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New cover design for The Lebanese Troubles

March 15, 2011 in News | 4 comments


The Dog River – Nahr Al Kalb

Our little rubber boat swirled and twisted in the boiling, ice-cold water. Circling above us dizzily, the thick green pines and the mountain peaks, here and there flashes of snow gleaming in the spring sun. The Dog River – Nahr al Kalb. Somewhere up here last year, they said, a father had hacked his daughter to death because she’d run off with her lover. Now that same blind fury was sweeping us down from the primitive heart of Lebanon, down towards its narrow rich Mediterranean plain.


Well I’ve finally gone ahead and done it. Changed the cover design for The Lebanese Troubles. And this is it. I’ve left the original cover over on the right for you to make comparisons.

Why not until now? Two reasons. First, I absolutely love Tom Young’s painting which I used on the original cover. When I first saw ‘Twenty Years’, it seemed almost to have been painted for TLT, perfectly reflecting the mood at the end of the book, even if it shows a scene that never actually happens.

But what I’ve learned in the past year is that artistry and appropriacy is not enough for a good front cover, especially for ebooks. The reader normally only sees a thumbnail sketch of the cover; nevertheless the impression it creates will very often determine whether the purchase is made or not.

My problem was that the original cover was bleak, and it seems that readers don’t buy bleak. Worse, it gives the impression that the whole book is about war. Today’s readers want blood and guts, that’s true, but only when the perpetrator is a vampire. Reading for many is a form of escapism: they want to suspend their disbelief, not be confronted with grim realities.

I haven’t managed to slip a vampire into the story yet. But if you’ve read the book, you’ll know that there’s a good deal of humor and energy, and that was not reflected in my cover.

The second problem was that I couldn’t find a good alternative. But today I found it – the picture I’ve used – license free, in that great resource, Wikimedia Commons. A little bit of work to do with the titles, using the free design tool, Paint (here’s a tutorial on how to create your own book cover), and we were good to go.

Several readers told me they thought the book would sell better with pictures of Monique and Claire on the front cover. As you can see, I didn’t. I thought long and hard about it, but in the end decided that I just didn’t have the skill, the time or the money to do it well. I’ll consider that again in the next iteration.

Another thing I didn’t do was to change the title of the book, despite frequent criticisms. Again I thought about it: “Sinners in Paradise” perhaps; or “The Land of Nod”. My favorite was “East of Eden” … but that’s been done before. What about “An Apprentice Hero”? In the end I rejected them all. The things is that I’ve spent months building brand recognition and getting “The Lebanese Troubles” to the top of the Google listings. If I change the title now, all that good work will be lost … and I’ll immediately invalidate those oh-so-important reviews. And besides, TLT is really quite a subtle title, exploding into a new meaning towards the end of the book.

Back to the cover design, and you’ll see a new Rapscallion logo at the bottom left. Thanks here to my good friend from TNBW, Greta Stone, who kindly developed four alternative designs for me, all with a spiky humorous touch. At thumbnail size, we’ll hardly see the logo, bur at full size I think it works, don’t you agree?

Let’s hear your views on the changes. Will the new cover make customers more likely to stop and look again than previously? How does it work for you? And in the coming days, I’ll let you know whether it really does make a difference to sales.



Please note that TLT will not be available at Amazon for a few days while their version is updating. But Smashwords has already made the changes, and the book is available there as normal – just follow the link in the sidebar.

I posted yesterday a longish sample from TLT, describing the mood in Beirut on the first day of the civil war. It seemed particularly appropriate as Bahrain seems to be headed in the same direction. How I wish people would learn to accommodate and celebrate their differences instead of using guns to enforce a point of view. Anyway, if you’d like to read the sample, you can either click here, or use the ‘Sample’ tab at the top of the page.

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Rapscallion – Keeping It Simple

April 24, 2010 in Rapscallion | 2 comments

Continuing the discussion on the formation of Rapscallion – a framework for shared resources and marketing for indie writers.

In responses to my post on the Rapscallion framework, several of you were concerned about the apparent complexity of the plan. The aim is to minimize complexity. Like everyone else, I want to write more and to achieve better sales, not to tie up myself – or anyone else – in administration.

Your concern was that there would need to be some system of tracking time or earning credit hours in order to pay people for services rendered. I’d be against that. It would leave the door wide open for dispute and disagreement. And administration would be a nightmare.

The system I’d like to see is a lot simpler. For the writer, a standard set of services is supplied, making sure the book is edited and published to a high standard, marketing it alongside others in the same category, and making sure that the book gets plenty of reviews. Marketing advice is also given. In return for editing, preparation and marketing support, a set percentage amount is deducted from the author’s royalty (just as an agent’s commission is deducted from royalties paid).

It’s then up to the writer to decide if she wants to hire in other services – cover design, maybe someone to write publicity, legal guidance etc. In its writer-only/members-only web-site, Rapscallion would list resources provided by its own members, or third-parties whose products and services meet a high standard. Rapscallion would also try to negotiate decent rates for its members. But best, I think, if the writer deals directly with the supplier for these supplementary services. Some would need them; others wouldn’t.

Take my position right now, for example. I may need to hire an artist. Let me tell you why.

I wasn’t expecting early sales of my novel to be sensational, but I’ve not managed to make any real impact yet. Friends and colleagues have been very supportive, but there are still only two or three readers outside my immediate circle. Why are we finding readers for the Rapscallion short stories reasonably well, but not for the novel? The problem doesn’t appear to be that readers are finding the book, trying it, and deciding it’s not for them. It seems to be more a question of not catching the reader’s attention. And that makes me question a number of important elements: the title, the cover, the blurb, the price, the number of reviews … and possibly the way the opening 1-page chapter begins. Let’s take just one aspect, the cover.

I adore the cover on The Lebanese Troubles. Key themes in the book are invisibility, emptiness, loneliness, and Tom Young’s painting perfectly captures the mood at the end of the story. However, I’m beginning to think that in an ebook context where covers are generally seen as thumbnails, it doesn’t really work. I look at the various forums and everyone’s advice is to have a strong single central image. My cover contradicts all the advice … while appropriate, it may not be commercial. If I’d been working in a team, a more experienced team-leader might have warned me. So now I’m thinking about a change, and I have an idea – which I’ve tested on a few people. In Rapscallion, I might have discussed it with my team-leader. Now, the question is, can I execute the idea?

I’ve told you before that when it comes to design, I don’t know my art from my elbow. However, the most effective ebook covers are simple – clever but simple. With the wonderful tools now available, even I, like many other indie authors, can assemble a decent cover. (That’s what it is, assembly, not design.) I produced the covers for two of our Rapscallion short stories, Waiting for Orders and Mirage, and I’m pleased with the impact they make.

But the design I have in mind now will require more than cutting and pasting. This time I’m not sure I’m going to manage. I’m going to try. If I can’t make it look good, then I know I’ll have to ask someone with better skills to help.

So how would this work with Rapscallion? First, the writer would discuss ideas for the cover with the team-leader. She’d refer to our writers’ blog to find guidance on best practice and best tools, examples of Rapscallion covers, and simple tutorials. At this point, she might decide to hire an artist – and she’d find a list of artists and pricing guidelines in the blog’s reference pages. Or, like me, she might try to go it alone. After completing the design, she’d pass it back to the team-leader, who would ensure that the standard Rapscallion guidelines had been followed. The team-leader would also probably have a view – will the cover sell the book or not? If the leader’s opinion was negative, then she might decide to ask someone else in Rapscallion – preferably someone she doesn’t know well, for the sake of objectivity. Ultimately the decision will be hers: is she happy with her design despite the advice? Or would it be better to hire an artist, after all? If that’s her decision, she’d make the arrangements (perhaps asking for two or three quotations) – and she’d pay, because this is not within the standard Rapscallion agreement./p>

I hope that makes it clearer. A set of clearly defined services is supplied to the writer for a fixed royalty deduction. Rapscallion will make it easy to find additional help, but if this is required, it’s in the writer’s own hands. Service providers will be free to set their own rates; Rapscallion will promote those that appear to offer excellent value at a fair price.

For the team leaders, calculations would be just as simple. After training and approval, they would try to identify authors whose books complement their own, appealing to the same kind of reader. Their job would be to identify authors, and then do the work required to make their books market-ready, editing, preparing them for e-publication (no technical skills are required, just training), passing on knowledge and advice, ensuring that all Rapscallion procedures have been followed. They will benefit in two ways: joint-marketing should help sales of their own book. And in recognition of their work, they will receive a fixed percentage of the royalties earned by the books they have helped to bring to market. Again, no complex administration – and if Rapscallion’s going to work that’s the way it must be: clear guidelines and procedures, and administration stripped to the bone.

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New Rapscallion Release – Daddy’s Machine

April 12, 2010 in News | 3 comments

Daddy's Machine - Cover

Today we published a new Rapscallion short story on Smashwords – Suki Michelle’s remarkable and disturbing voyage into the tortured mind of a Down’s Syndrome child who has miraculously been given the gift of intelligence and knowledge without wisdom or understanding – or love.

The Smashwords edition allows you to download and read the story on your computer today. In a few days time it will be available on the iPad, the Nook, the Sony Reader and probably Kindle. Just click on the picture to collect your free download of Daddy’s Machine – and if you enjoy the story, don’t forget to leave a brief review.

We’re interested in your views on the cover design. First, before you read the story. The cover is supposed to catch your attention and make you want to dive in. Does it succeed? And then after reading – has your opinion changed?

 

Next time – well, we’re going to lift the veil on Rapscallion. Somewhere between an agent and a publisher – could we help you find a route to market?

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Not Just A Pretty Face

March 27, 2010 in Activities | 1 comment

Mirage - Cover

Someone suggested on the tNBW site the other day that if I included pictures of pretty girls, I’d attract more readers to the blog. Well, just to show I’m listening, I have a real beauty for you today (Dave), from the second front cover I’ve worked on this week – for Suki Michelle’s new short story, Mirage.

If she’s your sort of gal and you’d like to get to know her better, just click on the picture, and Suki will tell you the full story: it’s a free download on Smashwords.

What I originally intended to do in this post was to explain how I created the cover, but I’ll save that till next time, and give you time to enjoy Suki’s great story.

But I also wanted to tell you that there’s more to this than meets the eye. Notice that little imprint in the bottom left-hand corner of the cover – Rapscallion? Yes you’ve guessed it. This has been coming for a while. I – no, I should say, we – have started a ‘publishing’ operation.

Why the coy inverted commas around ‘publisher’? Because this is not conventional publishing. Once again I’m taking a left-field view. These are the guiding principles.

  1. Instead of being a gatekeeper, serving as a barrier to publication, the publisher is a curator, lovingly nurturing and displaying great work.
  2. Instead of waiting for submissions, the publisher actually headhunts new talent.
  3. The publisher actively helps the author to prepare a book for publication and to build a bigger readership, but leaves control in the hands of the author – including copyright.
  4. The publisher serves the writer instead of the writer serving the publisher.

Naive, impractical, unworkable? Insane? Well I hope some of you will think so, because I’ve always found that when people tell me that, I’m probably on the right track – or at least close to it. Of course, Rapscallion will never be one of the major publishing houses. But that’s not the intention. My vision is to serve as a seed publisher – to help talented writers get a head-start with their career. Success would come if some of the people we work with are eventually signed up by some of the majors.

Rapscallion logo

There’ll be a lot more on the Rapscallion philosophy in the next few weeks including – because I know you’re going to ask – how we start making money from Rapscallion after releasing the first stories for free. But for now, it’s a big thank-you to Suki for working through the whole process with me this week – from finished manuscript to public release. We now have two stories in Rapscallion’s Amoral Tales collection.

If you’d like to contribute to the success of our new venture, then there’s a very easy way you can. Head on over to Smashwords now, read our stories, and if you like them, then leave a brief review – it doesn’t need to be more than a couple of sentences. And then mail the links to a couple of your friends if you think they’d enjoy the stories too. Do that, and you can say you were in on this with us right from the beginning. It’s all about teamwork.

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Designing Your Own Book Cover

March 24, 2010 in Activities | 4 comments

The Lebanese Troubles - Cover

Let’s get this straight. I can’t draw for nuts. Ask me to draw a picture of someone and you’re going to get Mr Blob.

That doesn’t stop me from enjoying art. Perhaps it even increases my enjoyment because I see creativity which is way beyond my skills. And it doesn’t stop me from attempting to create my own book designs, because with the tools now available, even the complete bumbler, like me, can create something that looks pretty good.

In the next two posts I’m going to explain how I created two covers this week, as well as taking a close look at the work of a professional.

At the top left, there’s a thumbnail of the cover for my forthcoming novel, The Lebanese Troubles. If you click on the thumbnail, you’ll be taken to a full-size version, the way the cover would appear on the front of a paperback. Try clicking now, and take a look in detail.

Now in fact I’ve broken a few basic rules with this cover design. Take a look at the Book Design Review’s Favorite Book Covers of 2008 and you’ll notice that many of the designs are very simple, minimalist -- a single object dominates the cover, asks a question, and tries to draw the reader straight in. Colors and fonts are bold. Font orientation appears to be important too -- sideways, downward, tilted, anything to capture the potential reader’s attention.

My cover couldn’t be more different. The central image (seen much more clearly in the full-size version) is tiny, overshadowed by buildings. It’s an oil painting with a great deal of subtlety in the coloring, and the fonts are all straight on.

So why did I make such an unusual choice? Well, the starting-point was to find a design that captured the essence of the novel. The Lebanese Troubles is set in the Lebanese Civil War … but this is no action-hero shoot-em-up. Instead, it’s the story of the steady disintegration of human relationships mirroring the collapse of civilized society. The protagonist gradually becomes isolated, an outsider, uncertain where he belongs, confused about moral values.

I trawled through Google looking for appropriate images, and found nothing that really suited. Plenty of pictures of shattered buildings and bombed out neighborhoods -- but where was the humanity? And then suddenly, I found exactly what I was looking for. I came across a portfolio of work by a British painter called Tom Young, who, as it happened, went to live in Lebanon 4 years ago -- and when I saw his picture, ‘20 Years‘, my jaw just dropped. He’d captured exactly the feeling that I’d tried to convey in my novel.

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of meeting Tom, when he was back in the UK for a few days, and it was no surprise to find that we shared a love of Camus’s novel, L’Étranger. I guess I hadn’t realized until then how much that book has influenced The Lebanese Troubles.

So I had a picture that I loved. But would it work as a cover design, when it was so different from most others? I remembered one of the comments on the BDR’s selection of favorite designs.

I picked one of the three covers that inspired me to click through to find out a bit more about the book itself (and to me, all three are equally intriguing, perhaps because of some amalgamation of my own interests and the cover design)

My mind was made up. Marrying the reader’s interests with the cover design. The Lebanese Troubles is unashamedly literary. So the type of reader who might enjoy it is likely to enjoy literature as art. Choosing a painting for the cover rather than a formula book design would be sending all the right signals. OK, perhaps the subtlety of the painting might escape the casual browser. Perhaps I could draw in more readers with the weapons of war featured somewhere on the cover. But I’d be making false promises, raising false expectations, and possibly leaving the reader disappointed.

Having reached my decision, designing the cover was fairly straightforward. First I saved a copy of Tom’s painting (with his permission of course). The next step was to decide which part of the picture to use. As you’ll see as you look at the original, it’s in landscape format, and I needed to convert it to portrait. The tool I used was something I’ve used for several years for cutting an image, resizing it, and then saving it in an appropriate format (.jpg, .gif, or .png) for printing or screen display -- IrfanView.

Next I needed to think about the title, and it was at this point that important marketing decisions were needed. I’m preparing my novel for two possible editions, a print edition at some point, but firstly as an ebook, in order to minimize the risks and maximize the income. But as I explained in an earlier post, the cover design is just as important -- perhaps more so -- when we’re e-publishing. And when we’re promoting an ebook, the details, including the title, need to be perfectly clear, even when the cover is reduced to a thumbnail.

These were my next steps. I copied the selection of the painting I wanted and pasted it into Microsoft Powerpoint. I thought about where I wanted the title to appear. Not within the design, I thought. I didn’t want words floating in the sky, or hatched out on the road at the bottom of the picture. Let the painting stand and speak for itself. So I was going to need a border. What color? Well, The Lebanese Troubles is a tragedy, so let it be black. Black would offset the painting well too. So I created a black background in Powerpoint, and laid it under 20 Years.

Then which font for the title? I liked the look of ‘Papyrus’, one of the standard Microsoft fonts I had available. It had a distinctly oriental feel, and I liked the way the capital letters descended below the line. So the next decision was font size. After a little experimentation I found that a 36-point font, using bold, meant that the title was still readable even with a small thumbnail. But that gave me a new problem.

At that point-size the title would need to be set over two lines. Then of course, there was the author’s name to think about. This meant that I would need to further reduce the height of the painting … or shrink it, so that the tiny figure became completely invisible.

For a while I played with the idea of using a different title. Suppose I just called the book ‘The Troubles‘? But that would hit my marketing campaign. I need the word ‘Lebanese’ to appear to appeal to Middle East expats. And it would hit the Search Engine campaign I’ve been carefully building. If you do a Google search for ‘Lebanese Troubles’, you’ll see that of nearly 7.3 million matches, my novel is already in positions 3 and 5. That’s going to be extremely important later. Drop ‘Troubles’ then? No, for the same reason. And because I really like the double entendre -- political troubles and my protagonist’s family,relationship and moral troubles. So the title had to stay. And it would have to be over two lines -- centered, I thought, looked best.

If I’d added my name at the top as well, the whole cover would have looked top heavy, so I decided to add it at the bottom. Another decision. If the book was called The Lebanese Troubles and there was a picture of devastation in Beirut, some readers would think it’s non-fiction -- an account of the War. I needed to make it clear it wasn’t, so the cover needed ‘A novel by Alain Miles‘. I’d decided to use a more straightforward font. (I read somewhere that every book should have two fonts, no more, no less -- I have no idea why, but too many fonts certainly gets messy.) But a 36-point size would mean two lines again. I really couldn’t afford to take more space from the painting, so I reduced the point-size until I could fit it onto one line. It’s a compromise. The name isn’t so clear in a thumbnail, but as an unknown anyway, I think I can afford to live with that. People won’t be buying because it’s me. (Except my Mum.)

One last decision. What color was the text to be? I was tempted to go for red. The war, red-hot emotions etc … but, on a black background this just got lost in the thumbnail. I needed something much lighter. In the end it was a pale gold, classy I think … and there is after all a reference to Lebanese Gold in the novel!

And that was it. I copied the complete cover back to IrfanView and created two .png versions, one in paperback size and the other in thumbnail size. My book cover was ready for publication.

Nothing I’ve described here requires any great technical skill. The difficulty was only finding the right material in the first place, and then making the right decisions. The beauty of e-publishing the book first is that if my cover doesn’t make the impact I expect, I’ll be able to spot the problem almost immediately, try something different if necessary -- and then implement the changes in just a few hours. But I hope I’m not wrong. Now that you’ve read this long description, you’ll no longer see the cover in the same way that a newcomer to my work would, but I’ll be interested to hear your comments anyway.

The process of designing your cover isn’t always quite as straightforward as my description here. Take a look at a professional designer at work by playing the outstanding video from Orbit Books below. Think it looks hard? Well, join me next time and I’ll show you how you can do most of this yourself. Using free software.

 

 

Posted Previously: What Scribd taught me about book design

 

Don’t forget to check the front page of Resources, which lists the new material added each day -- and remember that your contributions are welcome here too

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