Jeff Haws

Independent author

Main navigation

You are here: Home / Archives for cover

cover

Your First Look at the Cover for My Novel

by 4 Comments

almost-there-sign

I’d imagine few things make the whole “I’m going to publish a book” thing feel more real than the day you receive your book’s cover from the designer. It’s one of those moments where it starts to come to life, where you see the first artistic vision of the world you created with words.

That’s the step I’ve reached. I’ve been running through some options with my designer, along with a revision or two, and now I’m ready to reveal the cover for my first novel. Take a look below. [Read more…] about Your First Look at the Cover for My Novel

Why Cover Design is So Important

by Leave a Comment

Library

As I move closer to needing to actually sell this novel I’ve written, I have to start thinking seriously about what matters most for doing that — if, for no other reason, than to know where to direct most of the budget I’m willing to potentially waste on getting this thing out into the world of Amazon.

There are plenty of factors that go into that. I talked about three of those in another post. The top one I cited was the book’s cover. Honestly, if your book cover is terrible, I’m not sure much else matters. You can write the next Great American Novel, but if your cover is done by someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, but once dabbled with Photoshop a few years ago. If your cover looks like it was done in MS Paint, nobody’s ever gonna know if your book is any good. [Read more…] about Why Cover Design is So Important

Three Most Important Factors for Selling Books

by Leave a Comment

Selling

As I get closer to the editing phase of my story and this whole book thing becomes more real, I’m starting to think about some of the stuff beyond writing that goes along with putting a book into the market that will hopefully maybe possibly start selling a few copies … beyond the 50 or so my mom will buy just out of sheer excitement.

Of course, the writing matters. The story matters. But I’m not sure it matters as much as many think. I doubt you’ll hear this a lot on writing blogs, but the quality of your story isn’t going to be that big of a factor when it comes to selling books. That’s partially because “quality of your story” is really objective; what I think is a great story, you might think is trite and boring. For example, my fiancee thinks “Pulp Fiction” is boring and “The Big Lebowski” is stupid. Let’s just say we don’t see quite eye to eye on those two. Are those “quality stories”? I think most people would say they very much are, but not to her. What does that mean? Not much, other than it’s all subjective.

It’s mostly, though, because, as long as there’s some redeeming quality in your work, there’s probably a potential market out there for it. Thousands of romance and cozy-mystery stories I’d find to be laughably bad sell massive numbers of books every week. There are millions of readers out there; not everybody wants to read Cormac McCarthy or Jonathan Franzen. Not everybody wants you to challenge them. Some just want a 125-page quick read they can knock out at the beach, or before bed.

So, if not quality writing, what are the three most important factors that will go into selling your book? [Read more…] about Three Most Important Factors for Selling Books