Meant to post this a couple weeks ago, but kept getting sidetracked. Anyways, here is the wrap-around cover of “Around Centralia Square,” an upcoming literary novel from Cave Hollow Press. 🙂
This was interesting to work with, since I got to sit in on one of the conversations regarding their plans for the book when I first approached them about doing the cover. ‘Twas neat to see the inner workings of a small press. 🙂
All photographs taken were my own. Photoshop CS6/Lightroom 4.0.
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Client Work, Photo Illustration
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 😀
So, first off, the book cover. In keeping with the tradition of “Socks,” I made the covers to resemble each other.
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. 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. 🙂
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Photo Illustration, Writing
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. 🙂
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Photo Illustration
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
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures
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 past 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. 🙂
“At the Bullet’s Tip,” by Erika Lindsen, a romance thriller. 🙂
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. 🙂
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Photo Illustration
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) for the first people who buy your book off Amazon and show you a receipt. Found this at Madame Guillotine’s blog, here: 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. 🙂
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. 🙂
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Writing
So it turns out you can’t have two pen names linked to a single Smashwords account. The result is that I’d either have to create a second account for Stephanie Flint, or change all the covers and copyright info on the previous books. Seeing as how I wanted to keep “SBibb” for the account link, I decided to change the covers.
Overall, it might’ve taken a couple hours. Luckily, most of the covers had layering where I was able to just change my last name with a couple modifications, and Photoshop CS6 (loving the new save function) is helpful with doing some easy adjustments. Afterwards, I adjusted all the front matter and bio info on the stories themselves (again, yay for having everything in nearly one place).
I also added tags to each short story that included “SBibb, Stephanie Bibb, Stephanie Flint” to make it easier to find. Search engine optimization (SEO) is important to having your websites and books and such found, so I also included a note about the name change in the long description. I didn’t put it in the short description since I’d rather reserve that space for info about the story itself.
I also linked the “Where to find this book in print” to the1000 Wordsanthology (print edition) on Amazon. Since I don’t want to change the inner covers of the ebook version on Smashwords, I’m unpublishing it there. Kindle allows me (as far as I understand) to keep the older editions of the book the same, while putting my new name on any new books I publish. Therefore, I decided that will not change.
However, one thing I did try to do was make it easier for people to find my work, whether they look it up under Stephanie Bibb or under Stephanie Flint. I imagine it’ll take a little while for my stuff to show up on search engines under the new name, but this way, it should be linked. Also, when I did the book covers, I was careful to make sure the font didn’t change when I switched out the names. That way the quality of the cover remained the same.
Then I went through and made sure that all the edits were in place, and finally changed my profile name on Smashwords itself. I also uploaded my profile picture, taken by my wonderful husband, Isaac. 🙂
Here’s the response I got from Smashwords about the name change, in case anyone else needs to know it:
You have two options:
1. Open a new account for the new name. I wouldn’t recommend this because the books won’t be linked either with us or with the retailers. It’s also a pain to manage two accounts.
2. Here’s a link to the FAQ’s section on changing the author name:
https://www.smashwords.com/about/supportfaq#Updating
Scroll down a bit until you see the section “I’ve decided to change my Pen Name. How to I change it without de-listing my book at retailers?”
Some additional recommendations: A. You should change your profile to the new name, and then update your front matter for all the books so it reads “Copyright New Name 2012” Originally written and published under the maiden name, Old Name
… this will help our vetting team and our retailers understand why the name on the cover doesn’t match the name in the metadata.
B. Also, update the tags, bio and long description so both names are mentioned. This will help make all the books more discoverable if someone’s searching on the old or new name.
So hopefully this is helpful. Meantime, I’ll see if everything transferred over smoothly. If it did, then maybe the premium distribution will start working again soon. 🙂
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Uncategorized, Writing
It’s my pleasure to announce the latest completed book cover, “30 Days to the End of the World” for Diana Bocco (http://www.dianabocco.com)
Of course, once the final wrap-around cover is completed, I’ll reveal that and let you know when she expects her book to be available. 🙂
Meantime, I thought I’d mention something about promo materials. I’ve decide to plan on including promo materials in all but the most basic cover packages. This included an 8.5×11 flyer, a signature and avatar for those who want (such as if you’re on an online forum like Absolute Write), a thumbnail image, blog image, bookmark, business card, and post card. It’s up to the author whether they want to use them and how, but the idea is to make it easier for potential readers to remember your book.
Say you’re at a convention. Or maybe a book signing, and someone is debating whether or not to buy the book or doesn’t have money on hand. By providing them with a business card or bookmark, especially something that is a teaser, they’ll have something tangible to look back to if they want to look on Amazon for it later. Granted, everyone uses these differently, but I like for the option to be available for those who do. And with something like a bookmark, you could make a point to sign it. Or make notes on the back of a business card, if there’s something you’d talked about. The possibilities are endless, really.
But these are the promo materials I made for this cover, and I thought I’d share. 🙂
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Writing
Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist 