Cover Reveal: Rebels against Tyrrany

This week, the first book in my new series went to the publisher. 
It seemed like a good opportunity to “reveal” the cover to future readers and discuss the process of cover design.

 

Covers can kill – novels, I mean. Nothing, studies have shown, is more influential in enticing a potential reader to pick up a book while browsing in a bookstore than an “attractive” cover – and nothing is more likely to put a potential reader off than a “bad” cover.  A good cover will attract readers that would never buy the book based on subject, title or author, and a bad cover will make the very people who would love a particular book scorn it.  Covers matter!

But -- aside from "attractive" being highly subjective -- being “attractive” isn’t enough. 

Beautiful -- but would it sell books?

A cover that is “attractive” (even in the advertising sense of the word) may get a browsing reader to read the cover blurb, but if the picture has nothing to do with the content, they are likely to put the book down again. There is no point having a vampire or a half-naked woman on the cover of your book if the book isn’t about vampires or beautiful women in sexual situations.

When I first started publishing novels, I let the publisher design the cover, thinking they were the professionals and they would understand the market much better than I.

Big mistake.

When it comes to historical fiction, it is vitally important to immediately evoke the time period of a novel because you discredit yourself instantly if you get it wrong. Publishers, however, are not historians. They don’t know the difference between 11^th and 16th-century armor, or between a Spitfire and a Piper Cub.

Crusaders in plate armor? I don't think so!

So I now “design” my own covers, by which I mean I select the overall thematic components, and then hire a professional graphic designer to do the fine work essential to make the image look as good as anything a major publishing house can produce.

Most "advice" I have read about selecting cover says: "look what everyone else in your genre is doing and copy them." Well, if I write what everyone else is writing and don't have anything new to add, then that the way my covers should indeed be designed. As a reader, if I see another cover with actors in period costumes with their heads cut off, I will feel nauseous and certainly NOT buy the book precisely because the cover looks like the last 13 million books that have been published.

As someone who values creativity in writing, I also value creative covers. I do not want my covers to look like every other historical fiction book that has been dumped on the market over the last 10 years. So, no headless actors in period costumes. No empty helmets. No cartoon characters leaning on their swords. (Why any self-respecting knight would blunt his sword tip by driving it into the ground and then leaning on it is beyond my low brain capacity.)

I wanted images that would look realistic yet could be composed to reflect the content. For the Jerusalem Trilogy, I also wanted the reader to get progressively closer to the main character. On the cover of the first book, Knight of Jerusalem, Balian is shown from the back quart and his face is mostly hidden by his helmet, while Jerusalem dominates the picture. In the second book, Defender of Jerusalem, he is charging at the reader, but still obscured by his helmet while Jerusalem is more distant, receding. In the third book, Envoy of Jerusalem, the reader finally sees Balian head on and Jerusalem is lost. Instead, Balian separates the antagonists Saladin and Richard the Lionheart, while the Christian captives being driven into slavery form the background.

With the Last Crusader Kingdom, I sought to juxtapose Frankish secular power (represented by a castle) with Greek ecclesiastical power (represented by a Greek Orthodox church), and between them the symbol of change ― a fresh wind blowing ― in the form of a sailing ship bearing the crosses of Ibelin.

Now, however, I wanted a sharp change in style to signal that this is a new series, not just a continuation of the previous books (even if there is some overlap in characters!).

I wanted to connect with the period in which the book is set, the 13^th century, by using images that remind the reader of the wonderfully evocative, colorful and often whimsical manuscript illustrations of the Middle Ages.  

 









 
Indeed, I initially looked for real manuscript illustrations that might reflect the contents of the book. I experimented with using one of these, but the effect was something entirely too violent. (I also subsequently changed the title.)

So I ended up asking my amazing graphic designer to develop an “illumination” that was completely original. This had to show knights jousting (an important element of the plot) and it had to show an Ibelin taking on an Imperial knight (symbolical of their overall stance rather than an event), but it also had to hint at the love-story that is also an important aspect of this book.  All without being too cluttered! The result:

The back cover, on the other hand, is devoted entirely to the relationship between the two main characters. Here's the back cover image without the text.

Next week I will open the cover to tell you more about the content of the novel. You can help me chose the back cover blurb, however, by taking part in a survey at: https://www.facebook.com/HelenaPSchrader/


 Meanwhile, enjoy my published novels:

 Buy now!                                       Buy now!                                          Buy now!

 

Buy Now!

Write About Things You Know – Not About Yourself

English teachers and other instructors of creative writing classes are in the habit of telling aspiring young writers to “write about things you know.” There’s a good reason for this. If they didn’t make this seemingly obvious suggestion, they would have a lot of students coming to them for ideas or failing to write a single sentence because they “didn’t know what to write about.”

The problem with this practical piece of advice is that, while useful in the classroom, it is too often transferred out of that context. “Writing about what you know” is a way to get started. It is a way to practice and exercise, to develop skill and style. It is not – repeat not - the finished product.

A finished product is a piece of writing that you wish to share with a wider public than your teacher, classmates, close friends and relatives. And this is where it is important to make a very important transition.

If you are writing for public consumption – i.e. if you plan to publish in a magazine, on the internet or to publish a book – then you should not confuse “writing about things you know” with writing about yourself. Yes, if you’re already a celebrity, people might be interested in you, but, if not, the chances are that no one who doesn’t already know you is going to be interested in reading about you. Do you go out and buy autobiographies of people who have never done anything exceptional or heroic? Do you read books about people who have not achieved fame or fortune?  And if you do, how many have you bought? Have you read a dozen, a score, a-hundred-thousand? Believe me, the market for autobiographies by John and Jane Doe is very limited indeed. In fact, it is limited to about the number of copies John and Jane Doe are prepared to buy themselves to try and give away.

“Writing about what you know” does not, however, necessarily mean writing about yourself. It can mean writing about a familiar environment, or abstracting from personal experience to more universal experiences. In this sense, “writing about what you know” can indeed be useful component in a finished product. The point is simply that the finished product is unlikely to use this knowledge one-to-one as in autobiography, but as part of a larger, more universally appealing story.

In short, while it is perfectly legitimate to try to learn writing skills without a particular message in mind, no one should aspire to be a writer unless he/she has something to say.  In fact, no one should aspire “to be a writer” at all because being a writer is meaningless; the message is everything. Writing is a means to an end, not an end in itself. In the same way, writing “about what you know” should be a means to an end: either a way to learn writing skills or a way to deliver a more profound and universal message in a convincing manner.

Literature vs Best Sellers

One of my interns last summer was working on a PhD in English Literature. On a long drive back from a meeting, we got to talking about what defined good literature. For someone who has been out of academia for more than two decades it was a useful “reality check” – and highly motivating.

“Character and character development” were the two most important features that this PhD-candidate identified as the basis of great literature. Not suspense or thrills. Not relevance or trendiness. Not utility to the reader. Not originality of delivery. Not creativity or outlandishness. Not even plot. A piece of literature is not about what happens, it is about the human experience.

I found this motivating because it reminded me of why I write. I write to inspire people to go on living. The “telling of good deeds is like alms and charity; it is never lost labor, but always has its reward,” as Chandos’ Herald wrote to explain why he was writing a biography of Edward of Woodstock. So too I write about people, whose experiences overcoming adversity or discovering spiritual strength, can serve as inspiring examples to others.

However, the answer would have been very different if I had asked about what made a “best seller.” Best sellers have to be trendy, have to hit a collective nerve in society, appeal to current tastes, or focus on a current concern. A best seller tells us as much about the society in which it resonated as about the book itself. Today’s best seller is tomorrow’s dud, and few of us would even finish many of the books that were “best sellers” in other generations or cultures.

Every author needs to be clear about his/her objective. If the goal is to write a best seller, then it is very important to understand the market: what do people want to read about, how do they like it delivered, what length sells best, what genre is “in.” On the other hand, if the goal is a work of literature, then one can (perhaps should) ignore current trends and follow one’s inner compass.

Of course it can theoretically happen that one’s inner compass is in sync with current trends and a book written from the heart can also capture a mass audience.  Yet trying to serve two different masters at the same time is usually a formula for disaster. 

Therefore, I have decided that this year, as I write about a truly remarkable character, who I hope will be an inspiration to those few readers who discover him, I will close my hears to the clamor of the market and focus on my inner voice. This year, I want to write a good book, the best book possible – regardless of whether it will sell or not.

Birth of a Book, Part 10 -- Marketing

This is the last part of a ten part series on the stages involved in producing a novel.

Most aspiring writers I know do not expect or want to market their books. I was no different when I started writing. I considered myself a “writer,” an “artist.” Marketing was something slightly dirty, money grubbing, something for “ad executives” and Madison Avenue. I remember telling people that "my books are my children – they may not be perfect but I love them, warts and all. You can’t sell you children!" I felt it was both beneath my dignity and beyond my capacity to aggressively get out and sell my books. I felt, furthermore, that selling books required a totally different set of skills from writing them. Even if, I told myself, I had the time to sell books (which I don’t), I wouldn’t know how to do it or be very good at it if I tried.

But as I mentioned earlier, commercial publisher have only limited budgets, which are dedicated for the most part to the books of already famous people and successful authors, while print-on-demand publishers don’t do any marketing at all. Furthermore, the sheer number of books coming onto the market makes it increasingly important to market books.

To understand the situation, let me provide some key statistics:

• In 2010 roughly 450,000 books were published in the USA.

• Of these, roughly 135,000 were self-published

• Roughly 15% of all published books were novels; e.g. some 67,000 novels were published in the U.S. in 2010 alone.

• Less than 3% of all books published in the USA sold more than 1,000 copies. That’s about 13,500 books – a lot of books! – but still only 3%.

• Today, on average, each published title sells 70 copies. That means for every best seller that sells 10,000s, 100,000s or even a million books, there are a lot of books out there that sell only a handful of copies.

In short, if you are not a celebrity or an otherwise already a successful author, the chances are your book is going to be one of those that sells less than seventy copies – unless you are prepared to do something to promote your book yourself. Thus, whether you like the idea of marketing your book on not, and whether you think you are suited to the task or not, it is advisable to be prepared to market your own product.

There are two ways of doing this, of course. One is to hire a professional book or literary publicist. There are many agencies offering marketing and publicity services to authors today. Many are very professional and good. They are not cheap. I was quoted a price of $1,000 per day by one London agency -- with no guarantees of success. There are also a lot of agencies out there offering services at a reasonable price. Most of these have a standard package of services (press release, reviews, website, social media page, twitter, book fairs, contests). They do not have time to read the books they market. They don’t need to. They rely heavily on in-put from the author and operate using a “cookie cutter” approach. They can afford to charge reasonable fees precisely because they churn out marketing materials for lots of books that are pretty much the same regardless of the book.

Alternatively, you can try to do all the marketing yourself. This requires a lot of time, effort and above all patience. At a minimum, you will need at least one website with considerable content – not just the cover image and cover blurb. You will need to have a blog -- again with serious content that is updated regularly. You should be prepared to surf the internet for the blogs and websites of your competitors and to actively take part in social media forums on topics related to your book. Other things you can do are:

• Enter your book in literary contests

• Place ads for your book in newspapers, journals etc.

• Pay to have your book to be displayed at book fairs

• Organize readings and signings at your local book shop (but don’t expect a lot of people to come!)

Most important, be creative. The world of book marketing is wide, wild and constantly changing.

Just remember, unless you are prepared to market you finished product, that wonderful flash of inspiration that you had at the start of the creative process is likely to be drowned in the ocean of books flooding the market and will end up as one of those titles that does not sell even 100 copies.

Birth of a Book, Part 9: Reviews

This is the ninth part of a ten part series on process of producing a novel.

Reviews are both a mirror and a marketing tool. They are to be valued for both reasons.

Reviews – honest, objective reviews from strangers – are the very best way to assess your success as a novelist. Obviously, not every reviewer is fair or honest, and I have become disgusted with the number of reviewers who only regurgitate back what was on the cover blurb or in the “Forward” or “Notes” of the book itself. But increasingly, through online retailers, authors are getting a lot more feedback from real readers. These reviews may not be from famous critics and they may lack literary style, but they are from the very people you depend on to buy your books. The unexpected reviews from readers I never dreamed my books would appeal to are those that have been most exciting and satisfying, while complaints from readers about one or another aspect of my books make me rethink my writing. Thus the “mirror” function of reviews should never be neglected.

The marketing function of reviews is, however, increasingly important, particularly for the self-published novelist. In the absence of a large distribution network and well-connected executives, reviews are the single most important means of convincing readers that your book has value. Press releases may tell them about the content, and book signings might draw attention to the title. Ads may create a degree of name recognition. Interviews will generally focus on the process of writing and the author’s objectives. Reviews, however, offer readers more than all of the above. Reviews provide an assessment.

This has led many novelists into the temptation of buying good reviews or pushing family and friends into writing favorable reviews. Such methods work for a while, but even assuming potential customers don’t see through them from the start, people who are misled into buying a book that doesn’t meet expectations are the first to post their own negative reviews on the sites of online retailers. If you have as many one star reviews as five star reviews, readers are going to guess that the five star reviews were fake.

Furthermore, I have had readers tell me that they don’t bother to read 5 star reviews, assuming these rave reviews are just “hype.” They prefer to read the critical reviews because these generally address both the positive and negative, the successful and the less successful aspects of the book. These sophisticated readers, incidentally, usually also dismiss as “crap” any review that is simply insulting. In short, the reviews taken most seriously by these decerning readers are those in the 3 to 4 star category.

Nor should we forget the importance of quantity. A book with no or only one review looks like it hasn’t been read very much. It looks like a loser. A book with scores of reviews looks like a winner. Bestsellers have hundreds of reviews. So, let me take this opportunity to appeal to all of you – my readers – to post reviews of any of my novels that you have read. They don’t have to be long. Just tell others what you liked – or didn’t like – about my books.

Thank you!

(Note: My next entry will be January 28 after I return from holiday.)

Birth of a Book, Part 8: Self-Publishing

This is the eighth part of a ten part series on the process of producing a novel.

Self-publishing got a bad name from “vanity” publishing, a racket in which a “publisher” charges an author an outrageous fee to “publish” a book. I know all about it. I did it and got burned. The bottom line is that such schemes not only allow a lot of books of execrable quality to be published, they also kill good books because these are simply dumped on the market and left to die. Vanity publishers do no marketing for books whatsoever and often go bankrupt at regular intervals to avoid paying any royalties to authors who have managed to sell their own books.

In today’s world, however, “self-publishing” is also used to describe “print-on-demand” publication services. Here too the author pays for a professional to format, print, register and list his/her book. Often cover design is included in a standard package or as an extra service. The author can select formats from hard to trade paperback and ebooks. Kindle formatting is increasing popular. These pay-for-service publishers differ significantly from the “vanity publishers” because their charges are reasonable, but just like “vanity publishers,” they do no marketing for the books published under their imprint. They list the books with the major wholesalers and online retailers, but they do not market them.

While this may sound like a serious disadvantage, readers of my blog entry about commercial publishers will remember that the majors don’t necessarily do a great deal of marketing for the all their titles either. If you are a new author or you have a book with only a niche market that probably won’t attract the attentions of the majors anyway, self-publishing is a viable, possibly attractive, alternative.

I have become a convert to self-publishing ever since I found Wheatmark, a very reputable and competent publishing partner. (Note: not all pay-for-service publishers are either reputable or competent and you should do careful research on line before selecting one.) The main advantages of self-publishing are: 1) time to market, 2) control of the product, and 3) control of the marketing and publicity.

Time to market is much faster with a self-published book. Commercial publishers generally take a year or more after a manuscript has been accepted for publication. Self-publishing generally takes half that, and can take as little as 4 months if the manuscript is in good shape.

Control of the product is, of course, even more important. No editor at a pay-for-service publisher is going to tell you to “make this a happy ending,” or slap a cover on the front that you abhor. They do reject manuscripts that are offensive, pornographic, slanderous, incite to violence etc. etc. or of too poor quality, but if they accept a manuscript and you are playing by the rules, they are not going to start trying to interfere with your product. Likewise, they will not accept amateurish covers and have excellent graphic designers on hand to help design an attractive cover for you, but if you have a good design, they will let you use it. They are not going to force you to accept something you do not want. Instead, you will have the opportunity to work with them until you have something with which you are both comfortable.

Finally, because they do not pretend to do any marketing for you, you know from the start that marketing and publicity are all up to you. Knowing that, you can design your own marketing and publicity campaigns, or you can hire other professionals to do this for you. You decide how much time and money you want to invest. You decide if you want to do a “hard” or “soft” sell. You decide what aspect of your book you want to stress.

Ultimately the biggest disadvantage of self-publishing is that you really have no one else to blame if things go very wrong, but I have personally found the experience enlightening and educational – if not always satisfying.

Birth of a Book, Part 7: Agents

This is the seventh part of a ten part series on the process of producing a novel.

In my last entry I mentioned that many commercial publishers nowadays will not accept manuscripts directly from authors. Instead they require manuscript submissions to come through literary agents. As a rule, there are more publishers of non-fiction books that do not require representation, while publishers of fiction almost always do.

Agents, like publishers, generally have specialties and preferences. Therefore, an author should very carefully research literary agents and approach only those with an interest in representing the kind of fiction they write. The best way to select potential agents is to consult one of the many reference books about the publishing industry such as the annual “Writer’s Market: Where and How to Sell What You Write” or Jeff Herman’s “Guide to Book Publishers, Editors & Literary Agens” which is also updated regularly.

However, keep in mind that it is almost as difficult to get an agent as a publisher. Maybe harder. The most recent statistic I heard is that literary agents receive between 70 and 80 manuscripts per week. That makes for roughly 3,750 manuscripts a year. No agent reads all submissions. In fact, as a rule agents read parts of maybe one tenth of the manuscripts they receive. Most submitssion are rejected based on the letter of inquiry alone. "Thanks very much but we are not taking any new clients at this time...." Or "thank you for your submission but we see no market for a book of this kind...." etc. etc.

Even if you get past the first cut (which may be made by an intern or very junior employee), agents still rarely read an entire manuscript. They will read a couple of chapters at most and rapidly make a decision about whether they like the book enough to want to represent it or not. On average, a literary agent will sign on 1-2 new customers per year. Many refuse to take new customers at all, feeling they have enough work with the clients they already have. In short, you’re probably going to have to write to a lot of agents before you find representation. Once you have an agent, they – at least in theory – should be able to open doors to publishers, but they make no guarantees.

My own experience with agents is not very good. Let me explain. After I did my research in the above references and carefully selected only those agents who specifically stated an interest in the subject and genre of my book and indicated they were still accepting clients, I approached 18 different agents. I carefully followed the individual guidelines about whether I should submit electronically or in hard copy, whether to send a synopsis or first chapter etc. etc., and followed instructions about a short introductory letter meticulously. Yet all eighteen agents rejected the manuscript (unseen) because there was “no market” for the book. Since I’d already written book, however, and this was a piece of non-fiction, I decided to approach publishers directly. I found six publishers that specialized in the genre (aviation history) and wrote letters of inquiry to them. Three (50%!) showed interest, and I rapidly signed a contract with one of them. What is more, I have since sold the TV rights to this book.  In short, there was a comparably hot market for the very book that all 18 literary agents specializing in the genre claimed there was no market for. This suggested to me that not one of them knew the very market they purported to be experts about very well.

After this experience, I felt there was very little point wasting time, effort and emotion on intermediaries who appeared to be more a hindrance to success than agents of it. I have never written to a literary agent since, but that is a personal choice and many of you may find agents receptive and helpful. Certainly, as stated above, they are the “door keepers” to the larger, commercial publishers. As I outlined earlier, there are advantages to publishing with “the majors," so if they are your target an agent may be an necessary evil. However, the other option is self-publishing, a topic I will discuss in a later blog entry.

Birth of a Book 6: Commercial Publishers

This is the sixth part of a ten part series on the process of producing a novel.

I have published four of my books with commercial or trade publishers and the rest have been self-published. Both forms of publication have their advantages and disadvantages. This week I will address the advantages and disadvantages of commercial publishers.

The first thing aspiring novelists should know about major publishers is that on average they accept only 1% of all books submitted to them in any one year.

Second, the major publishers don’t really want “niche” books. Just like the big pharmaceutical firms, they want every book they publish to be a “block buster.” After all, they have large staffs and fancy, expensive New York or London offices to finance. In fact, the overheads are so high that despite being very picky about which books the publish (see above), they still lose money on 9 out of 10 books. In short, books have to have the potential make a lot of money before a major publisher can afford to invest in them. Books most likely to make "big bucks" are books by celebrities – or already successful authors. I recently heard that publishers won’t even look at a book from an author who doesn’t have 2,000 twitter followers. It’s not easy to have that number of followers, if you aren’t already famous.

Last but not least, because the majors want books with “universal” appeal, very, very few accept “unsolicited” manuscripts. This means that in most cases you will need an agent in order to even approach a commercial publisher with a manuscript. (Next week I will discuss agents.)

The greatest advantages commercial publishers offer are well established and extensive distribution networks, marketing expertise and large marketing budgets. If a commercial publisher decides to invest in a book, they can - and do - spend hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars doing so. They can buy bookstore window space, space in airport bookstores, ads in important publications, TV-spots, radio-spots, etc. etc. etc. They have the relationships to editors and talk-show hosts that will increase the probability that your book will be prominently reviewed, that you will get invited to appear on TV or give radio interviews – all those things you see successful writers doing.

But every aspiring author should understand that publishers can’t afford to do that for every book they publish. Big as the marketing budgets appear to be, they are nevertheless finite and far too small to market all titles equally. Publishers need to allocate resources carefully. What this means is that they invest the bulk of their marketing resources in only a tiny percentage of their titles. Furthermore, they tend to invest where they expect the greatest return on investment. In plain language: the more famous you are, the more marketing support you can expect. If you are already a celebrity (rock star, national politician, popular athlete), your book will be given the lion’s share of the marketing budget. If you are the new kid on the block, the first-time author, you are going to get the scraps. These can be so meager you may hardly notice anything.

Despite the comparative success of my four non-fiction books, I have found self-publishing more satisfying for my novels. I’ll discuss why in future entries.