Can I say how happy I am with the cover? It took a couple of drafts and many back and forth emails with my cover artist, Christy Caughie, of Gilded Heart design before I settled on this one. I love the colors, the image of the man spanning the spine of the book, and the woman with the sword. As an Indie author, I was able to choose my own stock images. The man, the woman, the sword, the background image, those were my choices. And it’s part of branding my Universal Law series. Each book will have a man and a woman.
For my Extinction series, only a woman will be on the cover. Why? Well, the series is about strong, young women leading their kinds out of the threat of extinction. Intermixed into the threat of extinction is the story line of fated love. Can these men and women discard fate and choose their own destiny? And who is the Protector, the man or the woman? And who is UnMarked, the man or the woman? I want my covers to represent the story, to have readers question the significance of the image, and to make each series distinct from one another.
Creative control gives me the opportunity to tie my current and future books together through the covers. Can a traditional publisher do this? Maybe, if there’s a contract for a series. However, many debut authors don’t have this opportunity. Also, I was able to control the interior layout of my print books. I even inserted my picture for the back page, which my previous publisher couldn’t do. Going Indie is a personal choice. Though formatting issues have been frustrating, and the initial cost of self-publishing is high, I don’t regret my decision. And with every book I release, I remind myself that this is a marathon and not a race.
Growing a readership takes time. As a fairly new author, discoverability is almost nil amidst the fierce competition out there. Yet, I can now SEE the results. When I published Protector a few weeks ago, I can see my sales real time instead of six months from now with my previous publisher. And when I quietly published NFAR, I saw sales right away though I hadn’t shouted my excitement to the world that NFAR had released. I’m thinking it’s returning readers (YAY and THANK YOU). These little steps bring a smile to my face. I have readers. READERS. Us authors love READERS.
Happy writing, and signing off to go do more formatting and writing.