Under the covers

One of the most exciting aspects of indie publishing is having control of the appearance of your books.  I once spoke to a “professional” author (i.e. one whose books are published the traditional way, via a contract with a publishing house) and he said how much he loathed the covers of his books – and I thought that was very sad (a bit like having to admit that your children are ugly).  As regular readers of this blog will know, I have no visual artistic talent at all, but I know a man who does – and he is “my” marvellous cover designer Andrew, at Design for Writers.

I am about to publish a short business book called “The Solo Squid: How to Run a Happy One-Person Business”.  Andrew has done the covers for the Sam Plank books and for all the money laundering piggy books, but “the Squid” is a new venture.  His first requirement was for me to look at other business books aimed at the small business and tell him the covers I liked and disliked; among my dislikes were anything too shiny and corporate and American or anything too cute-sy and homemade.  And – of course – I wanted a squid on the cover.  (Inevitably, with my love of research, I spent a happy half-day reading about the differences between squids and octopuses, and the use of squids in legend, literature and medicine, and discovered that those who study squids are nicknamed cephalopodiatrists.)  Poor Andrew – imagine trying to make artistic sense of that lot.  But he worked his usual magic (which, like all magic, requires enormous amounts of work behind the scenes) and came up with two options:

   

I adored them both, of course, but in the end plumped for the blue/sea-green cover for a few reasons:

• The red cover looks more mysterious – perhaps better suited to fiction than to a business book
• The subtitle – and particularly the word “happy” – is much more obvious on the blue cover
• The shape of the squid on the blue cover coincidentally quite closely matches the squid-like bullet points I have used in the text of the book
• Some people said that they found the red squid scary!

Andrew is now completing the back cover and spine of the book and then it’s on to the next stages: ordering a paper proof (which I always do with a new title – I don’t bother if it’s just a revised version), final checking and editing – and then publication.

With many thanks to Andrew at Design for Writers for permission to reproduce his cover designs in this blog post.

Breaking cover

It’s here!  It’s here!  The cover for “Heir Apparent”!  Andrew at Design for Writers has done his usual magic with my incoherent and garbled requests – and isn’t the grey elegant and slimming.

I’ve had a slice of chocolate cake to celebrate – the skeleton reminded me of the dangers of not eating enough for elevenses.

Putting Sam’s house in order

I bet you’re all wondering how I’m getting on with “Heir Apparent”.  Well I don’t mind telling you that’s its going to be a close-run thing.  It’s Wednesday morning and that means I have today and tomorrow to finish my first draft – with two chapters to go.  My husband reminded me that with “Portraits of Pretence”, I finished early and spent the last day of my retreat swanning around on the paddle-steamers on Lake Léman.  This time, I’ll be packing with one hand and typing with the other.

On the plus side, I am pleased to report that the story works, which is a huge relief.  Until I get pretty much to the end, it’s not a done deal: it could still fall apart.  My great fear is that twenty chapters in I’ll realise that something I wrote in the second chapter makes a nonsense of it all.  And indeed I had a difficult day on Monday when I decided that I just had to rearrange the order of various events in the book – so when I print out the draft I’ll have to read it really, really carefully [beta readers, that’s a heads-up for you too!] to make sure that I don’t talk in the past tense about something that now happens later in the story.

And thank you for your thoughts and comments on the back cover blurb.  I’ve made a few adjustments as a result – great improvements, all of them – and now that’s off to the cover designer.

The next time you hear from me, Sam and I will be back in Blighty – and, just to put you out of your misery, it’s Suffolk.

Honing the sales pitch

Today is something of a red letter day for me: after months of writing (and a fortnight of my writing retreat) I finally know how “Heir Apparent” will end.  To be clearer, I always knew how it was going to end, but now I know how it is going to get there.  It’s a mighty relief, I can tell you.  And to celebrate, I am allowing myself to think about life after writing, i.e. publication.  And the task that is occupying me now is preparation of the text for the cover.

The Sam covers – entirely deliberately – conform to a template.  Each has a background image of a document (usually a bit blurry), then a foreground line drawing of a person.  The title goes across the middle of the cover, with my name beneath it.  Across the top of the front cover is a banner identifying the book as “A Sam Plank Mystery”, and across the bottom of the front cover is a complimentary quotation from a reviewer.  And on the back cover is the dreaded blurb – that some authors say is harder to write than the book itself.  I have written a draft blurb and would very much value your views: would it make you want to buy the book?  What can I do to make it more “grabby”?  And please bear in mind that, for continuity and consistency, I use the back cover blurb elsewhere too: it’s the text that appears on Amazon as the “product description”.  So here goes:

In the final weeks of 1828, a young man returns from the family plantation in the Cayman Islands after an absence of six years to be at his father’s deathbed – and to inherit his estate.  But is the new arrival who he says he is, or an impostor?  Anyone who doubts his identity seems to meet an untimely end, but his sister swears that he is her beloved brother.

With their investigations leading them into the complicated world of inheritance law and due process after death, Constable Sam Plank and his loyal lieutenant William Wilson come face to face with the death trade and those who profit from it – legally or otherwise.  Among them is an old enemy who has used his brains and ruthlessness to rise through the ranks of London’s criminal world.  And as plans progress for a new police force for the capital, Sam and his wife Martha look to the future.

Changing up a gear

I know I’ve been quiet recently; my excuse is that I was on holiday cycling along the Rhine (which I can recommend for both scenery and ice-cream – the Germans are mad for both).  But I am now home again and work on “Plank 6” is at the forefront of my mind.  There are two key deadlines: on 22 July I am off to Switzerland for my writing retreat (seventeen days on my own, just for writing), and then on 18 October I am hoping to publish the book.  For the writing retreat to be of most value, I need to make sure that I have all but finished the first draft by the time I go – which is only 28 days away.  I’m nowhere near that at the moment, so it’s full steam ahead, carving out writing time whenever and wherever I can.  And the writing retreat should – must – result in a draft that I can send out to my lovely beta readers, and then I need to allow time to incorporate their suggested changes, which could be extensive.  I’m getting the vapours just thinking about it.

And of course the inside of the book is only part of it: before publication I need to decide on a title and a cover and a cover blurb, and organise a launch event.  So no pressure, then.  Over the weekend I put together a list of about fifteen possible titles – some are rather dull, others could work.  I’ll narrow that down to five and then put it to the public vote, as usual, in July.  I’ve started looking for possible cover images and documents, but thankfully can leave colour choice to the cover designer – I’ll be interested to see what they add to our current suite of blue, gold, red, green and purple.

One small update: you remember the book-signing that I did at WHSmith in April?  I’ve been trying to extract from them the vast sum I made from the day (read all about it here) and it’s taken nearly as long as writing “Plank 6”.  They’ve apparently designed a new payments system and I’ve had to submit my details to be approved as a new supplier, along with my invoice.  I’ll let you know when the money arrives and I can treat myself to an extra box of Jaffa Cakes.

Taking cover

Things have been a bit quiet on the Sam front in recent weeks as my day job – in the anti-money laundering world – has been very busy.  New legislation in Guernsey has required me to update five of my non-fiction books and negotiate the new publishing process (since migration from CreateSpace to KDP).  It seems to work fairly smoothly but the proof will be in the pudding – or rather, in the printing.

You see, I am in the middle of a frustrating discussion with KDP about the quality of their printing.  Whatever my gripes about their postage charges and time-frames, I was always been delighted with the print quality of books from CreateSpace.  After the migration I placed an order for twenty copies of “Fatal Forgery” with KDP, thrilled to see that the postage cost has dropped significantly because (a) they are now printed in Europe [Poland, as it turns out – at least in this instance], and (b) you get a discount on the postage for ordering multiple copies.  So twenty copies of an average paperback book cost me just £7.28 in postage (compared to US$32.99 for the same order from CreateSpace).

Sadly, it seems that the savings are being made elsewhere, as the books I received from KDP were not up to standard.  Of the twenty I ordered on 8 November 2018, eleven had to be sent back because the books were trimmed 5 mm too narrow, making the cover art fall off the edge:

    

KDP offered to send a replacement set of eleven copies – and they were worse!  They were not only printed wrong again (in exactly the same way – indeed, I’m not convinced that these aren’t the same copies coming back again), but packed loose into a large box with no packing material, resulting in knocked corners and bent covers.  And what’s that ugly bar-code sticker they have added?  For a month now I have been waiting for a resolution, with emails coming from KDP twice a week assuring me that my complaint is of great concern to them and that they are looking into it as a matter of urgency…  Thank goodness I always keep a few copies in stock, otherwise I’d now be finding it impossible to meet bookshop orders.

So I am reserving judgement on KDP as a worthy successor to CreateSpace and am investigating alternatives – other authors have good things to say about Ingram Spark.  I’ll keep you posted.