Revising Book Covers

Since Mr. McElroy has a thread asking about book titles I decided to try this thread about book covers.

Most self-publishing companies have some sort of 'Cover Creator' program that takes your info and inserts it into templates you select {Although they are not quite as flexible as they make them sound}, add text, change colors, etc., etc., and it formulates the cover based on your input. This is great until you want to incorporate something for your own photo files.

Face it - unless you have your own Tarot card pictures you cannot expect to find some in a company's 'free-use photos' file ... and using images of someone else's deck on your cover means getting permission and paying them a royalty (every 2 years as long as the book is in print).

So - I just made some changes - using my own deck, of course! I don't have to pay myself a royalty!

I do wish the program that inserts a picture was more flexible - but it's not. The cover of the Humor book is fine, but I wish I could get more of the Aces to show on 'It's All in the Cards', but it means pulling back farther and shooting at a higher pixel count - and still not knowing how it will come out until it goes through the template. Since the image is sharp I'd rather have sharp than a full image of four cards not sharp.

It takes less than 24 hours to make a change; I revise the cover file, send it for review (takes the book off-sale) and when the file comes back I do a quick check, hit 'approve' and the book is back up for sale.

SO ~

Should a Tarot Book have Tarot Cards on its cover?

Pix 1 & 3 - original covers
Pix 2 7 4 - revised covers

BTW - the picture on 'It's All in the Cards' wraps around the back if you look it up on Amazon.

I absolutely LOVE that first one! It's absolutely great in my opinion. I hope you use that one. I love the humor. It's fantastic

ETA: it's so perfect! I love it----did I say that already? And I love the title. I hope you debunked some myths while you were at it. If you want to use anything from the Tarot Myths thread of a few years ago, go right ahead. I think Solandia probably owns the copyright, though. You'd have to ask her, maybe?

Grizabella said:

If you want to use anything from the Tarot Myths thread of a few years ago, go right ahead. I think Solandia probably owns the copyright, though. You'd have to ask her, maybe?

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Solandia was sent a preview of the book interior and has no problems whatsoever with how I paraphrased, manipulated, or otherwise re-worked some material. Although I do not 'quote' anyone verbatim, I do thank my AT family at the beginning of the book. It also says 'Compiled By' - which indicates the material came from many sources.

My first cover for 'No Reading' was partly due to not being able to find anything appropriate to use! So, I went with something humorous that was in my collection (What? You didn't recognize the fat, hairy man as being me?) A couple of people questioned if it was really a 'best choice' for a cover outside of the gay community - so - IT'S BEEN CHANGED. I had an English Major help me with an interior revision, so the slightly revised interior with the 'hand over the cards' cover will be up for sale by the time you read this.

Of Cards and Covers

Hey, TarotBear,

Good idea for a thread.

Book cover design is a big deal, because readers really do judge books by their covers more often (and more emotionally) than authors would like for them to. Some quick feedback, all meant to be helpful:

- The humorous cover is quite nice. Be sure to look at it reduced to the size that people will most often see it when it's served on Amazon.com. When a cover gets reduced to that thumbnail size, small text, certain fonts, or text with a graphic treatment quickly become unreadable. All of that to say: look at a small thumbnail, and be sure you're comfortable with how the graphic represents your work at that size.

- You do have options for showing Tarot cards on the cover of your books. For example: Dover Books (the clip-art company) has a massive collection of decks, including a RWS, on this DVD:

http://store.doverpublications.com/0486990850.html

Images are at full color and high resolution; several different decks (including historical decks) are included. You can use up to five of these royalty-free images at no charge.

I did contact Dover to ask about using an entire deck. Responses were very slow -- it takes them about three weeks to answer an email! Initially, they said images beyond five would cost around $10.00 each to use. When I replied that $730 in licensing fees made no sense for a small-press, limited-interest Tarot book, I received a second offer (three weeks later) saying they would drop the unlimited use fee to $250.

There are other options, too, including the black and white images from the original PKT, which are unquestionably in the public domain at this point. (They're available, but must be downloaded one by one, from Wikipedia.com.) There are also some book-cover-isn images available from istockphoto.com for a low one-time fee, with no additional royalties required, world without end, amen.

- The second book cover has more challenges, I think. Does the mountain image really connect with or help a reader understand your content? The card image is a bit better, but, to my eye, the way it crops the card images is displeasing. You might try filling the upper half of the cover with a cropped image from one card you feel represents the content well, or even a chaotic mass of cards. And don't forget to look at the image at thumbnail size!

Hope this helps or inspires some ideas.

Unfortunately, Mark, that card cover picture wraps in one piece to the back, so I would have to reshoot the entire cover in one piece and judge (based on how the original has been auto-fitted in) where the cards on the right (front cover) would have to fit. This is all being done by a non-techie! What I should do is go back into the 'Cover Creator' and find an entirely different template that might use my original picture [loose cards on the left, 4 Aces on the right] in a different way that does not have such large boxes for the title and author name. I should also shoot 'just' the 4 Aces as a single cover picture in case I find a template I like where the image does not wrap around.

The problem being - ASA I open the file it will automatically expect I am making a change and take the book off publication until I submit a new file - which then has to be reviewed. If I were to go through 10-20 different covers and then go back to my original cover, I will still have to submit the files for review - AGAIN - before the book can return to publication. There should be some way to look at alternatives without this happening - but that is the way it works (at Createspace) at the present time.

I am using my own deck because I do not have to pay myself a royalty, and I am also using the cards that most closely look like the RWS images so as not to confuse someone who may be looking for the 'Men's Deck.' I also find that having one deck on the cover and an entirely different deck for the illustrations inside tends to confuse the buyer, who may 'assume' the book is illustrated with the deck on the cover of the book.

Oddly - if you follow this link Amazon is showing you the new front cover but the old back cover ... *sigh* http://www.amazon.com/Its-All-The-C...tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1408210278&sr=8-1 It may update itself in a few days ..... *sigh*

tarotbear said:

Solandia was sent a preview of the book interior and has no problems whatsoever with how I paraphrased, manipulated, or otherwise re-worked some material. Although I do not 'quote' anyone verbatim, I do thank my AT family at the beginning of the book. It also says 'Compiled By' - which indicates the material came from many sources.

My first cover for 'No Reading' was partly due to not being able to find anything appropriate to use! So, I went with something humorous that was in my collection (What? You didn't recognize the fat, hairy man as being me?) A couple of people questioned if it was really a 'best choice' for a cover outside of the gay community - so - IT'S BEEN CHANGED. I had an English Major help me with an interior revision, so the slightly revised interior with the 'hand over the cards' cover will be up for sale by the time you read this.

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Awww---that cover is fantastic in my opinion. It grabs a person's attention and it also conveys humor plus anyone who uses the cards or is interested in them would "get" it. I don't agree that it's only a best choice for the gay community at all. I'm not gay and I love it. But----you know better than me what publishing a book is all about so by all means, do what's right in your own estimation.

Oh, and yep, I knew it was you. And the best of luck with this.

Don't laugh - I could be back on the cover if I do another revision in the future!

For the moment - I am not making any more revisions to any more books until after I get the colorized deck published - which may be the middle of September 2014.

If you want 'humorous' - I have these hiding in a file ....