Forum: Author Hangout

he will be able to write after 5 years in HM prison system

The girl he attacked is still active on wattpad. She said he will probably only get 18 months as a first-time offender.

Thwow him to the fwoor and sthwike him woughly!

What this author did actually doesn't surprise me that much. This guy definitely took things to the extreme when he decided to attack this girl for her review, but I can't ignore the similarities between this guy and what I see so many authors doing.

Instead of taking responsibility for what she had to say in her review, he chose to view her critical review as an obstacle to his own success. He did this despite the fact that her review seemed well written and in all probability, was probably pretty accurate.

Instead of reading her words and trying to apply them toward improvement, he blamed her for whatever his perceived failures were and then drove to where she was and attacked her.

While I don't see authors physically attacking their reviewers all the time, I do see many authors making excuses as to why they aren't achieving the success they believe they deserve, instead of assessing themselves and their work to see what they need to do to bring themselves to the next level.

In the article, it said:

Brittain claimed the early reception for The World Rose was strong, blogging that "The praise I received was remarkable and made me feel great; I was compared to Dickens, Shakespeare, Rowling, Raymond E Feist and Nora Roberts."

If you ask an author why their book isn't selling as well as they want it to, they usually respond with something like, "I don't know. Every fan I talk to says that it is wonderful."

I'm not immune to this false line of thinking. My first publishing experience was the first book of a series. I wrote it, believed it was really, really good and published it. I sold some copies in the beginning, wrote three more novellas and another novel, but in the end, sales dried up for this series. Every piece of feedback received for this series was positive and yet, the sales for it sucked. They still do. The reviews on Amazon and Goodreads for this are pretty damned good. Mostly four or five stars.

I quit adding to this series, because it didn't make sense to keep going with it. Publishing books for a series that was selling at all just didn't make sense to me. I moved on, focusing more efforts into my pen names, which were garnering more sales.

Looking back, I can now see why it doesn't sell so good. The series in inherently flawed. My writing back then wasn't as good. I did more telling than I should have and the voice was a little disconnected among other flaws.

In other words, the blame lies with me. It's not the reviews. It is not Amazon. It is not the publishing gods or that I'm unlucky. The books don't resonate with readers. Even though they give the series good reviews (when they choose to write them), that doesn't mean much. If they truly loved the book, they would rave about it to their friends and their ravings would be convincing enough to inspire them to pick up a copy. This is how word of mouth works and is what an author or book needs to get automatic sales.

In other words, don't read this article and judge this author and nutbag unless you yourself are completely innocent of doing the same thing he did. Just because you don't drive 500 miles to a neighboring city and bonk a teenage girl over the head with a wine bottle, doesn't mean that you aren't making the same excuses he did. Put the blame where it belongs, develop your skills as an author and know that when your writing is up to par, your books will sell the way you want them too. Up until that point, you are 'in training'.

"I don't know. Every fan I talk to says that it is wonderful."

The key word in that is fan - any fan of anything says it's good. I know people who swear the best food in the world is chilli while others say it's the worst - - while the truth is both are right and wrong at the same time, it's just people have different tastes.

The key word in that is fan - any fan of anything says it's good. I know people who swear the best food in the world is chilli while others say it's the worst - - while the truth is both are right and wrong at the same time, it's just people have different tastes.

Because this was a hypothetical quote, there is no keyword. When putting this in quotes, I was simply trying to illustrate that if you get into a discussion with most novice authors about their book sales, they will usually give you an excuse that has nothing to do with the quality of their story, or their writing. I have a feeling you missed the point entirely.

Unfortunately, the reason their books are not selling can usually be attributed to one of two things:

1. They haven't developed an audience yet. This not only takes time, but also takes methodology. I will use myself as an example:

When I first began publishing, I did so in the free marketplace using SOL and one other large adult website. I used a couple different pen names for a couple different categories of adult fiction. The nice thing about SOL and other adult story websites is that when you publish the sites audience is automatically made aware of it. On SOL, a new story is listed on the top of the 'new story' page and is also prompted on the homepage. As more stories and posts are added, your story is driven further down on the list, but for the first week or so, you get exposure. As people come to the site, they see your story.

This helps you gain an audience. If people read your story and like the premise, or the writing, there is a chance they will mark you as a 'favorite author'

Great!

The paid market is different. It isn't so automatic. If you go into the paid marketplace with the same pen name you used in the free one, you have a definite advantage. If you go about it the right way, some of your fans will follow you from the free marketplace into the paid one. (Assuming they are truly impressed with your writing). But you have to bear in mind that a vast majority of free market readers stay free market readers. Most of them will never pay for materials except for those by authors they already pay for. That's just the reality of it.

But if you do bring a few readers with you, you have an advantage. Getting a few sales from readers when you publish something new will help your books develop connections in the sales algorithms of either Amazon or whatever platform it is on. These connections can lead to additional sales. How ever many sales you get, is the only accurate reflection you have of how big your "fan-base" really is. If you publish a book and make fifty sales, your fan base cannot be any larger than that. Your 'audience' fits into that auditorium.

Your job as an author is to find ways to expand that fan-base. You do this by publishing more works, offering books for free, giving discounts, talking about your books every time you have a chance, or doing whatever else you do as a business man/woman in the publishing industry.

2. Your writing isn't up to snuff.

It only takes one sale to start a book going 'viral'. If you were to write the next 'Harry Potter', 'Fifty Shades of Grey', 'Hunger Games' or whatever floats your book, your explosion would begin after the first sale. All of these books achieved the levels of success that they achieved because the people who bought them loved them so much that they couldn't stop talking about them. They talked about them in person, friend to friend, they talked about them on facebook, twitter, at the mall to the person taking their order, or wherever else they went. That's how going viral works.

There are also different ratios of 'going viral'. Your book can go viral in an explosive way, where you get 3 to five sales for every reader you acquire, or you can have a viral decay model, where you get 1 new reader for every three to five, or even every ten readers who read your book. This is usually more common than viral explosion, but the point is that as your writing or book ideas improve, you will gain more new readers. If you are writing books that people merely like, as opposed to love, or are passionate about, you won't get referrals. Period.

The better your writing is, the more referrals you will get.

Because this was a hypothetical quote, there is no keyword. When putting this in quotes, I was simply trying to illustrate that if you get into a discussion with most novice authors about their book sales, they will usually give you an excuse that has nothing to do with the quality of their story, or their writing. I have a feeling you missed the point entirely.

Chris, I was trying to point out that anyone's comments about fans saying something is good is really a waste of space because will always say what they like is good - thus an attaboy from a fan has null value in reality. Sorry if I didn't make that point clear enough before.

Chris, I was trying to point out that anyone's comments about fans saying something is good is really a waste of space because will always say what they like is good - thus an attaboy from a fan has null value in reality. Sorry if I didn't make that point clear enough before.

Yeah. Attaboys always feel nice when you read them, but personally, I have never learned anything from reading one. Matter of fact, I think they are dangerous. With my first series, I could have been convinced by the good reviews that the series was good and insisted on continuing it. I'm glad I didn't.

Instead, I decided to rethink my approach altogether. That was when I decided to limit my writing to novellas for the time being. I figured that this would give me two advantages. The first advantage was that I could publish more often and therefore keep more momentum and the second was that I could learn to improve my writing while making a few bucks at the same time.

So far, it is working well.

don't read this article and judge this author and nutbag

I can say from personal experience, he is a nutbag. I don't remember the specifics, but his posts on the wattpad threads were scary. I'm not talking about his novel(s). I'm talking about the kinds of things we discuss here about writing techniques, cover design, etc. He was aggressive, rude, scary.

I can say from personal experience, he is a nutbag. I don't remember the specifics, but his posts on the wattpad threads were scary. I'm not talking about his novel(s). I'm talking about the kinds of things we discuss here about writing techniques, cover design, etc. He was aggressive, rude, scary.

I wasn't trying to say that he wasn't a nut bag. He clearly is. I doubt anybody (including myself) would try to defend this nut bag as anything but a nut bag.

But I don't think anybody can learn much by reading this nut bag's story and pointing at him as a nut bag. His nut baggyness is so obvious that any rational person who reads this article would come to the nut bag conclusion.

My reply was more about trying to learn something from a nut bag, because we all have a little bit of nut bag in us.

Congratulations on an HONEST self-appraisal. Seeing the high eights and nines for your stories such reconsideration has clearly made your stories more liked by SOL readers (OK I accept that there are perceived weaknesses in the system but scores like those .....)

I'm not sure what you are saying here. My series is no longer available on SOL and haven't been for quite some time.

Apologies. The first sentence stands. However I misread and thought the piece was written by and not in reply to Argon whose stories I looked up

Ah, I see. Well, I guess 'honest self-appraisal' is what I'm trying to promote here. If you publish something and it doesn't sell the way you want it to, the only person you can point your finger at is yourself. If you point it anywhere else, you are wasting your time and energy. (Unless someone else wrote the story. lol).

Mr. Brittain, the current nut bag on topic, blamed the bad review written by a young woman, so he drove far from home and whacked her over the head. To my knowledge, that didn't help his sales.

It did give him a bunch more reviews, though. Go to Amazon and look them up. Some of them are quite humorous, but none of them look like they were written by anyone who actually purchased his book. But if you want a crap load of reviews and you don't mind them being one star reviews, his method seemed to accomplish that.

If you publish something and it doesn't sell the way you want it to, the only person you can point your finger at is yourself.

Since it's self-published, there is no one else to point a finger at. But it might not be the writing. It might simply be marketing, or lack of it. Or the book cover or blurb.

Then again, it might be the writing. :)

Since it's self-published, there is no one else to point a finger at. But it might not be the writing. It might simply be marketing, or lack of it. Or the book cover or blurb.

Then again, it might be the writing. :)

I agree with you that there SHOULDN'T be anyone else to point the finger at, especially if it is self-published, but I assure, you, as someone who works with two to three different self pubbers every week, one of the humps I have to help them overcome is trying to find ways to blame someone else for their lack of success. I've heard everything from belittling those who give bad reviews, to excuses about how other books came out at the same time in their genre written by more popular authors and drowned out their release, to (insert whatever excuse you can think of).

Marketing or lack of it can have impact, but think about this. What if you write a crappy book? Can marketing really help you overcome that?

Don't get me wrong, it is possible, I guess. The Blaire Witch Project comes to mind. I watched that movie because the marketing led me to believe that it was based on actual events, so I guess it is possible to sell a bad book through brilliant marketing, but I think the marketing would have to be extremely good and very dishonest to accomplish it. If you just use the average run of the mill marketing strategies to promote a book that is average at best, I hardly think you will experience a windfall of sales.

And I agree that book cover and blurb can have impact, but who is responsible for those? I don't let anyone else make the final decision for what I wrap my books in. I make that decision myself, so in the end, I can still only point my finger at me.

It would be 'interesting' if Paige Rolland signed up to SOL and started reviewing stories.

I know we're not selling stories here, and many authors say they don't care how many downloads or what ratings their stories get, but some brutal honesty might challenge some authors who are coasting in their comfort zones.

AJ

brutal honesty might challenge some authors who are coasting in their comfort zones

I recently asked a graphic design student I found on wattpad to critique my novel's cover. She said the size of the font was great and so was centering the image. But everything else had to go (the image, the font, the colors, the bar at the top). And she told me why. It was great feedback.

Someone who doesn't want to get that kind of feedback will never improve.

Because we are so different we do need to get a couple of points of view.

That's true for Beta Readers too. If one says something, you might or might not agree. But if many say the same thing, they're right and you're wrong.

The student that Switch Blayde asked to comment on his cover design has to have one set of references which might be (or might not be) close to the audience median; he couldn't know until someone else either agreed with that analysis or considered it nonsense.

To a degree. She's only a student, but she's learning what I never learned about graphic design. For example, she said:

You used Arial. I can't stress how bad that is. Arial is a cheap copy of Helvetica, but with really ugly lines and proportions. Still, even if you had used Helvetica, you're writing a mystery-thriller with a hint of erotica. Neither Helvetica nor Arial have an erotica/mystery vibe.

Go for a serif font, either a transitional (Baskerville, Times) or a didone (Didot, Bodoni), though the former would fit better. Search Vox-ATypI classification to see what I meant; the ones I mentioned in the parenthesis are the popular ones.

I know nothing about fonts. She evidently does. At least it sounds like she does.

I've read how important the color scheme is to a cover to evoke emotions and to send a signal. I happen to like the boldness of the gray background, but I'm not a graphic artist. This is what she said about the colors:

When I see gray, black, and red, I don't think on "thrilly" or "sexy." I think "boring office work."

Color scheme is crucial in these things. This is a mystery/thriller with erotica, right? Cherry red, dark blue, and violet with a lot of contrast comes to my mind. A lot of other books on the same genre use similar color schemes, but there's a reason for that, and it's the same reason why the Stop sign is the same everywhere. It's an INDICATOR of something. Colors have a meaning. I wouldn't change the staple erotica color scheme unless you really know what you're doing.

I don't like the painter Dali but hundreds do.

He's one of my favorite artists of all time. :)

That's true for Beta Readers too. If one says something, you might or might not agree. But if many say the same thing, they're right and you're wrong.

On the other hand, many publishers rejected Harry Potter before one eventually adopted it. Can all those who rejected it claim they were right because they were in a huge majority?

AJ

(I'm being a little ornery today because I'm having trouble thinking of a snazzy jargon-laden name for a spaceship's 'front door')

(I'm being a little ornery today because I'm having trouble thinking of a snazzy jargon-laden name for a spaceship's 'front door')

Lockland!

Shutme!

Pressure stop!

edit to add: most settle for - Airlock!

Tricky first step!

How about: Slam, bamm, goodbye, ma'am.

"I opened the slam, bamm, goodbye, ma'am." No, I don't think that quite works. But full marks for guessing my protagonist is female.

When making a cargo delivery, she finds herself in the middle of a mafia turf war, and the only person on her side is the male prostitute she's hiring by the hour because she likes his small penis.

AJ

The door opens into an airlock but most of the action takes place on terra firma and it doesn't really make sense to write that the mafia hitman sprayed bullets at the airlock.

AJ

On the other hand, many publishers rejected Harry Potter before one eventually adopted it. Can all those who rejected it claim they were right because they were in a huge majority?

That's not the same as Beta Readers. Beta Readers should represent your target audience. If the majority say a character isn't believable or liked, chances are they're right. If they get lost in a scene, it probably needs to be reworked.

With Harry Potter, it was the publisher's young daughter who read the sample chapters and came running down the stairs screaming for more. She was equivalent to the Beta Reader, not her father the publisher.

(I'm being a little ornery today because I'm having trouble thinking of a snazzy jargon-laden name for a spaceship's 'front door')

I guess "main hatch" wouldn't do it?

bb

Switch, it's important to know what criteria she was using, as well. I know the way you do cover art for a space opera is totally different to what you use for murder mystery, and romance is different again - cover art can often be genre specific, but not always.

I recently asked a graphic design student I found on wattpad to critique my novel's cover. She said the size of the font was great and so was centering the image. But everything else had to go (the image, the font, the colors, the bar at the top). And she told me why. It was great feedback.

There are a million "how to do a good cover" sites, and I'm sure you've seen them, but I ran across a couple that were focused and helpful, including good stuff on fonts. As your student (I think) pointed out, there are fonts and cover images associated with different genres, not that it's a requirement.

http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2013/10/20/book-cover-design-ms-word/

http://www.coverdesignstudio.com/typeface-font-book-covers/

http://diybookcovers.com/

bb

There are a million "how to do a good cover" sites, and I'm sure you've seen them, but I ran across a couple that were focused and helpful, including good stuff on fonts.

Thanks for the links. One interesting thing I already saw in one of them. It said:

Next is a list of reliable, classic typefaces that work well on book covers. The list is not exhaustive. You can find many fonts that look nearly identical to those named here. However, you won't go wrong with these suggestions.

SANS SERIF

Helvetica, Microsoft Sans, Arial, ...

So I can't go wrong with these reliable, classic typefaces. As in Helvetica and Arial. Remember what my graphic design student said:

You used Arial. I can't stress how bad that is.

Oh well.

Every cover I saw on thecreativepenn site were far to crowded and busy for my liking, every one of them discouraged me from reading the books. The best were the plain white ones, but they had way too much text on them.

That seems to be the main trend on the diybookcovers site as well. What ever happened to the KISS principle?

Every cover I saw on thecreativepenn site were far to crowded and busy

Most covers I see are too busy for me. And I'm talking about the traditional publishers as well. Often you can't even read the title, and I think the title is more important than the cover. This is especially true when it's a thumbnail.

That's why I came up with the cover I did. I wanted the title to stand out. I didn't want it busy, hence the gray background. I don't know anything about fonts. I thought the one I chose was easy to read.

I haven't even mentioned the worse comment she made. It was the image. I found the legs and panties so that's what I used. To me it looked sexy, like the woman was stripping. The student said it looked like a woman sitting on a toilet.

The funny thing is, when I researched it further to make sure I was allowed to use the image, I found the original. The tile floor and toilet bowl were there. She was sitting on a toilet. I asked the girl how she knew that and she said it was a standard way girls sit on a toilet. Who knew?

I haven't even mentioned the worse comment she made. It was the image. I found the legs and panties so that's what I used. To me it looked sexy, like the woman was stripping. The student said it looked like a woman sitting on a toilet.

The Readerotica series uses a very similar image, but I guess the hand delicately lowering (?) the panties changes the meaning just enough:

http://www.amazon.com/Readerotica-Great-Erotica-Writers-ebook/dp/B0097H1LMI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1447807127&sr=8-1&keywords=readerotica+5%3A.

I'd love some other opinions.

Since it's the title that attracts me, it's fine (imo).

If you don't mind, I'd love some other opinions.

Too much text for my taste. I'd have dropped the Episode 1, In Serial, An Erotic Mystery and had the Night Whispers in half the font size of Underground and placed midway between the main part of Underground and the girl's head. The removed text can be incorporated in the write up about the story and back cover if a print book.

It is important to me that any potential readers I get from it understand that this is a serial.

Then include the text Episode 1 of an Erotic Mystery Series in the same size font you use for An Erotic Mystery but start it right beside the lamp and on level with the middle of the lamp.

edit to correct typo of the to then.

It seems like I'm not really subtracting anything that way

You'd be cutting from seven text items (with the author name) in six lines of text to four items in five lines of text. If you place the Episode 1 of an Erotic Mystery Series on the bottom of the image just above the author name and adjust the font so it's the same length as the author name it'll balance better. Also, I agree you need a font with a capital G that doesn't take so much space. That way you can move the word Underground and Night Whispers further up into the black background area to give the readers a better view of the image.

It may be worth you time to try a version like that and see what you think of it. But the way things are my eyes switch over the text and the image may as well not be there because I have to dart to so many different textual items.

On a more personal note, I try not to have the author name in such a large font, but that's a personal choice matter; some like the name big, some don't.

but I couldn't get over the obscurity of the fonts.

Not sure if this is directed at me or not, but in case it is:

The fonts I use are Palatino Linotype, and considering how widely it's used in the print industry I wouldn't call it obscure. I do use italics for some text and plain for other text, but that's it. I also vary the font size depending on the importance of the information in the text, I want the people to focus on the title of the book while the author name is still noticeable but not overwhelming (as happens with some covers). When I use an image I want the image to be very visible because it's there to convey information or an impression, and it can't do that if I cover it with a lot of text. That's why when I have text on the image I try to put it in an out of the way spot. With the most recent cover artwork I've worked at standardising the font sizes and the author name location and size; I hope to get new artwork done for it all with such standards at one point.

I meant obscure in the difficult to see sense.

Thanks for the feedback, when I put the covers together I'm working on a full-size image so it's likely easier to see then. I'll keep your comments in mind when I next look at those covers and see what I can do to make the text stand out a bit more without being too glaring.

I like the cover for Star Performance too. The background image is exactly as it comes from NASA and is a star known as NGC 1999 (whatever that means) and that's all I know about it, but it caught my eye when I saw it.

Before I do my final save, however, I always reduce the cover size to thumbnail portions, so I can get a sense on what is clearly visible and what is not. (By the way, I use Photoshop CS6).

I use GIMP and create the image as 1838 x 2775 pixels at 300 dpi/ppi because that's what Lulu wants. My monitor resolution is 1920 x 1080 on a 28 inch screen and the image displays in GIMP at 25% of full size when I work on it. Once created I make a jpg of it at 1838 x 2775, another at 1800 x 2700 (for the e-pub image), and a third at 600 x 900 for my website image (when I get around to working on that again). All look good when viewed on my monitor at about 30 to 35% of size.

For Star Performance I did a search for images of stars and found that on the STScI site (a sub-site of NASA) and liked it. Not sure what the cloud is because it was taken by the Hubble Telescope, but looks great. The athletics pictogram started out as black and I changed it to gold and silver with the gold looking like an 'S' for the word Star, but had to back off from the metallic gold look to a yellow gold look for better aesthetics. I did play around with having the name and title in different places, but ended up with that because it put the word 'star' near the 'star' in the image. Here's the wikipedia page on it and the fuller image.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_1999

I still liked that cover the best, no matter what.

As far as overall visual effect, I think the Star Performance cover is the best. However, when you get down to what the cover is meant to portray, then it gets a lot harder to pick the best. For example, with the Rivers Region stories I chose two images to represent the two major areas it covers (plains and mountains) and use them on the cover to create a sense of uniformity by just changing the story title. In Stand in Time the artwork conveys both a western and time via the two simple images - when I can next work on that I think I'll move the images up and split the title and name with them. With Times of Old I was going for the plains and the plateau in the story with the ancient animals. So a lot of the story concept is conveyed in the cover imagery - a concept I try to work with in them all, but can't always get there.

is that the clock image seems too sharp next to the gun.

That's due to the quality of the original source images and not much I can do there, but will try when I can. I started with Photoshop and switched to GIMP many years ago when Adobe wanted an arm and a leg for the new version of Photoshop because my Photoshop 5 wouldn't work on the new version of Windows. So I tried a couple and ended up with GIMP; which was good because when I switched to using Linux GIMP was already there ahead of me.

I do still think your name should be legible in the thumbnails, though.

I suspect that's an issue to do with your monitor resolution or setting in some way, because it's readable on the thumbnail I see in Fire Fox on my system, but I may have a bigger screen than you do.

Do you not value those potential customers who are not so lucky as to have the latest equipment?

I value them all, but every device I've checked on shows more than just the cover thumbnail, it has the title beside it with my Name and the short blurb on the story, so the text on the cover art thumbnail image isn't all they have to go on. All the image is intended to do is give an idea of what the story is likely about to encourage them to read the blurb; the title is important for that, but the author name isn't. If they're searching for me by name, they'll get a search result where they know everything on it is by me, so, again, not an issue. Where having the name readable is important is how far away in can be read on the print book, and it's more than good enough for that.

I don't know what methods Lulu users to find new works

They show the title and author in large text beside the cover image. I don't use Amazon because I refuse to give them full control over my artistic rights. The only books of mine on Amazon with my approval are via an agreement between them and Lulu where I don't have to sign up to Amazon's terms and thus get to retain all my rights to my works and can pull them from Amazon whenever I wish to.

If Amazon is only showing the cover art and not listing anything beside it, then you do need to use a larger font to overcome the Amazon limitations on their presentation.

But my point comes in before they get to your author homepage. How do your potential customers find you if they don't know your name?

The title and author name are beside the image even in the category pages etc. I gather, from your comments, that Amazon has lists where they have just the cover images without text beside it. If that's the case there's no other way to have the name show.

People can find my books by name, title, by category search, and various other searches - each time the book is displayed the title and author name are in text either beside it or under it.

The first title is 'Same Sex Marriage Debacle'. I found the title difficult to read, because of the color choices of the background versus the title.

I've just amended the cover art image for SSMD by increasing the font a little in size and making the colour a little stronger by listing it as bold text. I don't want to play with the colours on that much more because it's already very colourful. The background for the upper image is what the image came with and the terms of use limit what I can do with, so I'm kind of stuck with that. The new images are up on the main page of:

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ernestbywater

I think I would go with white font for the author and possibly make that a smidge larger

Larger I can look at, for sure, but I don't want to go much larger with it. I try to limit the colours used in fonts, and I try to avoid white due to it's glare factor, but that is one cover image I have easy access to at the moment and can play with it, so I will. Part of the issue is what I see here is going to be different to what people see as the thumbnail in their browser. For some reason I can't fathom the Lulu image for the e-pub artwork gets bloated out bigger than the slightly larger print book image does.

I think I would go with white font for the author and possibly make that a smidge larger.

I've boosted the font on SSMD a bit more in size, looked at a version with white for the author and it seemed to draw the eye away from the title, which I don't want. The the whole image is now 600 dpi, the text colour is deeper through the text being listed as bold for it all, the title is up about 5% in size and the author is up about 26% in font size. New images uploaded to Lulu.

Ernest, I will consider your thoughts, but I am reluctant to remove any of the text. I can see your point, but what I want to avoid is having customers come into the project under the wrong impression. It is important to me that any potential readers I get from it understand that this is a serial.

I can see that, but there's no sense being overly verbose. All you need is "Night Whispers 1" (that is the series name, isn't it? Frankly, from the verbose text, I couldn't figure out what the frig the name of your series is, which is why you to to maintain the KISS principal).

However, you don't need to label a book by genre (ex: "An Erotic Mystery Series"). The book will be listed by genre. Instead, find a series title that captures the imagination. Something like "The Princess Fatwa Tragedy III".

Also, the only text you should have on the cover is:
1) The title, as big as you can make it
2) The author, almost as big as the title but separate, and
3) The series title in smaller type with a different font (to make it stand out), located below but near the title to help identify it.

All other text should be moved to either the back cover, or into the book itself. No one wants to spend a half-hour reading the damn cover!

As far as you capital "G", I manually adjust font sizes for my titles all the time, including manually kerning them (creating separate text elements and nudging them closer together).

Ernest, the rule of thumb is, is readers recognize your name, you make the author name BIG! If no one knows you, you make it tiny. Since none of us are producing huge bestsellers, I'd keep it relatively small (1/2 to 1/3 of the book title).

Also, Palatino Linotype is wonderful for longer books as the pronounced serif font speeds reading, but it's lost on a cover where it's only a distraction. You can use a serif font, but not one that's distracting or makes it difficult to read (which Palatino can do if used in small segments).

fhjohnauthor, like you, I've always used Adobe (both Photoshop & Illustrator), but recently found a new, similar product that only costs $39. Unfortunately, it's only available on the Mac. Adobe is horribly overpriced for what you get!

And I hardly think it would take anyone a half an hour to decipher my cover. Anyone who took that long, would take five years to read the first episode, so I don't think that comment was called for.

No, it wasn't. The entire cover doesn't take more than a second to read, but I was trying to make a point that you want a minimum of text on your cover, though I did it in an overly harsh manner. For that I apologize.

I tend to use distinctive fonts which fit each book from dafont.com (after securing rights to it), but I'll often have to kern the titles myself, or they'll be distracting font elements I'll 'erase' using Photoshop, thus I typically play around with the titles quite a bit to get them to look right.

I try to make the title as large as possible, but my print book source (createspace.com) forces you to include 'trim space' on the off chance they might cut it (which they usually don't), but that limits how large the cover font can be (by a full half an inch).

I'd go with the simplest approach: "Night Whispers", followed by "Gone Underground 1" (or "I" if you want to look fancy). If you look at my Lost with Nothing to Lose cover, you'll see I have a two line title with a smaller serif series font underneath (so the title and series aren't confused). I use the same font for my author title.

I also tend to with smaller capitals instead of lowercase font letters. You might try playing around with those.

I looked into the claims that you make here and, unfortunately, I can't substantiate that the way you state these things have any real degree of accuracy. I've poured through pages and pages of different series' and I cannot find any rigid standards as far as how to present a series title, versus an Episode title.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Episode" title (I'm assuming you mean "Book Title).

My comments weren't meant as a criticism (though my last point was a bit harsh. Instead I was emphasizing the KISS principle for book covers:

1) Keep the title the largest

2) Keep the Author name the second largest

3) Make the series title much smaller, but make it stand out (in my case, by using a separate font)

4) Keep all the titles as large and easy to read as possible.

How you go about that is up to you, there are no rules in this regard, but sales figures from various sources all emphasize that the title is the most important element in the book cover. The artwork shouldn't be so overwhelming that it distracts from the titles (though they still need to pull the reader in).

Sorry if I came off overly strong. Blame it on a late-night post and a lack of sleep. :(

To illustrate this, I point out your cover for "The Lad Who Poked the Devil in the Eye". I hardly think that this title falls into the 'KISS' principal.

You've got me there! After a series or terrible names, including "Stranded" of which there are over 2000 different titles in every imaginable genre with no similarity, making searching for the title impossible, I've decided to go with original and through provoking instead.

Although the title is long, it (hopefully) stops someone in their tracks and piques their curiosity. (I'll see if it sells any better than "Stranded" did).

As an alternative, try my Singularity cover. That showcases my proposed KISS philosophy missing in my "Poking the Devil" story.

As for my author's name font, you've got a good point. My use of a serif font stands in sharp contrast to the 'make it noticeable' premise (as does the ENTIRE cover of my "A House in Disarray" cover!).

Yeah, I mean typically, most of my covers are very simple. I usually have one or two word titles, possibly a subtitle and that's it.

One word titles are more powerful, but it can make locating your story virtually impossible (unless they search for your name). In my case, "Stranded" had thousands of results with no common story element connecting them. However, a later book's one-word title, "Singularity", is as commonly used. (However, I use it in a non-physics concept, which might cause confusion.) Most books with "Singularity" are non-fiction physics books.

Relying on your title and your author name for people to find your work will virtually always lead to disappointment.

The lengthy "The Lad Who Poked the Devil in the Eye" title wasn't to make the book easier to find. It was more distinctive, and the type to stop a reader in his tracks and ask questions about the story (triggering the reader's curiosity). However, for "Stranded", I'd discovered that there were simply too many other "Stranded" titles with no differentiation between genre subjects. I thought that book needed the extra distinction. "Poked the Devil" was a one-time attention grabber.

I recently asked a graphic design student I found on wattpad to critique my novel's cover. She said the size of the font was great and so was centering the image. But everything else had to go (the image, the font, the colors, the bar at the top). And she told me why. It was great feedback.

Switch, I asked for the same kind of feedback (on a discussion on cover designs on LinkedIn). That's why I hired someone to redo it for me (with a more 'generic' cover) and have changed how I approach my new covers. I still design them myself, as I prefer mine over the author/designer I used (she only charges $25 + cost of the art), but I learned enough from her that I'm now more confident about my covers. I'm sure I'm still making mistakes, but they're not as obvious as before. (I'll have to ask for a cover review again.)

(I'm being a little ornery today because I'm having trouble thinking of a snazzy jargon-laden name for a spaceship's 'front door')

Try "Entrance hatch" or "Entry Port". Their main purpose isn't in being fancy, but to prevent air from escaping.

Joe, Great covers! (though I agree with her about the gray cover). I did one (not yet published) mystery novel that uses a b/w cover (very dark) with a blood-red title. I only used that color scheme because I couldn't find any other decent cover images (other than the mostly black one).

Here's the one font, along with some better ones:

A House in Disarray cover.

Singularity Cover.

The Lad Who Poked the Devil in the Eye cover.

(Edit: Had to use small images of existing covers, rather than larger images of newer covers because SOL can't process certain names.)

fhjohnauthor, despite being 'complex', your cover works because there's lot of 'white space' (gray in your case) around the title, allowing the title to stand out.

I like the black-and-white and the female especially. Simple, dramatic. The title and author text seems a little crowded to me, but they stand out nicely.

The chaotic font was by design. It's hard to read, but suggests the chaos of the lead character, as well as the blood scene of the crime. I could have found thousands of easier to read fonts, but none captured the heart of the book--that the crime disrupted the entire police department--just as the lead detective's life is unraveling (the crime is just a parallel reflection of her emotional state, rather than a point of the story).

In other words, don't read this article and judge this author and nutbag unless you yourself are completely innocent of doing the same thing he did. Just because you don't drive 500 miles to a neighboring city and bonk a teenage girl over the head with a wine bottle, doesn't mean that you aren't making the same excuses he did. Put the blame where it belongs, develop your skills as an author and know that when your writing is up to par, your books will sell the way you want them too. Up until that point, you are 'in training'.

Huh? The guy whacked a young woman with a wine bottle. That is all the point I was making. He committed a violent crime. He didn't even have the balls to confront her about the review. He just sucker-punched the girl from behind while she was working.
As for your little Sermon-on-the-Hill, you're barking up the wrong tree. I do not want my books to sell. I am an amateur. I told stories and I cleaned them up as best I and my volunteer editors could. That had to be enough and most readers seemed to like them that way. That was as far as my ambition went. It was just a hobby after all, something to try to see whether I could do it in a foreign language.

Huh? The guy whacked a young woman with a wine bottle. That is all the point I was making. He committed a violent crime. He didn't even have the balls to confront her about the review. He just sucker-punched the girl from behind while she was working.
As for your little Sermon-on-the-Hill, you're barking up the wrong tree. I do not want my books to sell. I am an amateur. I told stories and I cleaned them up as best I and my volunteer editors could. That had to be enough and most readers seemed to like them that way. That was as far as my ambition went. It was just a hobby after all, something to try to see whether I could do it in a foreign language.

Looks to me like someone is getting a little paranoid. In no way were any of my comments directed at you in particular. I had no idea whether or not you had even published anything. If I offered anything that can help someone great. If not, maybe next time. Either way, you might want to relax a little, eh.

Well, you replied to my post and you used second person. How is that not addressing me? As for the "paranoid", try not to insult people. It's bad style in a discussion.

I thought that everyone was aware that when you hit the reply button, it automatically assigns your reply as a reply to someone in particular. As far as I am aware, there is no way to make a reply and not tie it to someone.

And take your own advice. I hardly think your 'sermon on the hill' comment was a compliment. If I am preaching, it is only to try and help other authors.

You know... I never even noticed that before. Thanks for pointing that out.

Well, in this case it would have helped avoid leading Argon to believe my comments were aimed directly at him, which they weren't.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1228863/Glassed-woman-tracks-attacker-Facebook-police-say-help.html

Your link took me to a different case.

even one is bad enough and reflects on society in general.

Uh... It's a second article written about the same incident. Either way, it wouldn't reflect on society in general. Society in general doesn't bash people in the head in return for bad reviews. Only individuals can do that.