Cover reveals

When I started out as a hapless writer, I didn't want to spend any money. I didn't know if any one wanted to buy the book. One thing I did shell out on was a proper edit. Reading a lot of Indie writer now, I realise the DIY approach is not always the right one. Don't get me wrong, some clever writers can edit, design and are marketing experts to boot, but most of us are not. Much as I liked my original weird dog photo, it stood out on the virtual book shelf as some weird art students project, not a sexy book cover. Much as we writers hate it, a book does get judged on it's cover.
I put my feelers out amongst my supportive writers group and got recommended; Patti Roberts at Paradox book covers. Judge for yourself but I think the new covers look very sexy!

And Book 2 is new and improved too!

Now I need to think long and hard about printing. I've been told that the Amazon createspace printing service is free and you get the books at cost. So I think that will be the next exciting bit of news I'll be sharing with you.

Changes

You might have spotted some changes recently. Firstly I thought I’d better change the heading of my blog. The line ‘as she struggles to write the follow-up’ was outdated. The follow-up to Language in the Blood, Blood Ties, came out in January.

If you recently visited my Amazon page you may have noticed that the cover of Language in the blood has changed from this:

To this:

I believe that I should explore every avenue of book promotion. I have little faith this will work but I gave advertising on Amazon a shot. I was very surprised that they rejected my campaign. It took a bit of back and forth but the reason they rejected the campaign was the design of my cover. It fell foul of their blood and violence rules. (What!) A toy dog lying on a marble floor smeared in ketchup was judged to graphic. I used their software to design a new suitable cover and now the campaign is running and having very little effect as predicted. I did like Amazon KDP’s cover design software and probably will use it again as it was just so easy to get a professional look in very little time. So which cover do you prefer? I hope to go back to the original as it had a very distinct look that I carried forwards to book 2 and sums up the quirky nature of the books.