New Covers + Starting From Scratch
Spring is finally here! I opened the windows in my front room the other day to let the fresh air in. One of the great things about our unfortunate situation is that the noise pollution on our street is way down, and the air quality is way up.
I'll admit that with this gorgeous weather, I'm itching to plant a small garden. But being the UK the 'garden' would be in the small allotment of gravel nearest the road. Also, I'm only in the UK for another month...
I don’t understand what city folk have against nature.
Wrapping up the Website
Through out March and April, I've been working hard on getting the Awakening website up and running (48hrs of coding, graphic design, and trouble shooting).
Back in October of 2019, I got an email from the company that produces the software I use for the website. In that email, I was informed that the developer of the theme that I was using had no intention of dealing with the security issues their theme had created for their users.
That meant I had to redesign my website no matter what. The question was: did I want to do it twice in the same year?
As it turns out, the version of the software I was using was only going to be supported until June 2020 - I think. It may have been that they weren't developing anything beyond security patches, and then those patches were going to stop the following year. In a nutshell, doing a full rebuild of my site was inevitable. It was just a question of how long I could put it off.
I may be a procrastinator, but deadlines are NOT fun. Especially when I’m balancing writing, job, side-hustle, and life responsibilities.
At the time, I was in the middle of a contract with a client of mine, and I was in the unfortunate position of telling him that the work I had just quoted him for, and that he just got approval for meant nothing because of this change. I used Drupal for him, largely because it had a lot community features that weren’t hidden behind a paywall, or posed a security risk.
Knowing I had to requote, and that the overhaul was likely going to be a thing for my client, my website and writing slowly slid to a lower priority. At least, I’d have the money to cover some book perks, like upgraded covers and new book descriptions.
Books Overhaul
Back in February, I re-hired the artist that did my cover for Awakening Fractured Memories. Why? Well, I enjoyed working with him, he does superb work, and I figured since each artist has their unique style, I'd take advantage of some brand consistency. Even if I had wildly different covers, there'd be this underlying sense that they belonged together.
He wasn't cheap. His prices had doubled since I used him last.
In the back of my mind I’m questioning spending so much money on short stories especially because I didn’t expect to turn a profit. It’s a short story. Two of them in fact. Both of which I barely scrape $0.30 from per sale.
In business, these short stories are what you call ‘Loss Leaders’, suggesting that people who read these short stories, move on to buy the slightly more expensive Collection.
Only they don’t.
But the goal for these short stories was never about profit, it was about seeing if I could finish a project, and to play with the self-publishing side without the pressure of that comes from the expectations of NEEDING to turn a profit. It’d be nice, sure. But for now, the experience of figuring out where my personal best sat remains more than enough.
These changes were about how they impacted reach and interest. Both the cover and the synopsis need to support the promise I'm making, creating a unified and cohesive promise and expectation.
The artist finished the cover for The Game: Beta Testing in mid April, and has started work on the new cover for Dream Eater.
I didn't just overhaul the covers.
I hired an expert to redo the descriptions for my stories as well. I'm decent, averaging just below 50% conversion rate (sales/downloads).
Maybe this is a little too much behind the curtains information for you, but I wanted to have cold hard data about how much a genre focused cover and blurb impacted clicks and downloads. The cover increased clicks by 50%, the upgraded blurb improved downloads by another 80%. That means, from a business sense, I'm attracting more readers, and fewer readers are clicking away.
If only I could get these readers to actually read the story and leave a review.
For your viewing pleasure, here’s a before and after version of the new cover, with a final touch up for typography and increase in contrast to make the cover pop a bit more.
P.S. From Future Amber.
I wasn’t too happy with the typography and the overall darkness of the image, which was an opinion that was shared with respondents through the Awakening Newsletter (sign-up through the form in the footer).
Out of the blue, I reached out to the artist who did the cover for Awakening: Prodigy (now Hunter’s Gambit). She happened to have some time available. As of 2020, she retired into motherhood, and hasn’t said peep since. I’m grateful that she was able to sort out these covers before hand.
At this time I have no intention of doing another iteration of these covers. My time is better spent working on new stories.