Aloha to Rebecca York, DARK MOON, CHAINED, AMBUSHED, and book covers

Aloha!  Rebecca York, an award winning author and long time supporter of SOS America, is my guest today .... sit back, relax, and soak up Rebecca's venture into the indie market.

Maybe you can’t tell a book by its cover.  But the cover’s either going to attract you or turn you off.  Which is why it’s a vital selling tool for writers going indie.

You’ll often hear writers say that the cover gods smiled on them for a particular book.  Or they’ll say they hate the cover.  With indie books, you can have exactly what you want or think you want.

For my new DECORAH SECURITY series, I gave considerable thought to each cover.  Two worked the way I wanted.  I ended up reconsidering one.

I came away from the 2010 Novelists Inc. writer’s conference in St. Pete Beach, Florida, knowing I should enter the indie market.  Most writers with my track record have a long backlist they can publish.  I didn’t because Harlequin holds the rights to so many of my books.  And all of my Berkley books are still in print in e-book format.

That meant I had to write new material if I wanted to go indie.  Since I love writing series, I decided to invent DECORAH SECURITY, a detective agency where many of the agents have paranormal powers or take on paranormal cases.

I wanted to launch with more than one title, so I conceived a short story, a novella, and a novel.  I started writing the novel, DARK MOON, first, as a transition from my Berkley titles.  It’s about two Decorah agents, Cole Marshall and Emma Richards, sent undercover to rescue the daughter of a millionaire being held captive on an ocean liner whose owner has turned the ship into a palace for kinky pleasure.

Emma doesn’t know Cole is a werewolf who’s going to make her his lifemate.  And neither of them can fight the sexual attraction building between them.  Can they complete their mission before the owner of the ship discovers their identities and has them killed?  And what happens after the bad guys capture them naked?

I knew the cover of this book would be important, and I’m lucky that I have a good friend, Patricia Rosemoor, who’s a cover designer as well as a writer.  (Her rates are on her Web site at: http://patriciarosemoor.com/PRPortfolio.html .)  I told her I wanted to duplicate the concept for my Berkley werewolf books.

She found a font that was pretty close to the font on my Berkley books.  We knew we wanted my name and the title to be large so they’d show up on a thumbnail version.

Then we worked together on that cover, using a shot I found on Jimmy Thomas’s Support Romance Web site.  Only we took out the big machine gun he was holding, reversed the image, and cut the hair falling in his face.  After I had Jimmy locked down, I found a wolf picture that would work for the background.

We needed one more thing, which was an emblem or a flash so the Decorah books would be instantly recognizable.  I named the series after the Decorah, Iowa, eagles’ nest that I spent so much time watching last spring and summer on a webcam. After I found a very patriotic looking gold eagle coin that would work for the series symbol, Patricia designed the emblem.

The next cover we did was for AMBUSHED, a short story in which hero Jordan Stone has a sixth sense for danger.  He’s going to need it to save the life of federal witness Elizabeth Bannerman. But he’s not only fighting the terrorists out to prevent Elizabeth from testifying.  He’s also fighting his notion of right and wrong, which could prevent him from giving in to his attraction for Elizabeth.

For the cover, I wanted to depict Jordan and Elizabeth, but it’s hard to find a picture of an attractive man and a woman together who aren’t smiling.  In fact, finding people you want to use at all in the right pose is not easy, which is why so many covers use parts of faces and bodies.

   I discovered just the right picture for AMBUSHED on Big Stock.  The woman’s blond and the man’s dark-haired, like my characters, but I would have changed their hair color in the story to go with that picture.

  Keeping the look similar, we used the same font for my name and the title.

The cover of CHAINED, the novella in the set, was more problematic.  Originally I was thinking I’d make the hero a very sexy ghost.  But how do you have a happy-ever-after with a phantom?  I think I came up with an elegant solution, which I’m not going to give away.

I used Jimmy Thomas again, and the picture I found with a rope coiled over his shoulder looked good with my Southwest setting.  Because the story is paranormal, I asked Patricia to show Jimmy in the sky, with clouds visible through him.  It was a reasonable idea, and we tried to get it right.   But I was never entirely satisfied.

The good news is that with indie e-book publishing, you can redo the cover–or the story, for that matter.

 After Christmas, Patricia went back to the drawing board with a concept of her own, and I’m delighted with the results.  You see Jimmy standing on the cover, then ghost images  behind him.   And the scene is a much richer showcase for the Southwest setting.

I don’t know Photoshop.  But I do feel I had considerable input into my covers.  Helping design them was a learning experience that I’ll carry over into future books in the series.  And it was a lot more satisfying than being given a cover by my publisher–one I might love or hate.

How do you feel about covers?  Are they an important element in your selecting a book?

IMAGES AND URLS FOR REBECCA YORK BLOG

DARK MOON Cover

Amazon.com:  
Link

BN.com:
Link

CHAINED Cover (First Try)

CHAINED Cover (Final)

Amazon.com:

Link

BN.com:

Link

AMBUSHED Cover

Amazon.com:

Link

BN.com:

Link

Jack Lord provides security in 1960s Hawaii .... 

Mahalo, Rebecca, for joining us today at SOS Aloha!  I am giving away a ecopy of one of the three books mentioned in today's blog - winner's choice.   To enter the giveaway,

1.  Answer Rebecca's question above.

2.  This giveaway is open to all readers.

3.  Comments are open through Saturday, January 21, 10 pm in Hawaii.  I'll post the winner on Sunday, January 22.   

Mahalo,

Kim in Hawaii

.... Scott  Caan and Alex O'Loughlin in 2010s Hawaii.