Book Covers - What Makes them Great?

Every day I ask my eighth grader what she learned in school. Usually it's a snarky "nothing Dad". But I ask myself that question too. Book covers was the learning topic today. The awesome Joanna Penn led the way with a superb article on her blog The Creative Penn. She's a frequent blogger, so the article is: Book Marketing: On Changing Book Covers. For me, this is one of the top three reads on what should go into a book cover. I bookmarked it. JA Penn hit the nail on the head. Emotion. Theme vs. Character. Meeting Genre Expectations. And more. Go read it if you are struggling with book covers.

Her article referred to an author I had never heard of, Russell Blake. He had another awesome article on making good book covers. Russell Blake Judging Books. He also posted the progression of the four book covers he had evolved through on the way to finding the one that he thought was best AND that also was supporting the strongest sales of the book. Great commentary on his thought process along the way. More great stuff if you are struggling with covers.
So for the first time ever, here's the working copy of my first fiction book, River and Ranch Does Landscape reach out and grab with an emotional connect? Does a horse in a meadow in the mountains convey an image that leads to reading and buying? It lacks people. Is this a showstopper? Does this not convey what the book is about? It is about a ranch and horses and riding in the meadows. But it is about people too. So for now it's a working cover until I can figure out something better.

Konrath Howey Shatzkin oh my!

We live in interesting times. JA Konrath, Hugh Howey, and Mike Shatzkin are making it even more interesting. Konrath and Howey are successful indie authors and maybe the largest, most active evangelists for the ecosystem of indie publishing.  Self made successes.  Mike Shatzkin, from what I have found so far, seems to be the lone voice crying out in the wilderness in defense of traditional publishing.

For the most part, Konrath and Howey are looking forward and offering their perspective, experience and expertise on a growing, moving forward industry. The Wild West.

Mike Shatzkin, at 66 yo, offers value in his perspective on the traditional publishing world. But this is almost solely done in defense and justification of an aging, collapsing, rigid, and shrinking industry, that is still the 800 pound gorilla. This is more like an austere Madison Avenue.

Once again we see the same old same old. Big established industry pays no attention to the little yappy dog barking at its heels. It plows on the same as it always has, while the little yappy dog, actually a puppy, keeps finding food and water and keeps on growing.  The little puppy that used to be heel height is now snapping at their kneecaps and still it is ignored. Music has gone through this destructive evolution. It's basically not there anymore. Can traditional publishing not see the similarities in play here? Software is mostly through this and numerous other industries can be described by this same conceptual model.

Big, comfortable, no threat perceived, no need to evolve, sit back and let the good times roll.  Given the number of established industries that have gone through this disruptive evolution, you would think traditional publishing would at least acknowledge that what has happened to others could happen to them. Not so far.  Everyone must still be in the sauna on Madison Ave, waiting for their cigars to be clipped and their dry cleaning to be delivered.

Go read what the above three pundits have written.  Well worth your time, if you are interested in this fast evolving world of writing and authoring and publishing.

Where from this urge to create

What is it with writing?  Why do so many people consider it?  Writing has to be one of the world's ultimate commodities.  Everywhere you look you see it and a bunch of us are madly spewing out more of it every day.  Count me in and let's see what happens.