Cover Art Conundrum…

October 1, 2011

I haven’t written here in awhile because I’ve been back to work as a teacher and it has been CRAZY busy.

But I did see something recently that inspired me to crack open a new blog post here on my writing blog.

I am a participant on goodreads.com, love writing book reviews for the books I read. Well, I read this fun (yet silly) romance novel called Hard & Fast. It has a chiseled guy on the cover, wearing jeans and nothing else–and it turns out it is 20th out of 338 on a list somebody made up entitled ‘hottest guy on the cover’.

I don’t know why, but the very thought of such a list has tickled my funny bone. I knew marketing was important…back blurb, title, cover…but this seems to be taking it to a whole new level. My book doesn’t just need a splash of colour, a unique design. It needs…

EYE CANDY!

RIPPLING ABS!

PANTS BARELY HANGING ON AT THE HIP BONES!

So it made me wonder…my novel’s a historical mystery with a dash of romantic quirkiness. A year ago, I would have said, put Colin Firth on the front in his Mr. Darcy uniform & it’s good to go…but now I wonder. You can’t see his abs beneath that button down jacket and his ruffled shirt!

Mr. Darcy, where are your chiseled abs?!

So now I’m picturing…a younger, leaner Colin Firth type-look-alike, sans cravat, waistcoat, ruffled shirt, totally shirtless with gleaming, hairless, muscular chest, standing cockily against a Palladian manse, in a pair of white button down pants (teasingly unbuttoned at the top, barely held up), with gleaming knee high leather riding boots, holding a horse whip in one hand and a bottle of Madeira in the other…

Well? Would you buy my book now?

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Posted in Publishing |

4 comments

Washboard abs don’t do anything for me. Dual Headlights on the other hand…

Seriously though, if you are publishing yourself, and intend to publish ebook versions only, you have to be really careful about cover art. Because of the small size of the images fine detail tends to disappear.

So before you start in on the cover, you need to decide whether you are going Dead Tree or EBook.

Wayne
by Wayne Borean aka The Mad Hatter October 2, 2011 at 3:21 am

Reply
Guess what I just found?

The Emily Contest was first established by the West Houston Chapter of RWA® in 1990 in order to promote publication of previously unpublished writers of romance. The contest is unusual in that it does not limit its entrants to members of RWA. Rather, it is open to any writer who is not published as of the deadline date of the contest.

The Emily got its name as a result of its initial publicity campaign involving a young scribbler named Emily who was a victim of writer’s block. The contest was promoted as a way to end this malady. So the contest was named in honor of this anonymous character, rather than Emily Dickinson or Emily Bronte.

The first Emily contest chair was the late Arnette Lamb.

In the years that followed its inception, the Emily has garnered a reputation as one of the top contests in the romance writing genre. Many Emily winners and finalists have gone on to be published. The list follows.

Your book would fit in the:

Historical Romance includes romance novels set prior to 1950.

Category

They hold the contest every year. I think that it opens for entries on October 1.

Wayne
by Wayne Borean aka The Mad Hatter October 2, 2011 at 3:31 am

Reply
Thanks Wayne for both comments. I’ll keep the contest in mind…for next year? Not done writing it yet!

Julie J.
by busywriting October 2, 2011 at 10:47 pm

Reply
- I was thinking that. Or maybe you might be able to enter book two in the contest
  
  Wayne
  by Wayne Borean October 3, 2011 at 12:42 am
  
  Reply