The Tale of a Cover

by Scott W Clemens | Jun 3, 2016 | Author's Blog

You can consider this an addendum to my previous post on covers, where I asked for opinions and received none.

When I was close to finishing Time Management I set about designing a cover. I took a photo of some of my watches and manipulated that photo in Photoshop to come up with a gold bas relief (it would make a great embossed cover). I thought it looked really nice. I wanted the font to look like something from the 19th century, and I found a first edition of Twain’s The Innocents Abroad (published in 1867), which used a font I later identified as Goodfellow (also used in several of novelist Christopher Moore’s covers). The result was this:

This is the cover I submitted with for my Kindle Scout campaign. I still like this cover; it’s elegant. But sandwiched between 3D covers on Kindle Scout, it looked a little flat. So I hired a designer, Perry Kirkpatrick (www.perryelisabethdesign.com), who had designed the cover of my previous book, With Artistic License. I gave her some watch photos and she came up with three different designs. They were all good, but not what I was looking for. She was very patient with me and worked on an hourly basis as I asked her to try first one thing then another. It was a long process as I kept asking for more design elements,  and after many iterations I was somewhat pleased with this one:

 I still like it. It looks very professional and intriguing, but there was still something lacking. Part of the problem, I realized was the uppercase treatment of the title (I prefer the Title Case). But Perry suggested it might be too busy. I thought about that, and realized that sometimes simpler is better, particularly when viewing thumbnail covers on a computer screen or phone. So I went back to designing the cover myself, with the goal of finding something that worked well on a tablet or phone. I won’t bore you with the many subtle iterations of that cover. The one I finally settled on was this:

I preferred another version with the watches shrunk to a smaller size, but a poll of more than 160 potential readers preferred this cover by a margin of over almost 4 to 1. So there you have it — the evolution of a cover design. Is one better than another? I’ll leave that to you.

Judging a Book by its Cover

by Scott W Clemens | Apr 19, 2016 | Author's Blog

When searching online for a new book to read, readers have only three things with which to make a judgement: The excerpt, the blurb, and the cover. For Time Management, I’m reasonably confident the excerpt is sufficiently compelling. The blurb may need work (I’m not an ad man). But one’s first impression will always be of the cover (we really do judge a book by its cover). So I’ve decided to try out two cover designs and I’m asking for your opinion. Please email me at mossbeach@comcast.net (or double clicking on the title of this post to bring up the comment bar) to cast your vote for 1. The gold cover, or 2. The farmhouse cover.

Outlining

by Scott W Clemens | Jan 29, 2016 | Author's Blog

My neighbor, friend and occasional traveling companion of many decades is Grammy nominated and Emmy award-winning composer, Christopher Hedge. Over the years we’ve had a number of conversations about the best way to nurture creativity. If he were a writer, he’d be a “pantser,” which is to say someone who flies by the seat of his pants, progressing intuitively forward from one idea to another, (more…)

Creation versus Marketing

by Scott W Clemens | Oct 25, 2015 | Author's Blog

In the old days, before the publishing industry fell apart, writers had to pass two gatekeepers before they could hold a book in their hands. A writer would submit a novel to an agent. Once accepted by an agent, the writer would then give 10% of any profits to the agent in return for a first edit and advice, and to be introduced to the publishers with whom the agent worked. Once accepted by a publisher, an (more…)

Reading

by Scott W Clemens | Aug 31, 2015 | Author's Blog

My mother made a pact with me when I was three: If I didn’t beg for a treat when we went marketing, she would buy me a book. So as she marketed, I perused the children’s books, bringing home Mr. Wishing Went Fishing; Bobby and His Airplanes; The Pokey Little Puppy; The Saggy Baggy Elephant; From Timbuktu to Kalamazoo; The Little Red Caboose; Fuzzy Dan, etc. My parents and siblings read those books to me. My classmates and I learned to read in first grade by way of “Dick & Jane” books. (more…)