It’s always useful to get a bit of a knock-back and realize that what you thought was fantastic isn’t so fantastic after all. But that’s fine, since it helps keep things on an even keel, provides a bit of the old sense of perspective and such like.
My current cover for me eBook ‘The Architect’s Apprentice’ was (I thought), reasonably good, but apparently it doesn’t pass muster with everyone. Those nice people at ‘They-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named’ reckoned it was a bit lacking in ‘quality’. Okay.
So what now?
I used to think I was pretty good with Photoshop, but (as in this situation) it’s becoming more apparent that I need to up my game a bit. There’s a great set of vids on YouTube by Phlearn, who cover all those funny little tricks that can make a world of difference to an image. Yesterday I finally got the hang of the clone stamping tool, which is definitely the neatest trick I’ve learned this week. Now I can get rid of anything I don’t want in my images as if they were never there.
So now I’m working on a new cover for the aforementioned book and hopefully by this time next week I’ll have it uploaded to Smashwords et al. According to Smashwords founder Mark Coker, changing a book’s cover can make a boatload of difference to the number of downloads it gets. So we’ll see.
Colin Garrow 