Category Archives: Book Covers

“Ashes,” Prequel to “Socks,” is now available on Smashwords

Wow, this past month has been busy. I have a couple new book covers I’ve been meaning to post for a while, and I have an exciting announcement: I finally got “Ashes,” the prequel to “Socks” uploaded to Smashwords! Yay πŸ˜€

So, first off, the book cover. In keeping with the tradition of “Socks,” I made the covers to resemble each other.

SBibb - Ashes Cover

Now, for a bit about “Ashes.” It takes place a bit before the events in “Socks.” As in, the rebels have just attacked the city, and now Cory and Serena are desperately racing to save the contents of the last existing library before it’s destroyed. The story is 7500 words long, quite a bit longer than the flash fiction, 1000 words of socks. Right now I only plan to place it on Smashwords as an ebook, since I’ve been having some technical difficulties with Kindle lately. But don’t worry, you can still get it for your kindle through Smashwords.Β  It’s currently available for 99 cents.

Find it here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/249071

Meanwhile, a side note about my 1000 Words project. Socks has the most reviews out of the nine short stories available for free, but has the fewest downloads. (Find the short story here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/154150)

Dreamkeeper has the highest amount of downloads, but no reviews. I wonder if it has to do with audience, the description, the cover, or some other factor.

Either way, just wanted to make the announcement. πŸ™‚

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Cover Reveal – The Devil’s Blues

SBibb -The Devil's Blues Cover

This is a wrap-around book cover I recently completed for Barking Rain Press. It’s for a mystery crime novel. It’s not yet released, but you can find out more about it here: [link]

Note: All of these images are from Shutterstock. Normally I’d use my own images, but in this case, stock images worked out best for what we wanted.

Photoshop CS6. πŸ™‚

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Cover Reveal – Man In The Forest

SBibb - Man In the Forest - Book Cover

This is a book cover I did for Melange Books. I did use one stock image, the face. The rest of the pictures are my own. This is the first fantasy/romance/erotica based cover I’ve done.

At the moment it isn’t yet released, but you can find it at Melange Book’s main website when it is: http://www.melange-books.com

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Cover Reveal – At the Bullet’s Tip

I was sure I posted this a week ago. Anyways, don’t worry… haven’t fallen off the face of the Earth. It’s been a busy pastΒ few weeks as Isaac gets prepared for grad school. We’ve been stripping furniture (old furniture, from the 1920s…) to stain, and that took up quite a bit of time for about a week. Anyways, I do have a new book cover to show you. πŸ™‚

“At the Bullet’s Tip,” by Erika Lindsen, a romance thriller. πŸ™‚

SBibb - Cover for "At the Bullet's Tip"

This was a cross between photomanipulation and digital illustration. Parts of it were drawn in (using Photoshop CS6), while other parts of it were originally photographs that I used the “threshold” tool on to give it that sillohuetted look. πŸ™‚

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Building A Better Monster – Cover Reveal

Today I get toΒ reveal the cover for Building A Better Monster, by Christopher Treagus. πŸ˜€ The book is anthology of stories, published by Barking Rain Press.

SBibb - BABM Cover

You can find the book here:

http://www.barkingrainpress.org/products/building-a-better-monster/

To put the cover together, I used multiple photographs I’d taken earlier of various animals, then put them together based on the different descriptions I’d found of a chupacabra. The publisher wanted a gridwork frame behind it, based around the concept of “building” the monster, and I want to thank my husband Isaac for giving me an idea of how to do it. Anyways, this is the cover that I completed. πŸ™‚

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Photo Illustration – Distant Horizon

SBibb - Distant Horizon - The Distance Traveled

Finally wrote out the synopsis for book three of the Distant Horizon storyline with Isaac (my husband), and afterwards, it left me wanting to create a picture representive of the ending. So here it is.

This time I didn’t try to make a book cover format, since I wanted more freedom for positioning.

Photoshop CS6 kept trying to shut down on me while I made this, but eventually (finally!) I just merged a bunch of layers and went from there. The authosave function did come in handy, though it was amusing seeing the file have recovered-recovered on it after shutting down the program twice.

Anyways, just some original art for the fun of it. πŸ™‚

Meanwhile, “Ashes” is formatted, and I’m just waiting to hear back from my beta reader before I release it on Smashwords. πŸ™‚

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The Socks Project: Ashes Cover Reveal

As I get closer to self-publishing “Ashes,” I thought it might be nice to do a cover reveal. So here it is, the cover to “Ashes.” It’s got some similar treatment done to it to resemble “Socks,” but it has a different color scheme to match the themes in the story itself. As an interesting little side note, I believe this is actually the same picture I used in “Socks,” but done differently enough that it shouldn’t be noticable. (Except that I pointed out, but anyway).

As a side note, I was debating on whether or not to include a blurb on the cover mentioning that it was a short story or prequel. After some discussion on Absolute Write, I decided not to include it. Why? Because the same information will be mentioned on the web page where it can be bought/downloaded. Also, because hopefully it will resemble the cover of “Socks” close enough that a connection will be made. Granted, this is experimentation on my part, but that’s kind of the point of doing this. πŸ™‚

Without further ado, the new cover!

SBibb - Ashes Cover - Blog

Also, as a quick note, I found this article and thought those of you interested in doing your own cover creation might like reading it. It’s about font choice. πŸ™‚

http://clancytales.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/how-to-font-your-cover.html

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1000 Words: The Socks Project Continued

Good news! I’ve finally started editing the prequel to “Socks,” one of the short stories from my 1000 Words project. I’m happy to announce that the title will be “Ashes.” I’m currently in the process of planning the cover, which shall be done in similar fashion to Socks, as a way to show they’re related. The difference is that “Ashes” is not restricted to a one thousand words word-length, and is currently closer to 7000 words. I’m planning on self-publishing it and selling it for $0.99 on both Smashwords and Kindle.

So, for a little more information about “Ashes,” it takes place in the time before “Socks,” so you’ll get to see a little more about the bunkers and the world she lives in. It’s also young adult, sci-fi romance.Β I hesitate to call it dystopian, since it’s not technically a dystopia, but it runs along similar worlds to popular dystopian YA right now (Pandemonium is the one that comes to mind, though I wrote this before reading that book). It is a complete story, however, if people like it, there is room to continue it before the actual “Socks” story begins. As well as room for right afterwards. Granted, it’ll be competing for time with Distant Horizon, the novel my husband and I are working on, but we’ll see how well it’s recieved. πŸ™‚

In the meantime, go check out “Socks” if you haven’t already. It’s available on Smashwords, and best of all, it’s free. πŸ™‚

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/154150

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Marketing Your Book

So, as Isaac and I get closer to finishing Distant Horizon (and thus starting querying), I’ve been doing reading on how marketing of a book is done, both for trade and self-publishing. After all, both are looking for readership, right? I found a few interesting tidbits I thought I’d share.

One is the article at the link below. It talks about how marketing is done of a book in the trade publishing world, and points out some good tips that could probably also be used if you’re self-publishing, too. It talks about the importance of marketing as a way to gain publicity, but that marketing doesn’t always equate to publicity. It’s that word-of-mouth you want, when you get other people promoting your book without your asking. Needless to say, I thought it was an informative read:

http://editorialass.blogspot.com/2009/04/why-dont-we-throw-some-money-at-it-like.html

Another interesting idea I came upon was the idea of offering signed prints of your book cover (if it’s one that looks really good)Β  for the first people who buy your book off Amazon and show you a receipt. Found this at Madame Guillotine’s blog, here:Β http://madameguillotine.org.uk/

Of course, ARC (advanced reader copies) are also a good idea, and it looks like Goodreads contests may be a good way to get publicity for them. The hope, of course, is that they’ll read your book and leave a review, and maybe, just maybe, recommend t to a friend. πŸ™‚

Also, another neat blog (not so much on marketing, but on publishing) I found is called The Intern: http://internspills.blogspot.com/

Thought I’d share that, too. Anyways, that’s all I’ve got for you at the moment. πŸ™‚

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Soda Pop Shop/Sci-Fi Photoshoot – Katherine

The moment has arrived! I have new photographic illustrations to show off. This was done with Katherine modeling, and she did a great job doing and portraying what I asked. And the dress fit, two. Definitly helpful (especially when I find the dress I want to use, then find the model, afterward). The theme of this one started out with the idea of doing a Soda Pop Shop or sock hop look. Or really, it came from looking at old Coca Cola Ads and wanting to try to emulate those ads.

So I tried that on a couple of pictures. First one… well… it needed work. So I tried it again using a different pose, and I’m hoping that one captured more of the look and feel of the old ads. Also, thanks to my husband’s grandfather to letting us borrow a time period coke bottle to use. And thanks to McDonalds for having those cool Coca Cola glasses. And funny thing is, I’m not even that big of a soda fan. So there’s my note on the usefulness of finding props that aid in the appearance of time. So yeah, there was my fun experiment with commercial advertising.

Meanwhile, I also did a few images meant more in my usual style of sci-fi, dystopia, and fantasy. And reminder to self… don’t watch MirrorMask right before starting on a manip project. Great movie, awesome effects, but totally messes up how I usually do digital manipulations.

If you’re curious to see the images I’ve just mentioned, take a look at the Flickr Slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbibb/sets/72157630562937410/show/

Otherwise, enjoy a few samples here. πŸ™‚

SBibb - Soda Pop Shop

SBibb - Hope In Dystopia

SBibb - Across A Thousand Stars

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