What makes an e-book sell? Part 1

by | Jun 8, 2011 | Writing

I talk a lot with other writers, both online and in real life (because that’s where the beer is!) about what makes an e-book sell. After all these discussions and head-scratching, I’ve come up with one simple, unquestionable answer.

We have no frickin’ idea.

I don’t have any idea what makes a book take off, while better books languish. I have no idea if it’s a cover thing, a blurb thing, or a marketing thing. But I do know a few things that will contribute to good sales, and in this series of posts I’m going to share what I think I know with you. But first, a disclaimer: this works for me, today. It may not work for you, and nothing I say may have any validity six months from now. The world is changing rapidly, and anybody that tells you they know exactly what is going to be happening in publishing a year from now is either a liar or an idiot, and you’re probably well-served to run away from them.

But we’re going to start with two things that I know are important – covers and blurbs.

That old saying “you can’t judge a book by its cover” is very nice when talking about things other than books, but the fundamental truth is that we can, and do judge books by their covers all the time. The cover is one of the most important things about a books, and that’s why a lot of really good writers spend a lot of time agonizing over their covers.

It’s also not something I’m very good at. Frankly, I love the covers of my first two books, but they do absolutely nothing to tell you what the books are about. As much as the cover of The Chosen is exactly what I had in my head when I got started working with my artist, it says nothing about angels, devils, immortals or saving the world. And Hard Day’s Knight is no better.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the HDK cover is beautiful, but look over at the sidebar and tell me that it says anything about funny vampires to you. Yeah, me neither. So I have cover issues, and I really didn’t come to that realization until this weekend at the HeroesCon, where I realized that people would glance at my covers, the covers didn’t speak to them, and they’d move right on. So at some point I’ll redo all the covers. Right now, I have good enough blurbs to get my sales cooking online, and online is where most of my sales come from, so I’m not going to spend the cash right now. But at some point by the end of the year, I’ll redo all the covers. I want a unified theme for all the Black Knight Chronicles books, and I want The Chosen to have a more fantastical feel.

So there’s one thing about covers – they need to reflect what your book is about, at least on some level. Here’s a better cover example, but one that still has a couple of issues in today’s market.Another thing that some folks miss when designing covers is the fact that they don’t just need to look good in mass market paperback size, they need to look good in the thumbnail, too.

Without picking on anyone’s covers, there are few things I notice with covers that take away from the impact.

1) Author’s name – it’s either too small to be legible, too big for the layout of the page, or the color of the lettering makes it impossible to read online.

2) Text – there seems to be a race to find our just how many blurbs, quotes and stats can fit on a cover nowadays. They’re almost always impossible to read online, so strip them off the file! If it’s fuzzy or illegible, cut it out! Move all that information to the blurb, where you have plenty of room to write all that stuff.

3) Overused royalty-free images. This is kinda limited to self-pubbed and small press books, but I’m tired of seeing the same chick looking through her hair at me from the cover of a book. There are a bunch of images out there, please at least look through YOUR GENRE bestsellers before using one that has been used a couple dozen times.

I’m out of space, so next time we’ll talk about blurbs. Leave your favorite cover gaffes in the comments.


Upcoming Events

by | Jun 7, 2011 | Appearances, Comics, Writing

I’ll post more from HeroesCon/ConCarolinas later, once I’ve had a little more sleep and time to process. Needless to say it was a great weekend, and I even sold enough books to make back my table fee! The coolest thing that happened all weekend is at the end of this post, so you’ll have to read the whole thing to get there.

We’re not going to discuss the pile of money I spent on comics, we’re going to call it a win and be done with it.

No really, that’s what we’re doing.

Regardless, I’ve got some great stuff coming up, and I hope some of you will be close enough to come out and join me for it!

This Saturday night, downtown (uptown) Charlotte, I’ll be reading poetry and maybe a selection or two from my novels (but mostly poetry) as part of the Festivities with Collaborative Arts. They invite local artists to participate in their Charlotte Shakespeare Festival as opening acts, and then we get a chance to hawk our wares at intermission. I had a great time doing this last year for their production of Othello, and I’m excited to be asked to return. I go on at 7:15 at The Green, and I’ll have copies of all my books with me for sale.

But I’ll only have two copies of Hard Day’s Knight, because that’s all I have left after HeroesCon.

You like how I snuck that in there? Yeah, it doesn’t get any more stealthy than this.

Then next month I’m participating in a killer mega-signing at Barnes & Noble in Columbia, SC with Kalayna Price, Faith Hunter, Rachel Aaron and Misty Massey. We’re working on a cool name for the event, and I’ll get you more info as we lock down the details, but we’ll have books to sign, a badass giveaway, and a couple of panel discussions as well, so that will be super-cool.

And in September I’ve used up a year’s worth of Marriott points to pay for my hotel room at Dragon*Con in downtown Atlanta. I don’t have a table or anything that cool, because I’m still the new kid, but I’ll be there hanging out, drinking and going to panels. I’ve only ever been to one Dragon*Con, and that was in the very early ’90s, so I’m looking forward to seeing how the show has grown in almost 20 years. I also have some hopes of meeting a few of my favorite writers, like Mercedes Lackey, and getting at least a little bit of useful information out of the panels.

I don’t have much booked for the fall, need to get my ass dialed in on the writing front. I had what I think was a cool idea for a YA series the other morning, so I’ll start playing with that once I finish up Knight Moves. It’s about a kid in a world where most everyone has magic, except for her, and what happens when she finds out that she really does have a gift of her own.

So the coolest thing that happened all weekend – I went to ConCarolinas to hang out with a few friends and sit in on a couple of panels. The first panel I went to was called “The Future of the Printed Word.” Obviously something I have a vested interest in. After all the panelists had their say, I raised my hand to comment, and Faith Hunter (NY Times bestselling author of the Jane Yellowrock series – totally badass shapeshifter series) told me to introduce myself before I got to my comment. So I did, and mentioned that I had three self-published novels, and she then told the room that Hard Day’s Knight was one of the best self-published novels she’d ever read. I blushed, and was touched, and flattered, and all those things. I didn’t even know I knew how to blush anymore! But it was super-cool to get that kind of vote of confidence from someone who I count as a friend, and someone I respect a hell of a lot as a writer, too. That kind of affirmation doesn’t come along very often, and not very often in a public forum, to boot. So needless to say that was the highlight of my weekend.