Renewed book cover Gone World: Revenge

 UPDATE: I decided to use one cover for the whole series and it's not this one, I'll use it for something else. The new cover for the gone series will be this one:

Been at it for a while, though not a long while. I only touched up the previous cover and put up new fonts. The title is now more readable.

Old Cover:

New Cover:

I learned a lot about cover design these last few weeks. It is more difficult to make a great cover than it seems. You can quickly put one up, but that is no guarantee it will be good. It's easier to make book covers from templates, but you must make sure the template is great else all will inherit its design flaws.

I still need to do a little bit of fine tuning before I get these covers out in the wild.

Update: Book Cover

I just finished another book cover for my Gone World series. It took me a week to get it together. I had to use a model this time, for I had trouble finding a good picture of a woman with her back turned.

This is the old one:

 

It isn't my best made cover. You can't read the title nor the author name, a rookie mistake, a mistake I'm correcting now.

New one:

 

The title and author name are readable. At the horizon some ominous bright light is visible and a young wounded woman stumbles toward it. I think it's better than the previous one.

I'm now working on the third book cover. I'll post it soon, most likely tomorrow.

Possible new cover for my Gone World series.

UPDATE: I decided to use one cover for the whole series and it's not this one, I'll use it for something else. The new cover for the gone series will be this one:

This weekend I played a little with Gimp and Inkscape. I made a new cover for my Gone World series. The old one I think wasn't bad, but it obviously wasn't good enough to generate enough sales.

I made this one this weekend. I'm not sure yet if I'm going to use this one or make another one. Tell me what you think.

Did some retouching:

At Arms: A vampire short story collection

Out right now!

Five tales of a high-born family and their retainers struggling against the curse of vampirism.

The Dark Wanderer - Two knights escort a young woman through a forest infested with wild beasts.

Though wild beasts will be the least of their worries.

Damnation - Lady Christine D'Ang goes against her father wishes and leaves the castle in search of a young man she fallen smitten for.

Accosted by a knight she flees and by chance meets an eccentric stranger.

Outcast - Lady Lyna D'Ang lives a sheltered and privileged life at castle Perring along with her siblings. This quickly ends when darkness descends upon the castle.

Ambos Thorne - Ambos Thorne, a renowned warrior, is faced with superstitious beliefs and orders that make little sense to him. He arrives at a cross road where he has to make a choice.

James Farmer - Tired and desperate, James, a farmhand, is chasing a heavily armed group transporting a woman.

Bonus Story: Death's Given Chance - A man on his way to a funeral battles with his own dark
thoughts about life being worth living.

A chance meeting will change his life forever.

A collection of short stories of 31000 words or approx. 124 print pages altogether, set in the Man-at-Arms and Maiden-at-Arms universe.


Available at:
GooglePlay
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Kobo

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Pre-Order: At Arms

Five tales of a high-born family and their retainers struggling against the curse of vampirism.

The Dark Wanderer - Two knights escort a young woman through a forest infested with wild beasts.

Though wild beasts will be the least of their worries.

Damnation - Lady Christine D'Ang goes against her father wishes and leaves the castle in search of a young man she fallen smitten for.

Accosted by a knight she flees and by chance meets an eccentric stranger.

Outcast - Lady Lyna D'Ang lives a sheltered and privileged life at castle Perring along with her siblings. This quickly ends when darkness descends upon the castle.

Ambos Thorne - Ambos Thorne, a renowned warrior, is faced with superstitious beliefs and orders that make little sense to him. He arrives at a cross road where he has to make a choice.

James Farmer - Tired and desperate, James, a farmhand, is chasing a heavily armed group transporting a woman.

Bonus Story: Death's Given Chance - A man on his way to a funeral battles with his own dark
thoughts about life being worth living.

A chance meeting will change his life forever.

A collection of short stories of 31000 words or approx. 124 print pages altogether, set in the Man-at-Arms and Maiden-at-Arms universe.

You can pre-order this book ($2.99) at:
Indigo
Kobo
Smashwords

Simple e-book covers for the budget minded people. (Could use some advise)

In 2008 I started on my first novel and it took me about two years to finish. I needed an e-book cover and lacked the cash to hire someone to make one. I had no idea how to make a cover myself, however it didn't stop me from trying, and the very first one I made was terrible. I think I used paint to make it. It was really, really horrendous, so I deleted it from the physical plane but it's still etched in my retina. Not long after that horror I discovered Gimp. I played around with it and finally after some trail and error and with the help from online tutorials I made this book cover:

Since then I pulled the novel, because it was a grammatical mess (even after a paid edit), and this year I rewrote the story and got it edited. I changed the cover into this:

I like to keep my book covers simple and often take my time to get it the way I want it. Though I have made book covers in less than 30 minutes, like the one bellow.

Others take more time to complete, because I make more than one version and sometimes I make an additional separate version for the physical book. Like bellow for my upcoming short story collection.

E-book:

Print Book:

I'm thinking about designing book covers for other writers. My target audience are those who need an affordable, simple custom made cover, and who are in need of a quick turnaround. However I'm not so sure about how much to ask for, being I don't want to ask too much because I'm far from a pro, but I can't ask too little because I'm not a novice either.

What I offer:

Custom made e-book cover. (Photo retouching/Editing)
Turnaround of within a week.
Low price. (Probably $25)
Major revising for additional cost.
Final file will be in Jpeg or converted in PDF. (In whatever desired resolutions)

What I need:

The client needs to provide their own stock photos.
Payment in advance and through PAYPAL.


Do you think $25 would to be a great price? Is asking $25 for a major revision too much? Or would it be better also to ask $50 for the book cover including two revision options?

I can also make print book covers, however it requires much more work. (Front, Back, and Spine) Should I also be offering this? And at which price would it be acceptable? Would $75 for the book cover with an additional $50 for two revisions be a good price?

I can only do a limited amount of covers each week, being I've got a day job, and I'm writing short stories in between, and coming November I'll be participating in Nanowrimo. I think two covers a week would be a doable limit.

I'm looking forward to what your guys have to say. :D

***

UPDATE

***

Made a book sample book cover. I tried my hand at Romance. Later today I'll try to post more.

Gotz another one

Violence, violence, and more Violence!

Violence: A Writer's Guide by Rory Miller


We all know violence of some sort, some at a higher level than others. Anyone who fought, or had to deal with violence know it's not pretty, however most won't be able to put it in perspective. This book will help understand violence, the how and why of it.

This book is great for anyone, not only writers. The information about violence will dispell any notion that fighting/battle is something honorific to do. It will make clear how dirty, messy, violence really is. People reading this will come out with a new view of life. It will open eyes that not all in this world is nice and clean. That the wars we see on television, detached and far, with these surgical strikes with cruise missiles, and drone strikes, that in reality these are not clean, surgical, but horrendous, and messy things. People die horrific deaths, us not seeing it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

It will help writers write more realistic fights and battles. It will give an edge to their writing, making it more gritty and graphic. Not necessarily good for every story, violence depicted as it really is makes for a bleak and random world. There is no romance in battle. If you're writing a heroic romantic epic, you might not want to be too realistic and instead put more fiction in your fights and turn down the violence in the fictitious world.