Marketing Images: a Study in Compromise

A strong image with room for the text. That's Layla, the alien girl in the book.

by Louis Shalako

For marketing images I have a few limitations. For one thing my old Pentium II computer won’t operate Adobe CS-6, (Photoshop) a major program for making book covers and all sorts of wild other images.

Staying within these limitations, I have two choices. I can farm the work of making an image out, or I can do it myself using the simplest of paint programs. The cheapest ebook cover I am aware of is $25.00 U.S. and she doesn’t include a POD cover. I would still have to acquire the original ‘clean’ image and make my own for the paperback, as similar as possible, using the paint program I have available. This sort of limits her in the fonts and effects she could use.

The snake sort of swallows its tail in that case.

It is ideal have the ebook and the paperback covers similar if not identical as it avoids confusion in the shopper’s mind when they are clicking around on the average bookstore website. They don’t just keep going because they thought it was a different title; get lost and give up.

The other option is to get a pro marketing image, by that I mean a stock image were there is no text. From a stock photo website, you pay by credit card and download a digital image.

Because of those limitations, I have no choice but to take the cheapest option anyway. If I am capable of making a halfway credible rendition of someone else’s design, I might as well have done it myself. However, the odds are they would be using Adoble CS-6 or something very much like it. It’s strictly either/or here. 

There’s not much point in me making one version and them another. It would still cost twenty-five or more dollars.

So my marketing images cost $5.65 plus whatever interest I end up paying on the credit.

The big difference in the resulting image is that I can’t meld two or three layers together. It affects the design, and so far I haven’t taken a straight shot and tried using the limited special effects that I do have. I buy a pro image and then put a title on it, the author name on it.

Sometimes there is a superscript. I only have limited fonts and I only have limited colours.

Typical POD cover using Createspace free template.

Even so, I seem to have learned a lot. If the book or story is targeted at men, put a girl on the cover, if it’s targeted at women, put a handsome man on the cover. I zoom out on the created image to see if I can read the name when the image is real small. I look for strong and dramatic images, that stand alone in the pictorial sense. They don’t need anything added.

The technology available affects the design.

Since I can’t meld layers together, I’m looking for entirely different, whole and substantial images. I’m not looking for elements or components that can be layered together, like a red rose on a white table with a face faded in above and behind, and sparkling galaxies whirling around in the background. I simply don’t have the technology. If I needed something like that and found a suitable marketing image on a stock site, I would of course buy it. If it was cheap enough.

Then I would stick my text on there and there’s my book cover. I would still have exactly the same limitations from the paint program.

This would obviously affect the branding of the works. It would be a challenge for all the different pen-names, all the genres and all the books and stories I have out there.

Just as an example, the third in the Maintenon mystery series, Blessed Are the Humble, is a pro image.

It would be nice to find a few more of the same type. First of all, I like that one. Secondly, I would prefer not to have to replace it anytime soon. I have no money to waste. It takes time to shop and time to make them. I would very much like to upgrade the covers of Redemption: an Inspector Gilles Maintenon mystery, the first in the series, and also the cover of The Art of Murder. Then there is the original novella, the one that inspired the series.

The Handbag’s Tale has been soldiering on for a couple of years now with a cover that looked okay at the time, considering my limited experience, but it clearly needs something new—something branded, something that is clearly recognizable as a mystery novel.

When you think about it, it’s like twenty-three dollars to get four new images. What I hope to do is to write quite a few more mysteries. Each of the covers must be ‘branded’ to some degree. The real killer is the time spent on a stock photo site looking for something, anything, that will work.

It’s always going to be a compromise, no matter how good your computer and your photo-shop type program. The real compromise is in the time it takes.

I have a nice little story here, it’s about 6,500 words. The image for such a product still costs the same as a full-length book. The difference is that I might spend an hour, maybe two looking for something I can use.

I spent days looking for an image for Horse Catcher, and that one ended up being a real big...compromise.

It’s just that simple: can I make this work, because it’s a good image and it fits well enough. But how will text look on there? And who is this book written for? Women don’t get turned on by other women—they get turned on by men.

If it’s an erotic or romantic story geared to women readers, then everything about that image matters. If the story is targeted at gay males, it still matters. Don’t put a hot chick in a bikini on the cover. So much of this should be no-brainer stuff but it still took me some time to get this far.

If an aircraft is a series of compromises flying in close formation, then writing a book and putting the whole thing together is a study in the art of compromise.

The Case of the Curious Killers, (iTunes.)

END

Marketing Images for Books and E-Books.

It's hard to believe that this book marketing image was originally created using pencil-crayons, typing paper cut-outs and scotch tape on black bristol board. The text was added with Paint.NET.

When I shot the picture, the flash was turned on, and it resulted in a big spot of glare, and I thought the shot was ruined. However, I stuck it into Nero Photosnap and fiddled around with lightness and contrast, as well as the different colour channels. I also probably sharpened it up, although it was some time ago.

The next in the Shalako Publishing series of PODs, (print on demand) paperbacks will be, 'The Case of the Curious Killers.' It will be another 5 x 8" book. Recalling how it felt to hold the 'On the Nature of the Gods,' paperback, with its really good cover art, I am looking forward to uploading this one on CreateSpace and seeing what it looks like.

That's no reason to rush the process, and as long as I can put out one a month or so the schedule is fine. It also leaves me open to other things, not the least of which is to get out in the fresh air after a long winter. That one should be out in the first week of May, followed by 'The Shape-Shifters' in June.

Oh, I almost forgot: here's an excerpt from, 'The Case of the Curious Killers,' a kind of space-opera.

>>>

The music had a syncopated, throbbing, thumping bass-line. A ragged cheer went up from clumps of youthful aliens here and there, and they came running out to the center, forming up in couples, trios, quads and odd-numbered formations. The biggest was a v-shaped formation, which looked like a club, due to the striped colours of their knee-length silken t-shirts.


This was merely the overture. He observed in fascination, as the bodies, including more of the alien types, began moving in a curious, shambling gait. Hartle caught the rhythm, and began to groove a little himself, conscious that he danced like a white man at the best of times. Their bizarre, long-armed, bandy-legged, ape-like shuffle was intriguing; he had to admit. As the music and the people began to speed up, he became aware that Sim was trying to grab his elbow and not having much luck.

“We must get off the dance floor.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I want to see this.”

“Watch from the side of the room!” Sim was practically shouting at him now.

He agreed a little unsteadily as they tried to make their way. What had been an empty, open space, was now covered in whirling dervishes, gymnasts, acrobats…when he felt the first hard elbow graze his rib cage it took a while to sink in.

“Excuse me, neighbours.”

The trio spun away. Then he took another hard one to the ribs just above the left kidney.

“That was a punch!” Sim was plainly frightened now.

A rock-solid, chitinous body slammed into him and he went down. He heard a shrill keening sound from the creature as he kicked upwards viciously. It scuttled right over him, putting a barbed foot-pod partly in his mouth, and suddenly his rage cracked wide open.

“Get your dirty alien mating-claspers off me, you creepy thing!” He shouted, all vestiges of courtesy and deportment gone.

Rolling and tumbling, he came up in a half crouch, hoping the thing was hurt real bad.

“Have your lost your marbles?” He bellowed at Sim. “You should have told me about the dancing.”

A quad of dancers, moving quickly in his left peripheral vision, targeted him. After a flurry of mutually exchanged blows with various members of the group, just as suddenly they broke off to engage another quad approaching. Hartle was furious, and came up again like a mongoose battling to make a cobra its dinner.

He ran at the bunch who had just attacked him, only to be grabbed and spun around, and he lost sight of them in eddies and currents of the dance. Lifting a leg and straightening it out real quick, Brendan managed to kick the boy who had grabbed him right in the face. There was a hot gush of satisfaction as the splash of blood vented. The boy’s two partners dragged him away by the legs, trailing bright yellow goo across the highly polished black tiles.

He had one brief moment of relative peace while the ebb and flow continued, and always that beat. Brendan gasped for air, with Sim beckoning from fifty metres away. Rival groups were attacking each other, and always, in time to the beat. Two big crabs came at him and he leaped on the nearest one’s head. Hartle tried to twist its antennae off by grabbing one and yanking as hard as he could. He kneed it in the side between two legs as he did so. The scream was so loud it startled him and he leaped off again with no trophy. He bared his teeth and growled and they both ran away.

Only fifty metres! In this crowd, it might as well be the other side of the Goddamned Galaxy!

“Fuck you all! Fuck all of you!” He stomped back and forth spitting mad. “Come on, you gutless fuckin’ little pukes.”

He bellowed, and then he was running at the wall of deadly dancers. Surreal in its bizarre incongruity, a spotlight followed him as he ran…

Wetness, warm and sticky, clouded his left eye. He brushed at it with a sleeve, and crashed into the line. Something in someone cracked with a brittle sound, and there came another shrill cry. His head jolted into his neck, there was greyness and stars, literally a flash of light in his head. He was pounding a fist into something’s abdomen. There was madness in him.

He lifted a knee into an obvious spot but got no response. He jabbed a thumb into its eye and it thought better of continuing the encounter. Again, someone raked his belly but it was a glancing strike and the clothing snagged and protected him. He popped it one in the kisser. Spinning, he was all arms and legs. A hole opened in the crowd, and he took a running, jumping dive, sliding to a halt right at Sim’s feet.

It was an oasis of peace and a kind of relative quiet here on the edge of the dance floor. Rolling over, he laid there, hoarse breath rasping in his throat. A semi-circular gaggle of citizens, all dressed in their Easter Bonnets and finery stared down at him.

“That was very impressive, young man.” An older female something or other with green eyes and head shaved bald stared at him through huge blue plastic pince-nez.

Four football-sized breasts heaved under her thin white blouse.

“You’re the best dancer we’ve seen tonight, at least so far.” Very upper class, you could tell by the diction, the terse elocution.

Maybe it had something to do with the long yellow bill, like a spoonbill or an egret. He got up stiffly.

“May I ask a personal question?”

She nodded, beckoning for something in a champagne-style glass. She only had four fingers, perhaps evolved from something like the tip feathers on a condor? Wow.

“What’s that thing sticking out of your ass?”

“It’s my tail, young man. We’re from Gallienus. We’re descended from avians.” She explained with a gracious nod.

“You’re very beautiful.” She simpered back at him and pecked at her stemware, filled with little multi-faceted pellets about three millimetres in diameter.

They were red and black. He had his breath back. She really was beautiful, in her own way. Her obviously male companion whispered in her ear and the pair of them giggled, nuzzling and cooing over some private joke, like mourning doves nestling together on a branch in winter.

END

New Things, New Ideas. New Challenges.

by Louis Bertrand Shalako

c2010

All Rights Reserved


Our basic premise is cross-linking multiple platforms in social networking.

After joining Goodreads many months ago, I kind of forgot about it. I had no idea of what it was for, and for a number of reasons I don't actually read a lot of new releases. At the time, I was busy editing stuff.

So when I went back, I couldn't get in. It turns out I have 37 friends there! But I was accepting requests in my e-mail box, and reading a blog post by Angel McCoy once in a while.

Today I managed to hack my way back in, change the password, and begin the process of getting the 'author profile,' and hopefully some cover images in there.

Last night I successfully downloaded OpenOffice 3.2.0 or whatever, and it is a clean, safe download. It installed correctly. It seems to work fine, and the overall impression is one of speed--this thing is quick. I've got one file in there now, and no doubt there is some time-consuming learning curve.

Theoretically, I will have a POD version of 'The Case of the Curious Killers,' up on Lulu, Wordclay, and who knows, maybe CreateSpace within about two months. Yeah, I thought it out.

In order to stand up in front of a roomful of people and talk about my work, it would be helpful to have something to hold in my hand. Something I can let the people hold in their hand, to see the quality of the thing, and to feel the tactile allure of a brand-new book. At fifteen, or even twenty bucks, the thing is not too out of hand price-wise, and this gives me the opportunity to direct people to the website, the Amazon Kindle versions, the e-books, which are probably more profitable anyway.

For that price, I will definitely sign it for you.

I have read poems, and a few very short things in front of an 'audience,' and always read some story or other at writer's group meeetings, etc. The biggest crowd was about twenty-eight people. In some way, I know I can do it. That part is just a 'performance.' I may be a little more wooden one-on-one, but I have plenty to talk about and they will probably ask pretty general questions. I have a good voice and stuff like that, and at a height of 6'5" people kind of look up to me.

That cover for 'Heaven Is Too Far Away' needs to be re-done. My 'paint' program, another free download, should fix that, it's just a a matter of finding the time. Searching images is almost maddening...it really is.

So far I use the Twitter account very little to talk, but I listen well. I look for data and intelligence about the marketplace and what it is thinking. Every so often I grab one and share it on Facebook.

I suppose I understand the basic principles of social networking and cross-linking, multi platforms and multi formats. Too see how it all interrelates, and mutually supports itself...learning how to use it...that all takes time.