Mystery at the Fair, New Cover!

Cover art is such a personal thing, isn’t it? For me, cover art that screams SciFi will draw me in any time. Spaceships seeming to scream through space, exploding planets, people adrift in space in space suits. Oh yeah, that’s the stuff. But what about other genre’s. I read widely, what attracts me to those other stories?

I’m not sure I can answer that. I’d off-handedly say the covers have nothing to do with it but marketers will statistically prove me wrong. I like adventure, spy stories, mysteries, even the odd western will catch my eye. Was it the cover or the back cover blurb? Many will say I was drawn in by the cover art.

But cover art, now that’s an arcane wizardry. Last year I wrote my first cozy mystery. I mostly do my own covers so I did a search on Amazon for cozy mysteries and found a mix of cartoon characters and English cottage gardens as covers. I shrugged. Neither of those were what I wanted for a cover that evoked Arizona, serious, or murder. The book was called Mystery at the Fair.

Not surprisingly, I decided on a fair ride picture hubby had taken years ago. I cut it out of the picture, pixilated it a bit to make it “cartoonish” and placed it, stand alone, against an Arizona yellow background. This year I hear from a trusted author friend, that the cover is killing me. While I trust this friend’s judgment, she is a much better author than I am, I reached out to another author, even more powerful.

Now this second author isn’t a personal friend. I frequent her blog site. I’ve been responding to her posts for a few years now. I did not expect an answer but this author is so nice, she actually responded to my question (and with associated links so she could see what I was talking about). Yep, you guessed it. She confirmed my first friend’s assessment. My cover sucked for the genre.

Now I hate those cutsie cartoon covers for cozy mysteries. No matter it’s a cozy, it’s a mystery. A death is involved. I think the cover should be more serious but I will defer to those smarter and savvier than I am.

Here’s the best part. My first author friend, out of the kindness of her heart, found some time in her overwhelming schedule and made me not only one cover for my existing book but one for my upcoming follow-on book as well. Am I blessed or what!?!?

The new covers rock! She even sent me all of the elements so I can recreate the ebook covers she made into wrap-around covers for my print books. I have everything I need to create a branded series because I’ve already started outlining the third book in the series. I’m not even going to address how she turned what I already in the way of blurbs and log lines into a fantastic tag line for the whole series.

I’m excited to recover/rebrand my first book and the subsequent books. You can tell me covers don’t matter but I’ve been up close and personal with my covers and I’m a new convert. Yes, covers DO matter.

How about you? Do you remember a cover that just sucked you right into the book? Please share!

Kindred Spirits released March 14th! I’m so excited about it. You can buy it and my other books at: Apple, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, Gumroads  or Chatebooks today!  You can also see all of my books on https://conniesrandomthoughts.com/my-books-and-other-published-work/. If you’ve read any of my books, please drop a review on the site where you bought it. It’s a big help to me in the book rankings each vendor uses to promote the books on their sites. Thanks in advance.

The Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is sponsored by the website Forward Motion (http://www.fmwriters.com). The tour is you, the reader, traveling the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. There are all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s always something new and different to enjoy. If you want to get to know the nearly twenty other writers check out the rest of the tour at http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com! Up next: L.C. Aisling.