Energy of covers

If you have never self-published a book, my writing so often here about covers might seem kind of a so-what kind of thing. Why does it matter? Isn't it all about the plots, characters, dialogue, editing, words?

It's important because if I have learned one thing through my time of reading reviews and the forums--  readers won't even get to the words without the right cover. Title and cover are the first things to attract someone. Many won't go beyond that to the blurb or sample chapters if the first two don't hook them.

Now if you are self-publishing and paying a graphics artist, you don't have to do your own work, but you will still have to care. It's up to you to help that graphics artist understand what the energy of your book is about.

Whether you pay for it or you do it, your cover is an attempt to capture the energy of your story in one image.  With a trailer, you get the opportunity to find more images and music to go a little further-- assuming the possible reader is intrigued enough by that cover and title to take time with the trailer.

When I began doing covers, I thought I would have no problem since I'd been doing digital paintings for a few years as well as had a lot of beautiful photographs. What could go wrong? Well turns out you need to satisfy the genre. So what I write about with a romance cover won't be what you would run into if you write a memoir, spy drama, or book of poetry.

When it was suggested my cover for Hidden Pearl wasn't matching up to the others, I was torn on it. I liked that cover. Even though photographic, it was very painterly, I thought.

Here's where the conflict between attracting readers and the energy of the book must be considered. I wrote Hidden Pearl to explore how people can look for that thing of great value and think they have found it in various ways-- some of which are beneficial and some not so much.

Pearls are hidden behind shells. They are created by irritation as they grow into what will be found by humans and regarded as of great value. If this book wasn't a romance, a pearl in a shell might've made a great cover-- but it is a romance as well as adventure. If I had been a well known author, I also could have probably used the pearl in a shell; but I think, as an indie writer, I have to attract readers to my hero or heroine.

Hidden Pearl, for a title, works because its hero, S.T. Taggert, is a man who has achieved much despite coming from a difficult background. He's wealthy, successful as a builder and architect. It would appear he has it all. When his mother asks him to find his sister, a woman he's never seen as an adult, he only reluctantly agrees. His past is something he's put aside. When photographer Christine Johnson comes into his life, he doesn't want anything she offers. Irritations build up for S.T. but as with the pearl, those irritations lead to him to becoming a stronger man, one of more value even to himself.

I think the new cover is probably better at capturing the interest of a reader browsing through books. I didn't change the trailer though and left the original cover there as I still have a good feeling about it. I think the change, however, is a positive one with less clutter and more emphasis on the key players in the book.  It doesn't hurt to re-evaluate the books and covers every now and again. Are they still the best I can do? For now, with this book, I think they are.

books that just don't go over with readers

One of the books I have found most challenging to market is also one of the books that publishers likewise didn't know what to do with. As is the case with most of what I have written, I don't know what year I wrote Moon Dust. I don't remember what year I sent in the query and got back a-- send it to us.

I do remember, after reading it, that the editor wrote back that the story began way too harsh for a romance. You see, it opened with the hero as a small child and how he was hiding from someone who was going to abuse him if he was found. It's a scary moment even though it's not about what happens to him but the fear and helplessness. Reluctantly I redid it but had the memory still happen but as dream later on, maybe too harsh still as it came back with a rejection-- and no suggestions. Even if it had though, it wouldn't have helped. It's what the story is about.

Then and now I understood why it's had a hard go with readers. Moon Dust is about a tough subject-- the adult ramifications of sexual abuse. You don't learn until two-thirds through who the abuser was and that might prove even more traumatic to a reader.

Despite how it seems, this book is not about victimization. It's about victory-- but not victory without cost. It's about what people can do (20% or more of women and  at least 10% of men in our country) because for those who were molested, more are impacted by this through their relationships.

Before I wrote Moon Dust, I researched the topic of how this kind of crime impacts men. It seems to me given what has come out since that time with both priests and now that football coach, it's even more a pertinent story, but it simply doesn't attract romance readers, I guess. And the energy of this book is also that of a romance.

Anyway, I have done a new trailer for it as well as a new cover, one that I think is a lot more apropos for the story. The heroine starts out a woman with a lot of innocence but she cannot handle this marriage any longer,  not when she has no idea why her husband behaves as he does. She does a remake of herself, but she doesn't leave the question of this man she has loved so much and still wants but not in a damaged relationship which is leading to stress and ulcers.

 When I found the above cover at CanStock, I knew I had Susan as she so exactly depicts the feelings I wrote about for that woman and her appearance. I put it with a backdrop (which I might play with again) and we redid the cover with it.

I imagine there are other writers with the same issues where they know they have written a good story, but they also understand why readers want to avoid the topic which in this case is also about physical abuse involving three teen boys and how it is impacting their life decisions.

The story illustrates the danger in our world as well as how we can change others. Moon dust is also a fairy tale in the book, but it's about a truth in relationships and how we do help others. The fairy tale is how when we think something mystical will help, like prayer. We find the real help came through connection and sharing positive energies. It's not magic at all.

The book has a lot more to it than boy meets girl. Or even how a marriage can be healed when it's been broken. For most people though it won't get a chance, and I am not sure what I can do to give it that chance given the topic is a culturally tender issue.

One of those teen-age boys ends up the hero of a book eight years later-- Second Chance. Moon Dust would be a good beginning to it but Second Chance is the one that has found more readers maybe because the story is experienced through the world of wildlife rehabilitation.

Anyway marketing to me is often a mystery but I keep plugging away at it. What I will do is stay true to the stories as I have seen them, make changes when I see there is something I hadn't earlier gotten, but not sell out just to sell out.

animals are part of the story

There is not much that I like better than when a reader reminds me that I missed something. It's a real plus for writers to have those who are astute enough to catch such omissions. In this case, I got the word that when I did the trailer about inspiration for From Here to There, I had missed an important character.

That was sooooooooooo true, and I realized it was big enough to want to immediately correct the problem. Hobo, Amos's dog and a major part of ranch life is very much a part of the book.

He was inspired by a dog I had known years ago. He lived next door to us when our children were babies. Sometimes I'd go for a walk in the neighborhood, and Hobo would come with me which probably wasn't so great for leash laws, but he wasn't my dog and I hadn't invited him. He was intelligent, loving and very much the inspiration for the Hobo in From Here to There.

So I went looking for the right personality of dog on CanStock as I had no photos of Hobo from so many years before. When I found it, I redid the trailer as it was obvious it wasn't finished without him.

From where stories come

When you begin publishing your books, another element enters your world-- one beyond the story. It's even beyond the marketing as such. It's about why some books sell and some do not. It's what are you doing that worked or did not for readers.

There are a lot of places to find answers to that question. One, which I have been reading other writers discussing, is using a computer  to help organize your book. So basically there are certain known formulas that work. You pick one of them and then insert your own dialogue, actions and characters. The end result supposedly will be a computer-generated, with human help bestseller.

The very idea of approaching writing that way turns me off even if it worked. It would mean following a program instead of the story that had come to me. Approaching writing that way would take all the enjoyment from it-- best seller or not. It would deny the flow of my own work. I would have to force mine into what the computer had decided worked.

It might explain though why so many books today disappoint me. They do feel like they follow a formula whether the formula was learned from a class or a computer dictating it. To me, they are boring.

But maybe some could say the same thing about mine since I also have a certain amount of consistency in what I enjoy writing, certain elements that will be in any book of mine, but they are there because they are the stories that come to me and are emotionally satisfying-- not because a computer dictated them.

I began doing something a few weeks ago that more firmly convinced me I don't want that kind of computer help with plots or structure.

As I was fooling around with extended trailers, I began to think that there are a lot of images in my head that are part of how each of my books have come together. I don't particularly think of it at the time; but when I do, I recognize it for what it is.

My books haven't come out of some perfect structure. I haven't published non-fiction, but the fiction comes from experience which expands into imagination. It comes out of dreams. It comes out of visualizing these characters, and then coming across a face that fits them perfectly even though I had never seen that face before.

Below is one example of what I mean with the images that led to one of my books-- From Here to There.

Images that inspired from 'Here to There'

The images don't all come from Montana where the story was set. They come from my own photos in various western states over a period of years, and they come from those I found online buying the license to use.

These images are not the plot. They are the essence. No computer can give them to me; and if I forced them into a computer generated formula, I think it'd suck out their energy. Maybe this is why I didn't end up trying to fit them into the boxes desired by traditional publishing. The books belong to the energy, not the formula. If a particular book proves to be unsuccessful with readers, well at least it remained true to itself.

music and the trailer

Creating trailers is like any other art project-- the ideas never end for what might be done and how I can improve them. In this case it's the music that came along and gave me an option I had missed earlier to make this video closer to the feeling of the book. It came about by chance.

A friend was asking how to make JewelBeat work as she wants to add music to her own videos. As I was verbally trying to walk her through it, I thought it'd be easier if I was looking at music.  In the search box, I wrote Native American (something I thought I had done before but must not have) and came across some wonderful music which could be useful both for extended trailers, the short zippy ones, and slide shows of scenery when the terrain fits.

To me, music is a critical part of creating these trailers and finding the right notes is always a challenge. I think this one is it now. Other than the music, I changed nothing else. See what you think for Hidden Pearl--

Benefits from creating book trailers

Doing trailers is a lovely break from words as well as causing me to think more deeply about the physicality of the characters and their world. Whether they sell books, who knows, but they enrich my own experience in the books. We won't go into their addictive quality of making me want to buy more stock images. I want them all! I am just lucky that mostly I have all the background photos my stories could need after a lifetime of photography as a hobby-- also that I determined in the beginning to only use dollars the books have made.

For the first time, before I started the hard work of editing, I began a trailer for the historic book I plan to put out in the fall. Working with the images of the characters at this point has added dimensions I hadn't expected. It makes me think more about the physical reality these people faced (heroes, secondary players and villains) and provides grace notes to add to the story when I seriously go back into it.

My trip to the region where it's set was part of that enhancement as I heard the sounds, felt the land all over again in a fresh way from which the book is benefiting. Even though I haven't begun editing, you'd be amazed, if you don't write, how much happens in a writer's head before they sit down at the keyboard.

What wasn't in the land or my photos were the characters, and it's what I can put there through stock images. It's like bringing my words alive, but it takes time and research to find images, then alter them to be able to use.

Photos that show still action from a book simply don't exist in the stock image world except for writers who have made mega bucks and can hire actors. For indie writers, you find pieces of it. Once in awhile, you get very very lucky and find the background and model where it's perfect as it is.

There have been complaints that so many times the model on many romance covers is the same person. Writers worry about it -- trying to find different models but can't readers do what film viewers do--imagine this as a movie star playing different roles?

The story might be about real people, but the role could be played by Matt Damon or Ben Affleck. Then they go out and play two other characters in different movies. Viewers can adjust to that so why can't readers where it comes to covers or trailers?

When I find a stock model who doesn't quite fit my characters but is close, I purchase the image but then use photo tools to alter the faces just enough. I want them to 'feel' right, but if they look exactly as I imagined that character, I consider myself lucky.

A partnership of images and words

The week-end pretty well dissolved into taking it easy but with a big emphasis on the trailer for a book I am not supposed to be editing but am beginning to nibble at. I have mostly decided it will go onto Kindle but not until fall.

I am really enjoying looking again at this historic romance set in Southern Arizona of 1883, a year after the fight at the OK Corral; but I hope I can leave the writing alone for the summer. I think everyone needs to do a variety of things and for over a year, writing has been most of what I have been doing.

Is it really taking a break when I work on the images? It takes a lot of time but doesn't feel like work. Since I love the area so much, love these characters, (not to mention like playing with images a LOT), I love doing it. I don't know if I'd enjoy it as much for someone else's book because this is like doing it for my own children.

The image above is one of those I created for an extended trailer; but it is not the trailer I will make public. And much as I like this one is, it won't be in the extended trailer either.

Before I have discussed how an image like the one above comes together. I might have new readers since then and because I am particularly happy with this one (one of the best I've done not to mention more complicated), I thought I'd go into the way it happens.

With two minutes to play instead of one, I knew one addition I wanted-- a spirited black stallion. The hero's horse is almost a secondary character in the book. I found the right horse and pose with a man on it. Wow-- but not the right man. A very nice looking man but not the hero of this story. I could have just cloned him out of it leaving a rearing stallion, but as I purchased it, I already had another idea.

Because I already had several planned images for the hero, I looked for another that could be adjusted to sit on this horse. There it was-- Eureka! Actually I didn't say that. I just paid me money, took the image and began to adjust it a bit to be the right angle for how that rider had sat on the horse. (This would be so much easier if I ever learned how to do layers...)

Now I had spirited man and horse but wanted background. Here's where my recent trip to Southern Arizona paid off. One of the sets of photos I had wanted was in those desert washes with the big trees. One of them worked beautifully.

Lovely image but wrong setting for the ranch yard where I felt this really should be placed. That meant I had to set that horse and man into yet a different background, create the feel of early summer on the land and beyond his ranch. It is the one that will be in the extended trailer.

I don't consider the one above to be a loss, not just because of its beauty, but by cropping it could someday be a cover if I come up with the right project. I could also see painting it for a landscape if I ever actually do some painting this summer. No reproductions though. My licensing rights don't extend to that (the owner of those rights is no dummy).

What I am thinking now for the future books (assuming the other three go to Kindle), which will be historic, is they will come with the link at the end to extended trailers like this one will be, available only to purchasers of the book with the suggestion that they view it after they have read the book. Afterward it wouldn't ruin the story and would be an enhancement of the experience as the trailer brings to life the energy of the story, the land, and these people.

Taking a break-- or not

Although I said with my ten contemporary romances now on Kindle that I would take a break from writing/editing fiction until the fall, I can't seem to leave it alone-- addiction apparently. I did resist taking my computer on a recent family outing, but my mind went to the writing whenever there wasn't something going on. My thinking is not on the ones out there. I'm happy with where they are right now, but those set in the 1800s where I am not yet decided whether to publish online.

The one with which I am most emotionally involved right now was set in Arizona 1883 between Tucson and Tombstone. I wrote it probably twenty years ago (although I am guessing as I would have to do for the beginnings of most of these stories). As I have begun looking at it actually it's in good shape without seemingly any big editing job ahead.

Although I just said that, it seems no matter how many times I do these books, I always miss something, but it's usually minor these days. In the case of this book, it looks as though it will mean tweaking the way a sentence is put together more than its meaning.

What I also have been doing is beginning to create a trailer, a process which I already admitted has proven to be addictive. When I was in Arizona last trip I  collected quite a few images I knew I'd need; so I have most background stills. Now it's been looking through the photos I have purchased for ones I can change to meet the need of the heroine and her transitions as well as finding new ones for the hero.

As I visualize several secondary characters I am trying to decide if any should be in a trailer.  It's pretty unusual for me to use them in trailers that are 60 seconds. Then it's looking for main characters, their primary motivations and the setting of the story as 12 or 13 images are about all I can use. Doing the longer trailers are more rewarding in terms of story-telling but also evidently far less popular  when the project is aimed at selling the book to potential readers.

It's surprising me how much help doing a trailer can be to the writing especially for something like this where I am beginning the trailer before I get into serious editing. It gives me a visual reality to the characters and story; and in this case getting me back in sync with what was happening. I think this will help me be sure the plot and people hold together when I do begin the serious editing.

I should wait for the fall. If the weather continues as good as it is, I might because plein air painting will be more appealing. To add to it, I still haven't decided whether I even want to publish it online. This is one story that never saw a publishing house. I wrote it simply because I loved the story and characters, loved the setting and that was enough. Now, I am not sure...

Incidentally-- summer seems to be going way too fast. Of course, in my neck of the woods, it just began.

The energy of the trailer

My learning curve is still evolving where it comes to eBook trailers. With some free time after finishing editing the last of my ten contemporary romances, I have become more involved in the meaning and doing of trailers.

From the get go, eBook trailers were a fascination to me for obvious reasons. Anybody who has been heavily into painting, photography and sculptures is going to find trailers a natural extension-- not only to view other people's but to create their own.  I loved all the imagery I could potentially find to depict parts of a story. It has been more like playing than work.

The problem is trailers need to also be thought of as marketing tools. It's fine to play with them, and I still enjoy creating the longer ones as kind of a love song to my stories; but they are an advertisement-- pure and simple. They are for the reader with the intention of letting them know what your book is about. It's great when people enjoy them as purely an art but their basic purpose (and there are many kinds of trailers beyond movie and book) is to sell or promote something.

A trailer is about images but more than that it is about energy. The first task then for the creator of a trailer (which often is a paid professional) is to find the energy of what the trailer is to promote. The creator has to know that or their trailer will fall flat.

I didn't fully understand this when I began creating them.  I have come to believe it's not so much about what happens in the story, not even the main points, but what will the reader feel and with what will they be left when they read the last word? A trailer has the goal of answering that question.

So in creating trailers for the last contemporary which is not yet out (but will be by the end of June), I got back into recreating them for the eBooks already out where their trailers were too long or missed the mark.

Here's the shorter, more snappy version for my Kindle eBook-- Moon Dust.
 

For those who hate YouTube (something that is beyond my understanding as to why that would be), I also put the trailer on Picasa at Moon Dust

Gathering material

Although I try to keep myself upbeat regarding this business of publishing, there are those down times and it'd be ignoring reality to not sometimes write about them. As a writer, any writer, you put a lot of yourself into each manuscript. There are not only hours, but your own set of beliefs and values. When that work is rejected, there is no way to feel anything but depressed. What you try to do is pick yourself up and concentrate on other things for awhile.

Because I haven't put dollars into this business of marketing books, I have some comfort that at least I haven't pulled money from one need to feed another. But emotional blood, sweat, and tears, there's been plenty of that. And there have been dollars involved even if indirectly.

For instance this week-end, I finally thought I had the right weather to get a photo of a home that would fit one my heroine owned in the book I am redoing. I had put together most of a trailer for it but wanted her home, as it's an important part of the story and figures prominently in several key scenes.

Getting that photo required driving around 80 miles to the Portland area. The photo (yes, I found one) didn't come for free given gasoline prices-- but we often like to go for drives. This was an area Farm Boss had been a lot as a young person; so it was kind of fun on that level.

This drive was also a step back in time for me. The house I had written about was based on one an uncle had rented between having sold one home and having a better home built. His mother, three kids, and he (he was a widower) spent a summer at that house on the banks of the Tualatin River. I loved when I came to spend a few nights. You could swim off a dock that was right below the house. The home was kind of sprawling, old and not in great shape, but I had had my heroine buy it that way and do the remodeling before the book begins.

Although I didn't get the photo of that house (it has since been nicely remodeled and was not accessible from the public road), we did find a very nice, public trail and park that they have put along the Tualatin. We walked about half a mile down it and got some photos through the brush of homes on the other side. One of which will work nicely for what I needed. I'd hate to try and figure out what that one photo cost though-- so I won't.


The two photos above are not the house. The second one was on the lane leading to the house I once stayed in.