I was invited to be a guest on lovely Four Foxes, One Hound authors’ blog by fellow sweet historical writer, Patricia Kiyono, and I thought, why not share this here, too? Perhaps it will help another author who’s in the forest of indecision, or be interesting for a reader who is curious about the reason I’ve (kept) changing the covers!
Charlotte B’s Cover Story
We all know the pain of sunk costs, right?
Yep.
After two years of trying to improve my original covers for my first book series, I finally made the decision to change them significantly.
This was a tough decision for me to make for two reasons.
The first was, because I am a professional artist, I was proud of the fact that I could make my own book art based on actual scenes in my stories. It was fun being able to paint the dogs, the seasons, and accurate protagonists’ clothing and hair colors. Besides… I was so tired of seeing countless books in my genre with the same basic look, and oftentimes the same cover model. Yawn.
I thought it would be too easy to get lost in the shuffle if I followed the crowd.
Speed forward one year later and see me lamenting my poor sales numbers. During that year I realized that, in the advertising world, high impression rates that don’t lead to clicks means that either the cover or title are lacking, or they are too far off track for the genre. Readers aren’t recognizing that the book is their kind of book. I noticed that my books looked nothing like other books in their sub-genre. While some readers and authors told me that they liked my book covers because they were different, in the end, I decided that they stood out too much. They were too different.
When a reader knows what they like, they want more of the same (Bryan Cohen). More than one marketing element that’s different from all the books they already read and liked is usually considered a high risk purchase. They’ll pass the new, chancy book over and take one that looks just like all the others! It struck me forcefully that what’s inside the book has no bearing on whether or not a reader takes a chance and buys my story. All a book shopper has to go on are three or four things that they absorb in a second or less: cover, title, then blurb and tagline.
The second reason bothered me more, because it affected others. I balked at changing the covers in a big way because the books are in a series. An incomplete series. And there are readers who have the first 3 paperback books in one or two former cover iterations! Oh, how sad for them and embarrassing for me!
In the spring, I had hired cover designer Nancie Janitz to work with me to rebrand the series, and it was her idea to add the jewel-toned color banners to unify them. She also came up with the unique book back and spine using my original artwork, which I love. Nancie’s great to work with, and is an all-around lovely person.
I began selling books with the new covers, but I still had misgivings. I increasingly felt that I was holding onto an idea that just wasn’t going to work, and now I had just invested more time and money (as well as Nancie’s time) into them. More sunk cost and effort.
Just before my re-release of Book 3, Nancie had a family emergency and was unable to finish the 3rd and 4th book, so she kindly passed the cover files to my daughter to finish. Together, Majken (my daughter) and I started setting up the last two books, and I thought, “It’s time. Change them now or never!” I stayed up late that night, scouring for options, and came up with public domain or paid photos that could easily be tweaked to look like my story protagonists. The next day, with me hanging over her shoulder, my daughter worked the photos into Nancie’s designs. We covered up just the centers of my original book art so that the settings are painted, but the figures are from photo sources. My daughter manipulated the colors and clothes, etc. and “Voila!” I love the results!
Even though I no longer felt self-conscious about being indecisive (that band-aid had been ripped off), I did still worry about readers who had purchased older editions and wouldn’t be able to get matching covers to finish their collections.
I decided that there was a silver lining to low sales. I have posted a notice offering to replace physical copies at cost if a reader can show me that they own an older edition. If they cannot afford the small cost, and it’s important for them to have a matching set, then they are invited to contact me privately and “I’ll see what I can do”.
Within this first month, my sales have risen, and other authors in my genre are more eager to recommend my books in their newsletters. I’m really happy that I decided to keep trying and listen to my inner critic.
