Becky Taylor’s Not So Secret Feelings About Bad Cover Design

Admission: When it comes to covers, I’m completely superficial—looks matter. This is because I know that while we are often and repeatedly reminded to not, ‘judge a book by its cover’ the world absolutely does just that.

Now I know, I know—you found that gem in that used bookstore fifteen years ago. It has the most ridiculously bad cover you’ve ever seen, but the WORDS, it’s the words in that book that matter because those words changed your life!

Yeah, I bought that book too.

Once.

I still think it’s a great book and I’m happy I gave it a chance despite its horrifically bad cover design—most people didn’t.

The point is, unless you already have brand name recognition with legions of fans waiting, desperately, for you to drop that next book—many people are not going to give your book a chance if the exterior bad.

This is because people, being human and needing this skill to survive for hundreds of thousands of years, are wired to make associations.

Large animal=run

Small animal=try to catch and eat

Berry that killed Fred last week=don’t touch, probably kill me this week

Bad cover=Bad book.

Even though we, very intellectualized modern humans know these associations are not always true—we still make them every day, consciously and unconsciously.

So all of this just to say, “I know that, when it comes to publishing, how your book looks on the outside (and the inside too, but interior layout is a whole other post) really does matter.”

I was super grateful that with ASCENDANT I got to have an opinion. Quite frankly, as a writer it would pretty torturous to have to stand next to all that hard work and love, trying to pimp it and sell it to a busy, busy world, if it had ended up dressed in a cheap crappy outfit.

See, totally superficial.

Anyway, that was one of the nice things about working with a small press, they asked me up front what did I like, what did I want, what did I hate—while never making any specific promises about what the end result may or may not end up like.

I sent them a whole list of things along with examples of a couple of book covers I really loved and admired.

All of this was absolutely wonderful—believe me, author’s don’t always get that much input up front. But the single thing that I think made the biggest impact on the final design of my cover was the stock photo I sent to the publisher along with the note that said: I’d really, really like a picture of someone's eyes peeking over a book.

And this is how they ran with it:

Honestly, I couldn’t be happier. 

For more information about Rebecca Taylor and her books, visit her website HERE!

One Dark Secret About Wendy S. Russo

I didn’t publish my first book, but not for lack of trying. I boxed a trilogy, bound, with cute little labels on each of six parts, and mailed it to Bantam Spectra in 1999. I felt I owed it to my then-boyfriend to submit it after the two years I spent working on something that had ZERO chances of being picked up. It was, after all, Star Wars fan fiction.

Imagine my surprise when, ten months later, the mailman left the box at my doorstep with a  letter from Bantam Spectra praising my nerve and politely declining my submission. It impressed me so much that I sent them a thank you card because all that time, I honestly thought it was buried somewhere in a Staten Island landfill. Had I sent that box today, I am positive that it would be dropped in the trash unopened.

I didn’t publish my second book, a two volume epic fantasy, either. Or my third, a short contemporary novel. And I struggled for ten years on an epic fantasy that I worked into the fiction equivalent of meringue whipped way too long.

January Black is the first of my stories that I felt strongly enough about to research publication. It went through eight rounds of editing, endured dozens of rejections (mostly by non-response), and nearly missed an opportunity due to an interested acquiring editor having a serious family crisis. (A year later, she lost her sixteen-year-old son to cancer.) It was finally released by Crescent Moon Press on January 15, 2013, and since then, it has been enjoyed by people all over the world. It’s received high praise from Conservative Teachers of America, and won a silver medal at the 2013 Readers’ Favorite Awards.

Darkly Delicious YA asked me to talk about one dark secret. Today, I will admit to being very insecure. When I got that box back from Bantam Spectra, I shoved it in a corner of my closet because couldn’t bear to throw it away. It had somehow managed to avoid being tossed in the trash by people who had no reason to care, so how I could I, it's creator, be so flippant? At the same time, just looking at the box reminded me of what the letter from them said. I shoved it in the back of the closet so I wouldn’t be mortified by own audacity every time I saw it.

I am an author, and I am also a creature of doubt. I feel like I should be confident in my storytelling abilities, but I’m not. I feel like I should have being a published author figured out, but I don’t. I feel like I should have my first series in the bag and working on a second. So why am I struggling to progress on either series I’ve started since completing January Black in 2010?

Honestly, that book--despite the errors that readers have told me are on every page—is a tough act to follow. Readers have praised it highly. Conservative Teachers of America is hoping that I will continue writing novels that present traditional values in a way kids will absorb without realizing. And did I mention it won an award?! How in the f*@&  do I follow that but with a bigger award?

It’s a reality, for any author, that there will be a book that does not meet the readers’ expectations, one that just won’t be a good as the last one. It has to happen sooner or later. But, you know what thought creeps up on me while trying to beat Level 154 of Candy Crush? What if I never write anything that compares to my first novel? What if the readers who have enjoyed it are disappointed by everything else I put out? Can I change my genre? Can I start writing LGBT erotica or even open-door sex scenes without readers thinking I’ve sold out or lost my way. In twenty years, when I look at my backlist, will I think to myself, “Well that was a slow roll down hill?”

Of course, if I don’t publish another book, I won’t have a backlist for readers to have an opinion on one way or another. Instead, I’ll be a one-hit-wonder, without a hit, and I’m insecure about that as well.

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