It's a Cover Reveal Contest!

I'm practically jumping up and down about the cover of my fourth Downward Dog Mystery, A Fatal Twist.  Last year's cover reveal contest was so fun, I've decided to do it again!  Here’s how it works:

Each day for the next seven days, I’ll post an element of the cover on my Facebook author page https://www.facebook.com/TracyWeberAuthor.  Before midnight that day, leave a comment naming the object pictured and you’ll be entered into that day’s contest.  “Liking" my author page or “Friending” me on Facebook while you’re there is good Karma, but not required.

While you’re there, be sure to make a note of the object for the grand prize round.

Then, any time between when I post the final object on Sunday, July 3 and Wednesday, July 6 at midnight, send me an e-mail at Tracy@WholeLifeYoga.com with all seven objects, and you’ll be entered to win the Malice Prize Pack: a copy of  Malice Domestic Murder Most Conventional, the Malice 28 book bag and program, the coolest author swag I scooped up at the event AND an autographed, advanced copy of A Fatal Twist when it is available in August.

Here are the prizes! 

• Monday: An autographed copy of my Agatha Nominated first book, Murder Strikes a Pose. If you already own it, remember:  books make great gifts!
• Tuesday: A Downward Dog Mysteries coffee mug.
• Wednesday: An autographed copy of the second book in the series, A Killer Retreat. If you already own it, remember:  books make great gifts!
• Thursday:  An oh-so-cute German shepherd coloring book and colored pencil set.
• Friday:  An autographed copy of the third book in the series, Karma’s a Killer. If you already own it, remember:  books make great gifts!
• Saturday: A $15 Amazon gift certificate.
• Sunday: An advanced copy of A Fatal Twist when it’s available sometime in August.
• Grand Prize:  Malice prize pack AND an advanced copy of A Fatal Twist when it’s available.

The first element is pictured below. Visit today's post on my  Facebook Author Page and make your entry!

 

NOTE:  By entering, you acknowledge that Facebook is not liable for any part of the contest.  The contest is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.  ;-)
Namaste and good luck!

Tracy Weber



Check out Tracy Weber’s author page for information about the Downward Dog Mysteries series.  KARMA'S A KILLER, A KILLER RETREAT and MURDER STRIKES A POSE are available at book sellers everywhere! 

Seven Tips for a Successful Cover Reveal Contest

 

A cover reveal is supposedly the perfect opportunity to build excitement about your newest novel, but how do you get anyone other than your mother to care?  My past cover reveals (all two of them) got lots of likes and more than a few comments, but they felt anticlimactic to me.  I love my covers.  I want my readers to be as excited about them as I am.  But how?

On the flight  home from Malice, the answer came to me.  Host a cover reveal contest!

Now all I had to do was figure out how to do it.  In case any of you want to try one too, here are my key learnings:
 

Seven tips for a successful cover reveal contest:

Follow the rules.  My favorite social media marketing tool is Facebook, but Facebook is persnickety about contests.  There are rules, rules and more rules.  Follow them and all is golden.  Don’t?  You might get yourself banned to Facebook purgatory.  A place where your Facebook privileges are suspended or even revoked completely. Facebook rules, including those pertaining to contests, are at this page.

Have a single web page that summarizes the contest.  I write for multiple blogs, but I posted the first day of the contest on my personal blog.  This included the disclaimers and instructions for all days of the week-long contest.  That way even as the contest continued to plug along, I had a single place I could refer people. Even though I thought I was clear in every post, I had multiple entries that I needed to correct each day.

Make it a week-long event

In my case, there were 5 key elements in the cover I wanted to highlight, so I spread the contest out over 5 days, with a unique prize each day. The grand prize round two was days later.  Even my husband, who had seen the cover multiple times, started to wonder what the next “reveal” would be.  And the participants created stories about how the 5 elements might fit together—some of them surprisingly close to the truth!

Have a grand finale

The final reveal, of course is the grand finale, but shouldn’t there be a grand prize to go along with it?  In my case, I honored my fellow Agatha nominees for Best First Novel by giving a set of autographed copies of all 5 of the nominated books. 

Ask for a little help from your friends

In this case, my friends are my street team.  I had a special contest for a signed ARC of my book to street team members who shared the post.  That got me reach to readers I’d never otherwise find.

Be involved

I’ll admit, this contest took a lot more time than I thought it would.  Posting the contest was only the start.  I also had to check in on the posts several times a day, note who had shared each post and how many times, and reply to the relevant comments.  I also had to re-direct people who accidentally posted their answers on the wrong page.  I firmly believe that time spent interacting with my readers (and future readers) is time well spent.  I don’t recommend doing this, however, if you’re up against a deadline.  Make sure you leave plenty of time for contest administration.

Advertise!

What good is a contest if no one enters?  I advertised in several ways, all low cost and low time:

·        Posts on my personal and author Facebook pages.  I started a week before the contest, and posted daily throughout it.

·        Cheap Facebook post promotions.  I was hesitant to do this, in case my contest violated any of the oh-so-grumpily-enforced Facebook rules, but I put on my big girl pants and did it anyway. I paid between $2 and $5 a day to boost the day’s post.  Honestly, except for the final day, my organic  reach far exceeded my paid reach.

·        Posts in relevant Facebook groups.  I belong to 5 cozy mystery groups, and I posted to every one of them.  If you’re going to do that, be sure to follow the group rules.

·        Dedicated blog posts.  I dedicated the contest-week posts on Killer Hobbiesand my Whole Life Yoga blog to the contest.

·         An author newsletter article with a link to the contest.

If I’d had more time and energy I would also have posted on Twitter and advertised in Goodreads groups.  Alas, that will have to wait for next year’s contest.

The results? 

Considering my author page only had less than 600 fans and I’m a newer author, I was pleased with the interaction.

·        Each day of the contest, my author page post was seen by 900 – 1200 people, 90% of that reach was organic.

·       The final reveal post has been seen by over 2300 people.  Four times the number of fans of the page it is posted on.  Considering I didn’t promote that post and Facebook’s organic reach is usually about 5%, that is notable.

·        Each day’s contest had 60 – 90 entries.

·        The final contest (which required following the contest for 5 days and e-mailing me personally) had 54 entries.

·        The “likes” on my Facebook author page grew by 70.  (Not a lot, but since I wasn’t targeting that, I thought over 10% growth in a week was interesting.)

·        Many of the contestants contacted me personally to say how much fun they’d had and to thank me for the contest.

Will I do it again?  You bet!  The fun I had alone was worth the costs of the prizes! Next year I plan to make it  even more exciting.

How about you?  Have you ever run a cover reveal contest?  If so, how did it go?  What ideas would you add to my list above?  And even more importantly, what do you think of my new cover?

Tracy

          

Tracy Weber is the author of the award-winning Downward Dog Mysteries series featuring yoga teacher Kate Davidson and her feisty German shepherd, Bella. Tracy loves sharing her passion for yoga and animals in any form possible. Her first book, Murder Strikes a Pose won the Maxwell Award for Fiction was nominated for the Agatha award for Best First Novel. The second book in her series, A Killer Retreat, was released January, 2015 by Midnight Ink.

Tracy and her husband live in Seattle with their challenging yet amazing German shepherd Tasha. When she’s not writing, Tracy spends her time teaching yoga, walking Tasha, and sipping Blackthorn cider at her favorite ale house. 

Visit her at TracyWeberAuthor.com, friend her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/tracywe, or e-mail her at Tracy@WholeLifeYoga.com.

Renaissance Woman

By Jennifer Harlow

Work grounds me. It centers me, at least when it's not the cause of all the hell in my life. This month said hell is at the courtesy of moving so amid being on hold for over an hours (Really Comcast?!?), packing, spending more on getting my shit down to ATL than my entire car is worth, setting up utilities, researching new car and health insurance, and a trillion other little things, I needed a day to find shelter from my self-imposed shit storm.

So I taught myself how to make an e-book.

We're talking writing, editing, formatting, converting, even the fraking cover. I went mental.

Ever since Justice I've been haunting the Kindleboards forum to learn the ins and outs of the e-book world. There people like Hugh Howey bestow their considerable knowledge to us plebeians. Everything's there from the best editors, writers helping others with blurbs, the best practices, all of it. I cannot recommend this place more, even if you're a traditional author vs. hybrid like me (a foot in both traditional and indie publishing as Kindleboards told me). However, as much as I love it, the boards can be a bit soul crushing. Not from the people, they're all lovely, but what some of them advise to make any money. Namely if you want to become a full time writer you need a ton of luck, only write romance/Erotica/New Adult, and publish a new book or novella once a month. Yeah, you read that right. A NEW BOOK A MONTH. This year I'll have FOUR full length books out, two traditional and two indie. I was so proud of myself. No one besides those with ghostwriters (Patterson/Evanovitch) accomplish that in the traditional world. But in the indie world, I'm a slacker. And if I haven't disillusioned y'all enough, it cost about $1000 to get Justice made and marketed. I've made about 20% of that back. The lovely, successful indies mantra is "It's not a sprint, it's a marathon." Fair, but what if your shoes are falling apart and you're out of shape? What do you do then?

Anything you can.

On their advice, I'd been toying with releasing a "short," meaning a short story just to keep up The Galilee Falls visibility up because once a book has been released for 3 months, it falls off a "cliff" where it is basically banished to Siberia to make way for newer titles. And damned if when 3 months hit I went from about 60,000 (not terrible but not great, if my superheroes were into BDSM it'd probably be at a thousand, but there's always the next one) to currently 267,000 in the Kindle store. (Cue crying jag). Okay, I'm back from the land of self-pity where I am basically their queen.  Anyway, I needed to produce new material and apparently most of my FREAKS and Midnight Magic readers aren't into superheroes as the release of Death Takes a Holiday last month did nothing to raise sales. (Not a swipe at y'all, I swear. To each his own.) So something had to be done and that couldn't cost a thousand dollars. 

Enter the Kindleboards brigade, especially Joe Konrath's 8-hour challenge. Joe Konrath, for those who don't know, used to write the Jack Daniels mystery series, then went indie before it was cool and made a million dollars self-publishing his own stuff. He's a member of the "10 new things a year club" along with Lilianna Hart, Elle Casey, and Bella Andre. One night when Joe was drunk he decided to try and get something up on Amazon in under an hour. That included the content, formatting, and cover. That magnificent bastard succeeded. And he was surprised to find it sold a few copies in the first day even though he didn't publish it under his own name. So on his BLOG (another indie must read) he put out the challenge for us all to try it, but gave us 8 hours to do it all. I was in the throws of house crap so I didn't hear about this until after the contest was done (My timing always sucks!!!) but when I got crazed and needed an escape I decided to give it a try anyway. I sort of had the content in mind. A few blog posts I'd written for the blog tour, I could include the playlists, the first chapter of the next Galilee book, and a short story I'd written a million years ago then called "When Justin Met Joanna" (now entitled "Origins.") So, on content I was good. It was everything else where I was screwed.

But I had no fucking clue where to begin when it came to formatting and covers. I'd hired someone for those with Justice but couldn't in this case. So I had to learn these things, me who barely knows how to turn on a computer. Once again, hurrah for Kindleboards. People there led me to a program called Scrivener, which was not only a word processor a la Word but would also convert your stuff into EPUB and MOBI. I bought the sucker. Then spent my allotted eight hours screaming, crying, and smashing my computer in frustration when the converted files looked a hot mess. Formatting was either non-existent or cluttered. Whole portions were missing. But I am not a quitter. I am stubborn to a fault, I admit it, but in this case it paid off. I played around until finally it looked professional. Clean. I could now add "Knows how to format an e-book" to my list of not-that-useful skills for the real world. But I'd done it. And hopefully in the future I can repeat the process and save $200. Well see when I get around to Galilee Rising.

So, content? Check. Manuscript? Check. Now came the cover. Enter Photoshop. My mom wanted to make Memes last year so for Christmas Dad bought her the program. She was kind enough to let me install it on my computer and I began to learn it as well. Another 8 hours later (no this wasn't the same day, it was between all the moving bullshit) I had a basic understanding of filters, text, effects, etc. Then I started an account at Shutterstock. This is a site where you can get photos/illustrations/vectors (whatever those are) to use for your covers. There are literally millions to chose from. I found mine after a few more hours of searching, Photoshopped the hell out of it (another few hours) and added it to my MOBI file (another hour of trial and error), and up it went. 

Ta da! I give you...

So if you need a Galilee Falls fix, this should keep you until December. Only $.99. But in the end, this experiment may save me hundreds. I still might pay for covers but I can do the formatting myself. Now if I could only write ten books a year...

Anyway back to moving. Hope this post was helpful to all you newbies.

Judging a Book By Its Cover

During my 2009 Blog Book Tour for the hardcover release of To Hell in a Handbasket, the second book in my Claire Hanover gift basket designer mystery series, I wrote a guest article for the Murder By 4 blog titled "You Can't Judge a Book by its Cover". In that article I wrote about how I was able to get the cover art changed for both that book and the first book in the series, A Real Basket Case.

Why bother, you might ask. Isn't what's between the covers, the novel itself, what's most important? Yes, but first readers must be enticed to crack open those covers and actually READ the novel, and the cover art is often the enticement. That's why authors obsess over their covers, especially when the art doesn't match the story inside. For instance, when the hero/heroine pictured on the cover has the wrong color hair or skin (yes, it's happened--to author friends of mine!)

Some of the large presses give their authors absolutely no say over their cover art. It's take-it-or-leave-it. I'm very lucky in that my mid-sized presses (Five Star Publishing in the case of that 2009 article and Midnight Ink for this article) both solicit author suggestions for cover art that get passed on to the art department. They also give authors a chance to comment on the cover art mockup before it goes final. Because of that, I've been able to influence the artistic concept and get some changes made that resulted in better covers.

Below is Midnight Ink's cover for the November trade paperback and ebook re-release of A Real Basket Case. The acquisition editor and I discussed putting a gift basket on the cover with a gun inside, which is the murder weapon. The art department added the gym-themed elements, because Claire Hanover meets the victim in a gym class. They also added the gift tag series logo, which will be carried on to each book in the series.

The one element I disagreed with was the view out of the window, which was of rolling green fields. I suggested they make the scene out of the window a view of mountains, since Claire lives in Colorado Springs. There really aren't any rolling green hills in Colorado Springs, since the city is located in a high alpine desert. And, you can see that they took my suggestion!

The next cover is the one that Midnight Ink created for Deadly Currents, the first book in my RM Outdoor Adventures mystery series. My suggestion to the art department was to illustrate the first scene in the book, where a raft goes sideways over a raging rapid and dumps its occupants, forcing my river ranger Mandy Tanner to go to the rescue. As you can see, they did just that. Plus they added a very cool blood-in-the-water effect. I was so excited about that cover that I had no changes to suggest.


And below is the latest, my brand-spanking-new cover for Wicked Eddies, to be released next May, which will be the second book in my RM Outdoor Adventures mystery series. It continues with the theme of an outdoor river-based scene and here the blood-red color is in the sky versus the water. It also contains the oval series logo, which is the logo of the outfitting company created jointly by Mandy and her lover Rob Juarez at the end of Deadly Currents.


My suggestion to the art department on this cover was to picture a river eddy (whirlpool) since that was in the title. Unfortunately, the eddy shown on the first cover art concept looked more like clouds swirling around mountain peaks than like water swirling around rocks. So, based on feedback from me, that concept was nixed. I'm very happy with this "Plan B," though, as are my blog readers, whose comments included:

"Absolutely beautiful...and a little sinister too. "
"It looks suspenseful...and yes, perfect!"
"The cover is stunning! Gorgeous colors. "

I agree!

So, Inkspot readers, have you been influenced by a cover to buy a book and then later felt that the book didn't live up to the cover? Or that it did? Got any cover art stories of your own? Please share in the comments.

3 Books, 3 Formats, 6 Covers

Keith here.

The reading world is in the midst of a war over formats. We've all been following the back-and-forth between Kindle/Nook partisans and those who defiantly hold on to their paper-and-ink books. Here's which side I come down on: both.

Don't you think we authors should strive to ensure our novels can be read however our readers want to read them -- whether as words on a paper page or on an LCD screen? And what about those who might want to use their ears rather than their eyes to "read" a book? Fine with me. Let's add one more option to the mix then -- audio books.

My first two books have just hit the format trifecta. Dot Dead and Smasher are now available as audio downloads for iPods, MP3 players, and such on both Audible.com and Amazon.com. (You can listen to samples here and here.) Both are still available as ebooks and trade paperbacks. (Readers, pick your poison.) My third novel, Drop By Drop, is currently available only as an ebook, but if it continues to sell well (fingers crossed), I'm hoping it will be offered in print and as an audio book as well.

One side benefit to all these different formats is a flowering of covers. Dot Dead has one cover doing double duty for the ebook and trade paper and another for the audio version. Smasher -- lucky fellow -- has a different cover for all three formats. Drop By Drop is available in just the one format and hence has only one cover at present. If my arithmetic is correct, that makes a total of six covers. I'm pretty fond of all of them, but I do wonder which ones you prefer. Please let me know in your comments!

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Can You Judge a Book By Its Cover?

by Robin Allen

Imagine being embarassed about your child's appearance. Not the color/length/amount of their hair or their low-slung jeans and silly t-shirts (well, okay, this one is clever), but the closeness of their eyes, the thinness of their lips, the de Bergerac-ness of their nose. You had no choice how they came out, really, but you have to live with these attributes for the rest of your life.

Same thing with authors and book covers. Our books are our babies. Whether the rest of the world grades them as A students or D, we think they're honor students. We believe we've written a beautiful story and we want to present it to the world in a stunning outfit.

But...

Authors don't choose their book covers. (Unless you're Stephen King, I imagine, but some of his covers make me wonder if even he isn't consulted.) For the most part, the inside belongs to the author and the outside belongs to the publisher. The publisher can do anything they want. Anything. Black eyes, grotesque mouths that drool, ginormous hairy noses that leak into the drool. Unless you're Stephen King, you probably wouldn't be happy with that.

After I made my deal with Midnight Ink, after the contracts and the champagne and the congratulations (friends, family, self, etc.), I started to think about the cover of my book. I read horror stories (not written by Stephen King) about authors so distraught over their book covers, they fled the country or took a vow of poverty. I love both Texas and money, so the worst thing I could come up with was to draw a line in the sand.

Midnight Ink does great covers. (Lookie here. Or look at our covers on the right side of this blog.) I liked most of the ones I saw and didn't dislike any of them, so I knew I wouldn't be embarassed by mine. But would I love it? Would it represent the story? Would it be too precious? Would it feature a nine-toed baby even though there are no babies or toes in the story? Or worse--would it have a curlique typeface?

When my editor, Terri Bischoff, asked me what I'd like to see on my book cover, I knew a) that I loved her and b) exactly what to tell her: "I didn't write a pink book and I don't want a pink cover." I may have repeated myself two or three or eighteen times.

So, as you can see, my baby is beautiful, thanks to Desmond Montague.

The stock pot (= kitchen story), the skull and crossbones on the stock pot (= mystery), the steam rising into skulls (= danger, death) , the hot dog on the badge (= humor), the HowardJohnson color scheme (= I have no idea, but it takes me back to my childhood when my parents would take all four of us kids across town in the station wagon to eat fried clams).

It's funny that the saying, "don't judge a book by its cover" is so well-known and popular, yet publishers spend a lot of time, effort, and money on book covers.

I'm not a nihilist, so a clever title or interesting cover will make me pick up a book, but I'm also not a sucker. I'll always read either the first couple of pages or flip to a random page to judge the writing.

I do pre-snub covers, however, and am immediately warned off by blurred images (literary fiction = inordinant number of descriptions of things I don't care about) or children (coming-of-age story = 400 pages concerning things I don't care about).

What about y'all? Have you ever bought or not bought a book because of its cover?

Robin Allen
Author of the Poppy Markham: Culinary Cop Mystery Series
If You Can't Stand the Heat
Now available on Kindle, Nook, and eBook
See my poem "A Friday Afternoon" in the 2012 Texas Poetry Calendar

Expecting the Worst

By Deborah Sharp

I'm dwelling in Book Cover Nirvana.

Just received the finished illustration from Midnight Ink's art department for my second book, Mama Rides Shotgun. I was worried (what else is new?). I didn't think they could possibly hit a second home run. The first cover -- dead man's hand dangling from Mama's vintage turquoise convertible -- is SO terrific.

I expected to be disappointed. How, I wondered in my pessimist way, would they ever top the fantastic cover for Mama Does Time? I ALWAYS expect the worst. I'm not just a glass-half-empty type. To me, the glass is fully empty, I up-end it to get the last drop, it shatters, and delivers a cut to my lip that will become infected and send me to the hospital, where I'll contract a case of flesh-eating bacteria which will ultimately kill me.

So, yeah, I worried.

Well, the art department proved my pessimism wrong, coming pretty darn close to the first book. Designer Lisa Novak and illustrator Mark Gerber, once again, did a great job. A sherbet-colored scarf and turquoise saddle (How Mama!) Another dangling hand. A scene rife with Florida icons, from alligators and oranges to the state tree, my beloved Sabal palm. (No, folks: Coconut palms DON'T grow in my series' rodeo-and-ranches slice of middle Florida.)

So send up a cheer and pop the champagne. Just be careful not to put out my eye with the cork. The cover may be a success, but there is still so much that could go wrong . . .