually do have a very nice realistic handsome as hell potential model... Except he might find out and he would not like it. His wife even more wouldn't... actually she'd make a good model too... but no, they won't go for it and neither would my daughter and son-in-law. I do get why.
The thing is as soon as I turn any of them impressionistic, I would lose all those people who want the photo like image. So what to do...
Well I came up with a potential new idea for a book already out there. It's a story that hasn't had a free day yet and really hasn't caught on partly probably because it's a tough subject-- the impact of childhood abuse on adults and our world.
I need to emphasize more the healing aspect of that story, but how does a cover do that? A cover cannot do everything; so I asked myself-- what could I use that would get some of the emotions from the book?
While it does have romance, danger, and all the emotion that go with that, it does deal with a tough subject. I think in a positive way but you know you have to get that reader past the cover; so... the idea I am working on now is to use a new cover at Kindle (which is a photo) and then put the one I had hoped to use inside as a second cover.
Outside cover which will bring across the sense of peril.
and then inside representing the love story...
Will it help? Who knows but there is a book that comes after Moon Dust, one that I have yet to put onto Kindle. It has a photographic cover; so they would work better together-- no, not the hunky guy.
I still haven't given up on the idea that someday paintings might work and the whole fad of using these professional models will be gone. But it's not going to happen today! Meanwhile I am still thinking about that hunky cover guy for a different story, more of a cowboy one. Would that mean I was selling out?
