Monday 26 November 2012

Eyecandy Monday

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Yeah yeah yeah ... this is not quite my usual brand of eyecandy for a Monday. But Mischief Books are officially launching new covers for most of their e-books this week, and in my opinion they are WHOLE lot better. I love my new cover!

This is the old cover for Red Grow the Roses, by the way:



You can do that with e-books. You can relaunch a title looking sharper, more up-to-date, or more mainstream whenever market conditions demand.
(Guess which market phenomenon prompted this lot, heh?)

Here's the old cover for Underworlds, and the new more dark-romancey version:


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Old cover for The Visitor, and the new:

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Old cover for Shameful Thrills, and the new:


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Old cover for Exposure, and the new:

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It may seem trivial (and often all about font) but the fact is that people ARE drawn to books by their covers. A book that looks tacky, old-fashioned, aimed at somebody else entirely, or so cheap that clearly even the publisher didn't give a damn ... it's never going to sell, no matter how great the contents.

Yes, even when it's on a Kindle.

After all, there are millions of books out there ... readers have to pick somehow.

6 comments:

t'Sade said...

I completely agree with the font thing. It is one of those things that attract the eye and get people's attention.

I love the rose cover, yummy.

But, I kind of like the Mischief bar on the side. It was a nice thematic thing that said it was a book from them. When I look at my Kindle, it is easy to see from a distance which book is Mischief (I have quite a few) without even knowing which book it is.

But, still lovely covers.

Madeline Moore said...

I doubt very much I could manage to post a picture on your blog. My new cover is the same as the old cover, but the colours have been muted.

My old title, "Pretty as a Porn Star" is now "Débutante"

Janine Ashbless said...

Yes, I liked the Mischief bar in a practical way - it gave actual info about the contents, which is always a pleasant surprise on a cover. But I suspect it was one of the things the focus groups said made the titles look too much like cheap genre books instead of "real" novels.

As for changing your title, Madeline ... that's another big step further, isn't it? Hmmm.

Anonymous said...

Yep, lovely new covers. Now if only Mischief could actually list all the contributors to its anthologies as authors, so that the books would actually show up on Amazon under the authors' names... This 'Various' thing in the author field clearly isn't working.

t'Sade said...

Sadly, Amazon actually limits the number of entries (editors, illustrators, authors) to a way too short number. When I was creating magazines for Amazon, I tried to put in all the authors but never had enough room.

Janine Ashbless said...

Amazon - we love it and we hate it.