Kindle Romance Cover End-of-Summer Catch-up!

Hello you lovely readerly and coverly-loverly folk - we're back!

Okay, so that didn't feel like quite so long a 'holiday' as it should have done, but if the kids (others', not mine...I have none of those!) are back at school that probably means I need to hang up the flip-flops, stop overdosing on Bones reruns and find me some purdy Romance covers to share with you all.

I didn't give up on cover-hunting over the holidays, don't worry - plenty covers from around the genres added to my Cover Lover Pinterest board!

CUTE BLUE

Both of these are cute, sweet and clean and use that bright blue with just a punchy little highlight of red or pink to set it off. You get a sense of blue-sky optimism from these covers, with a little passion thrown in.

Title: I Dream of Johnny
Author: Juliet Madison
Publisher: Escape Publishing
Cover Artist: Unkonwn
Genre: Contemporary Romance

Title: Olivia
Author: Paola Calvetti
Publisher: Ediciones Martinez Roca
Cover Artist: Unknown
Genre: Contemporary Romance

A FEW MORE OF MY FAVOURITES...

There are so many!! I really just couldn't pick from them all. So much gorgeous cover goodness! Here's a sampling from just the past week...

And of course, it couldn't be KRCOTW without a Pick of the Week...

PICK OF THE WEEK:

Title: Left
Author: T.R. Graves
Publisher: Amazon/Self-Published
Cover Artist: Claudia McKinney of Phatpuppy Art
Genre: New Adult Romance

SCORES OUT OF 5

Thumbnail-ability: 3.5

Font & Text: 4.5

Genre-fit: 4

Overall Composition: 3.5

Overall Concept: 3.5

OVERALL SCORE: 3.8

What's to love...
Clean, simple, pretty but strong. I think what I liked best about this cover was the fact it was just somewhat different than the usual formula. No couples embracing, no cowboy or kilted rogue looking back over his shoulder. The ribbon feels a bit more like the tenuous connection between two people and not too bondage-y (something I think we're all pretty much over these days!). Simple body language with just two hands. Maybe she's pulling him. Maybe he's reaching out to her. Or maybe both? Nice simple palette. Very pretty brush-script for the title. I don't even mind the little embellishment under the author's name, as it grounds the whole area of text.

Let's see what next week brings us!

Now, off to even out my sandal-tan in the last of the late-summer sun. Oh that's right. It's raining. *sigh*

Is it nearly Christmas yet?

Kindle Romance Cover Pick-of-the-Week - 4th July 2013

I'm keeping it short & sweet from now on - wow, those posts were getting LONG. There just isn't time to write OR read that much cover goodness. So I'm diversifying. My favourite 'runners up' will get some raving tweets and shine their little lights on my Pinterest boards, and I'll review one lucky cover a week right here on the blog.

That leaves me MORE time to investigate duplicate-cover-image scandals (not really a scandal, I'm just a nerd), and carefully select a Fabio-esque cover for your Friday enjoyment. And other things I haven't even thought of yet. I like to keep you all on your toes (and by 'all' I mean the 6 people who read this. Or maybe the 6 Google bots who visit the blog).

I've been in two minds about this pick as STRANGELY enough it shares exactly the same colour scheme as my last pick of the week. Either I am exceedingly limited in my taste in covers, or it's just some big coinkidink.

Title: Fractured
Author: Dani Atkins
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Cover Artist: Unknown (please let me know so I can credit!)
Genre: Contemporary Romance

SCORES OUT OF 5

Thumbnail-ability: 4

Font & Text: 3.5

Genre-fit: 3

Overall Composition: 4.5

Overall Concept: 4

OVERALL SCORE: 3.8

What's to love...

Maybe it's my recent 'discovery' of Mad Men, but I'm liking this retro 'flat' style of illustration. The contrast of hot red against cool sea-green makes it pop. The black line art helps balance out the whole composition and gives some hint at dark things in the past or to come.

The split caused by the 'reflection' is a great mechanism, and ties the title into the composition for me - 'Fractured'. I already get a sense of a person in two parts, or a story in two chapters. So what will it take to flip the whole thing around and it be a couple greeting each other joyfully and not just a woman walking alone? I do so like a cover that makes me wonder...

Kindle Romance Covers of the Week - 11th June 2013

NOT A REAL BOOK! Just having some fun :D

It's that time of the week again! I've tumbled through the torrents of torrid love story book covers on Amazon Kindle UK, and picked out my favourites...just for you. That's right. YOU, lovely reader.

(That didn't sound stalkerish at all, now did it?)

ANYWAY...if you're new to the Kindle Romance Covers of the Week, I scroll through the 1000+ book covers in the Amazon UK Romance section for the past 7 days. And I find the pretty. And I find the weird. And sometimes I find the downright inexplicable-what-were-you-thinking-are-you-MAD covers. But I like to keep things positive and generally point out more about what I like than what I don't.

That being said...I can still speak my mind...

FIFTY SHADES OF...*YAWWWN*

Am I alone in this? Am I the only one that is getting just a teensy little bit tired of the grey-scale "Aren't I dark and mysterious and wearing silver-plated bespoke nipple-clamps under my clothes," covers? I picked out all of these covers from the line-up because of their exquisite composition and balance. They are lovely.Yet, I find myself going a little cold for this style. I want real, human warmth from my love story. Not (yet more) complicated power games and highly-choreographed acrobatics. How about some hot, damn-sexy down-home love? Am I crazy? That and I'm just bored. I LOVE COLOURS. Gimme COLOURS. Okay. I'm done now...

THE BODICE BUSTER LIVES ON!

That's right folks, fear not. The quintessential Bodice Buster can live on in your Kindle. Granted, these days the busty ladies (breaking bodaciously from their brimming bodices) seem to have a little more of the upper hand, if the body-language is anything to go by. You go girls. Kilts up.

WELL, THAT'S A LITTLE...DIFFERENT

I find myself intrigued, yet a little frightened by these. 

A BEVY OF BUTTERFLIES

These two are actually very pretty and I'd consider them not-far-off runner's up this week. But there does seem to be a lot of butterfly-theme going on lately, along with the desaturated colour style of the Instagram Generation (of which I've just proven I'm not a part. Oops.).

AND THIS WEEK'S FAVOURITES ARE...

Title: Following Bliss

Author: Heather Strang
Publisher: Amazon/Self-published
Cover Artist: Jim Thomson
Genre: Paranormal Romance

What's to Love: Cute image, lovely open feel, and great scripty-font choice! Feet!

Title: Listening to Brahms
Author: Rosemary Allen
Publisher: Matador
Cover Artist: Unknown (let me know so I can credit!)
Genre: Historical Romance

NOTE: I know it looks like I'm breaking my own NO GREY-SCALE rule here (though technically this would be considered 'sepia'), but this cover is NOT of the same ilk as 50 Shades. Seriously folks. This is a forest. Not a red room of pain.

What's to Love: Atmosphere, buckets of atmosphere. Simple, yet intriguing.

Title: Diamonds in the Rough
Author: Portia Da Costa
Publisher: Mills & Boon Spice
Cover Artist: Unknown (let me know so I can credit!)
Genre: Contemporary Romance

What's to Love: Just such a pretty picture. Elegant, yet vulnerable. Not sure I'd like it as much WITHOUT the big red dot. The red dot sort of adds to it.

(trying not to sing tunes from Disney's Aladdin now. You know the ones I mean.)

Title: Can't Buy Me Love
Author: Summer Kinard
Publisher: Light Messages Publishing
Cover Artist: Unknown (please let me know so I can credit!)
Genre: Contemporary Romance

What's to Love: Clever combination of elements. Inviting, hints at a bigger story hiding behind the cover. That flaky paint is just right.

Title: Sins & Needles
Author: Karina Halle
Publisher: Eternal Romance
Cover Artist: Najla Qambar
Genre: Romance

What's to Love: Picked this without knowing it was by Najla (who designed my Pick of the Week a month ago!). Great, moody image, oodles of Girl-With-The-Dragon-Tattoo attitude. Suits the story blurb to a T.

MY PICK OF THE WEEK

And finally - the Pick of the Week!

Title: Eversea
Author: Natasha Boyd
Publisher: Amazon/Self-published
Cover Artist: Adrian Rapasch
Genre: Contemporary Romance

SCORES OUT OF 5

Thumbnail-ability: 4
Font & Text: 4
Genre-fit: 3.5
Overall Composition: 4
Overall Concept: 4

OVERALL SCORE: 3.9

I practically grew up by the ocean, long ago, way 'down-under'. Sea glass was one of my favourite things to find, and when I'm wandering the English beaches, I still can't stop myself picking it up. So I'm with Natasha on the cove/beach theme of her novel here.

The colours are gorgeous, and for the SECOND time I'm just loving the pop of just-enough red. The turtle motif hasn't got any correlating plot-related clues in the blurb, but it has me curious..

Natasha and her designer, Adrian Rapasch, actually ran a cover-design-vote before settling on this one! Great way to publicise and see what people really like. Check out the other designs here.

I've been in two minds about this being my POTW ('Sins & Needles' is SUCH a close runner-up, with an awesome title and cover art), but my eye kept being drawn back to this one. It's just beautiful, deceptively simple, and wonderfully balanced in a 'trying not to try too hard' sort of way. That piece of red glass is the glowing heart amongst a sea of cold bluey-green. I love it.

What do you think?


Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed this as much as I did! See you next time...


Top background image Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos (with a few little amendments by moi)

And then she went 'Kaboom'...

Tonight marks exactly a month since I dove in the deep end of Twitter (and several other social media sites).

As a new / 'indie' / self-pub author you are bombarded with advice from all angles about blogging, guest-blogging, tweeting, book trailers, conferences, live tweet-chats, writing contest, flash fiction, tweet fiction, Facebook, Klout, Pinterest, Tumblr, Flickr and any other cute new site that ends with 'r' (and should REALLY have an 'e' because really...they're spelling it wrong). And published or unpublished you must push push PUSH your social media 'platform' so that you have a network or an audience or a 'sphere of influence'...

And you follow. You follow lots of other writers and join the 'community' and retweet and repin and reblog. And you allow yourself to be bombarded by the tweets and retweets and blogs and ads and #hash tags and @mentions and more blogs and more websites until your eyelid develops a nasty twitch and you read and you read and you READ.

Steve King says to 'shut the door' when you write. Shut the door? How can I shut the door when I've just woken up to the reality that I am no longer in a room that HAS a door? And there is no door because I'm sitting in the middle of a airplane-hangar size waiting room full of other people all shouting at the top of their lungs to be noticed and there IS NO DOOR.

And then you kind of go... kaboom.

In a small, quiet moment, your mind finally says...'Enough.' And it implodes. Slowly, gently.

And you remember something.

You used to write, once. Once upon a time...a month ago. You used to write. You used to sit, quietly with your laptop, and create characters and scenes and think about exactly which word to use to describe the light when the leaves move and you're with someone who's talking but you're only half listening because you can't stop watching the light as the leaves move...flickering back, and forth....back and forth.


So here's the lesson I teach myself today. The airplane-hangar will always be there. But sometimes...you have to shut the door.


Image credit: United States Department of Energy via Wiki Commons, 1952. Alterations by me.

Judging a book...

I'll be the first person to say the old, 'Don't judge a book by its cover', though I find this generally applies more to people than to books. I'll admit it, I am a sucker for an interesting/beautiful/well-designed cover. At a glance, I want to be drawn in, intrigued, informed. A book cover should tell me something about the genre, the feel, the darkness/lightness of the book, and so on. Which might be why I have more posts about covers than about writing, which is a little worrisome! But let's go with it.

My confession is this: I do judge a book by it's cover. And, I don't believe I am alone in this.

Book covers never used to be a factor I would have to consider when purchasing a book, but with the advent of eBooks on Amazon and Smashwords, I find it affecting my purchasing decisions more and more. You may also have noticed a lot of the self-published titles have...interesting...covers. Bad stock photos at best, flat colour and some ill-advised fonts. Never have scrolly fonts, comic sans and drop-shadows been abused in such a way! Why, I ask, do self-pub titles have to have such terrible covers?! It really is putting me off reading them.

These particular eBooks may be spectacularly written, but I wouldn't know, as I would never be tempted to download them...sorry.

Now, I'm not saying that a beautiful cover immediately promises a well-edited, beautifully written book. Ohhh no. I have tossed out plenty of books with pretty covers which proved to have some challenges in the basic spelling and grammar department in just the first few pages. So even I can be fooled.

Here are a few things as a reader I would most strongly suggest to those looking to self-publish in our brand new world of publishing freedom:

1. Get the cover art right. It must match the feel and tone and genre of your book. MUST. If you didn't make it past 5th grade art class, don't worry, there are eBook cover design services springing up all over the internet. But be careful how much you pay...

2. If you go with a professional cover, make sure the contents match the pretty outside! There's nothing like the let-down of being fooled by the packaging, and you'll likely lose readers forever.

3. Once you have your design and book ready, get feedback. From people you love. From people you hate, or hate you (it will at least be honest, right?)

Your writing is obviously the most important part of a book, but make sure that you are always putting your best foot forward. Don't give readers any reason to not click or pick up your book. Do it as a matter of professionalism. Covers do matter.

Further reading...

• Melissa Walker's 'Cover Stories' - A great blog of interviews with published authors on their cover design process
• Natasha Fondren's blog article, Ebook Cover Design and Optimum Size Specifications for Amazon, Kindle, B&N, Nook, iBookstore, and iPad Formats
• The Book Designer's Monthly E-book Cover Design Awards