May 2014 - Page 2 of 3 - Postcards From Across the Pond

We interrupt our regularly scheduled broadcasts to bring you this update on the state of Finding Rachel Davenport– the paperback. It has a new cover:

She\’s new, she\’s purple, she\’s…naked?

It also has a new price: $6.99 (or £6.33 or €7.42). This is not a limited-time offer or anything like that, it’s just that, when I uploaded the new cover, I noticed the paperback was priced at $9.99 and that was a mistake—I had always meant to price it lower. (This could explain the enthusiasm customers displayed in avoiding buying the paperback—practically as soon as I set it to $6.99, someone bought a copy.)

Pricing aside, this new cover is not to be confused with the cover for the e-book…

Don\’t confuse the price, either: this is only £1.61 including VAT

…or the erstwhile cover for the paperback…

…or the fact that the e-book started life with a different cover altogether.

So, why the confusion and indecision over the cover, and why am I seeking to make it even worse? I’m not; I’m trying to clear things up.

Finding Rachel Davenport began life as an e-book published by Prospera Press’ Opis Imprint with what I thought was a dynamite cover:

The readers, however, seemed to disagree, so the publishers, who seem to know what they are doing, asked if I would consider changing the cover. I did. I like the new cover and, although readers aren’t exactly snapping e-copies off of the virtual shelves, the book is e-selling fairly consistently.

The publishers also allowed me to publish the paperback version myself, which came in handy for sending hard-copies to reviewers, as well as friends and family. (What, you didn’t get your free copy? It must have got lost in the mail; the good news is, you can now buy a copy at the reduced price of $6.99.)

Anyway, producing the paperback copy was a snap, but the cover was a bit out of my purview. So I spent a few hours with Photoshop and came up with this:

Not bad for someone who doesn\’t know what they are doing.

I considered this an adequate and (let’s face it) fairly lame cover, but one that would suffice as a stop-gap measure. Then I stumbled across One on One – 101 True Encounters by Craig Brown in the local book store:

Doesn\’t seem quite as lame now, does it?

This book was published by Fourth Estate books, a reputable publisher (Annie Proulx, anyone?) that, I assume, has a stable of professional cover artists at its disposal (or at least a brother-in-law who took Commercial Illustration 101 at the local community college), and the cover they came up with looked an awful lot like my lame done-in-an-afternoon effort.

This, of course, meant I could pat myself on the back for a job well done and go about my business, but eventually I realized I had to bring in a pro. So I hired JD Designs and she came up with the new paperback cover, which I think is a bit cheeky, over-the-top, flashy, and captures the tone of the book pretty well.

(Quick aside: I thought the silhouette looked too much like a naked woman, so I asked the designer to add the cape. Now the silhouette looks like a naked woman wearing a cape. Still, it\’s a result.)

So to recap:

LT: The PAPERBACK, published by Lindenwald Press RT: The EBOOK, published by Prospera Publishing

This situation should hold steady until my contract with Prospera runs out, at which point I put the new, purple cover on both editions. I will, of course, write another post at that time, under the guise of keeping you up-to-date, but which will really be a thinly disguised reminder that I have a book (several, in fact) out there and …

Hang on, someone’s at the door.

How is that for serendipity? The postie just arrived with my shipment of Finding Rachel Davenport sporting her spiffy, new cover. (No, I did not make that up—the post came just as I was typing that paragraph.)

Pretty snazzy, eh? Now go buy a copy.