At our next meeting, we’re going to try something new to tap into the smarts of our members and help each other out. We’re calling it “Five-Minute Feedback.”
We can all benefit from feedback, but five minutes is not a lot of time. But what if you have three book titles you can’t decide between? Or you’re struggling with your elevator pitch and need some suggestions?
I have volunteered myself to be the guinea pig for this idea and if it doesn’t fail miserably, we’ll try it again at future meetings and other members can get their five minutes of feedback.
More than once, I’ve heard presenters at BAIPA meetings suggest that one way to boost your book sales is to redesign the cover. So I thought I would redesign the cover of my first novel, Bones in the Wash: Politics is Tough. Family is Tougher.
Here are five cover designs, including the original. I like the original, so the redesigns don’t look that different. I would love to hear which you like the best, and, if possible, why. (If you click on the three dots at the bottom left, you can see the slides full-screen.)
(I’ve been giving away the ebook version of Bones for months hoping that readers who enjoy it might also be interested in my most recent novel, When I Killed My Father: An Assisted-Suicide Family Thriller. It’s not easy to measure cause and effect, but at least three times, I’ve received a five-star review of Bones and a purchase of When I Killed My Father within the same day or two. Not enough data to prove anything, but enough to continue the experiment.)
At the meeting on Saturday, I will share these five covers, we’ll see if anyone would like to share their feedback out loud, then we’ll do a quick poll. We’ll also encourage participants to share their thoughts in the chat. (You can get a headstart by posting your feedback in the comment section below.)
Interested in “Five-Minute Feedback” for your publishing project? Your title maybe, or cover design, blurb, author photo, elevator pitch? Contact me at [email protected].
One other place to solicit feedback for book cover design, or other elements, like title or blurb, is the BAIPA Answers Forum on Facebook. Recently, former BAIPA board member Arlene Miller has been soliciting feedback on the cover of her upcoming book.
John, I would suggest a cover image of the wash (family laundry) with a couple of bones sticking out of it. To me, that illustrates your point. Antilope Canyon, however, does not, but merely takes the viewer’s imagination away from your point. Antilope Canyon is a famous place, with a lot of emotional meaning for many viewers. They already know it and have already assigned meanings and feelings to that image, so unless you are trying to call up all those meanings and feelings, they are just getting in the way of whatever you are trying to evoke.
Steven, thank you for your comments. It is interesting how the cover photo and title mean different things to different people.
I am trying to evoke the meanings and feelings of Antelope Canyon, and there’s a pivotal scene in the book of a flash flood in a slot canyon. The book takes place in New Mexico and that flash flood chapter is set in Bandelier National Monument, which has brightly colored slot canyons, like Antelope.
And the wash referred to in the title is not laundry, but a dry creek bed.
You’re not the first person to misinterpret the title, but I’m going to stick with it nonetheless.
Okay, if that’s the kind of wash you mean, then why not put that kind of wash in the image? And make it a generic wash, not a world-famous not-quite-a-wash. I know what a wash in the desert is; I’ve walked up them. The fact that I did not identify your image as a ‘wash’ says something. If others have similarly mis-interpreted your image, that might be useful information for you.
Let me gently remind you that the function of the title and cover image is to convey something specific about your story to the potential reader. If your title and image mean different things to different people, perhaps they are not doing their job. That is a beautiful image of Antelope Canyon, and I can understand how you may love it — I love it, too — but unless your story actually takes place in Antelope Canyon, it may be taking viewers away from your story, rather than into it. Just my 2 cents.