Monday, August 4, 2014

Two Book Covers Revamped

Now that being a self-published author is bringing in some decent money, I've been slowly making my way through my books. I've edited a few, changed the formatting, and resubmitted updated versions. I've also been slowly making my way through the covers to have them updated to a more professional look (to see what I'm talking about, you can check out the change in my travel photo book covers here.)

I decided the next two on my list would be the short books in my Explanations and Advice for the Tech Illiterate series. My homemade covers that I crafted with my digital camera, followed by Paint and Gimp, have done alright. I've sold some e-books and paperbacks of both books (and even a decent number of audio books on the first one; the second one is still being made into an audio book.) So here's what the old covers looked like:


I'll admit that my graphic altering skills are amateur at best. The font sizes are a little bit off because I generally forget to write down what size I used for my author name and for the title. I'm not a huge fan of how I had to cover the universal remote in the second one with text. They're a little hard to read as thumbnails. Even with all of those little issues, they've had double-digit sales for 2014.

So I hired Elizabeth Mackey (of Elizabeth Mackey Graphics) to make my tech illiterate covers look a little more professional. We went through a couple of different ideas and I almost went with some covers that used a more silver / grey text but ultimately these were easier to read as thumbnails. Here's the two new covers:



I like these two a lot better than my old covers. They still use the photos I took, but the titles are easier to read, everything is in the exact same place in both for the title and my author name, font sizes are identical, and she found a way to rotate the remote to get it to fit better. I've already replaced the old covers with the new ones and I think they'll help sales (sales of my travel photo series were more than double in the month following the launch of their new covers.)

As always, I'll provide links to both books in case any of you would like some general tech help / advice with computers, wireless networks, home theater, etc. If you know some people that could use some help in those areas, please let them know about my tech illiterate books. Thanks.

Explanations and Advice for the Tech Illiterate E-Book
Explanations and Advice for the Tech Illiterate Paperback

Explanations and Advice for the Tech Illiterate Volume II E-Book
Explanations and Advice for the Tech Illiterate Volume II Paperback

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