We’re thrilled to welcome guest and fellow Midnight Seductions Author Elizabeth Black to our pages today!
I want to talk about covers. They can make or break a book
When I choose a book to read, if I’m not familiar with the author, the cover goes a long way to helping me choose a new book. A bad cover can sink a book for me, and I’ve seen some fugly covers. I’m thinking of two covers I have seen that are absolutely abhorrent. One is one of my old covers from a small publisher that crashed and burned a few years ago. It had to be the ugliest cover I’ve ever seen. It looked like someone went to PickAnUglyStockPhoto.com or SuckyClipArt.com, grabbed a few images, and slapped them together. It must have taken a whopping five minutes to make that cover. I hated it.
I have since made that story a freebie, and the new cover is a watercolor done by an artist. It’s one of my favorite covers. It’s simply beautiful.
My two favorite covers are for my two upcoming releases – both erotic versions of fairy tales. The first cover, depicted below, is for my novella “Climbing Her Tower”, which is an erotic version of “Rapunzel”. It’s exactly what I wanted for the story. It’s sensuous without being tacky. The colors are bright and welcoming, too.
The second cover, also depicted below, is for my novella “Trouble In Thigh High Boots”, which is an erotic version of “Puss In Boots”. I’ve written a short story erotic “Puss In Boots” but that story is only a portion of the fairy tale. “Trouble In Thigh High Boots” covers the whole thing. That cover shows off my Puss (a shapeshifer named Tita) as being a flirty little minx. Both covers are exactly what I wanted. They convey to the reader the mood of the stories and they draw you in. Since my erotic fairy tales are part of a series, I wanted the covers to be similar in design.
I’m self-publishing these stories, and I believe beautiful covers are absolutely necessary. I hired a cover artist to make them, and I recommend other self-published authors do the same unless you are very proficient at Photoshop and have an artistic eye. It’s far too easy to end up with a cover that blows chunks. I want my stories to be the best they can be, and that means hiring a cover artist. The cover can make or break a book.
Look for “Trouble In Thigh High Boots” and “Climbing Her Tower” to release in early fall.
Visit Elizabeth Black at her web site
http://elizabethablack.blogspot.com/
Friend her on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/elizabethablack
Check out her Amazon Author Page:
