Despite getting some very positive responses and a
4 Star Review from my new short,
Something Under the Sea is Drooling (for which I am most honored and thankful), I feel that it is not selling as well as it should. So, following the sage advice that I've found everywhere from
Joe Konrath's blog to
kboards (wonderful resources for indy publishers, BTW), I have attempted to re-tool my blurb. Sadly, however, I received very little response on both
my blog and on
my kboards post. Which, leads me to believe that perhaps my blurb is fine.
So I've taken on the arduous task of getting a new cover. Arduous is perhaps the incorrect term. I am enjoying the experience, now that I have
finally been blessed with a wonderful artist with whom to work. However, getting to this point was another story altogether. Perhaps one day I will blog about that "adventure" in a future post (it all depends on the comments...feel free to post). Regardless, I would like to share some of my experiences that I am currently having with my new cover artist, the esteemed
M. S. Corley.
First of all, I discovered M. S. Corley via his
deviantart profile. A note to self-pubbers everywhere: deviantart is a tremedous resource for artists! If you do nothing else today, go to this site, create an account (it is free) and begin looking around. When you find art you like, or art that inspires you, or art that is the perfect style for your next project (or what have you), add it to your
Favorites. This is a very simple process and you can even create folders within your
Favorites so you can orgainze these pieces of art. I have one for "Children's Books", one for "Scary Stuff", "Sci-Fi", and so forth, based on the types of books I like to write.
Some of the initial pieces of Mr. Corley that caught my eye were:
These were by no means the only pieces that caught my eye - M.S. Corely has a profile chock-full if amazing work! Yet, here we have an individual with a tremendous grasp of a wild range of varied styles, a SOLID grasp of all elements of Graphic Design, a killer eye, hand, and design sense AND it appears from his art and his profile that he is a Christian who also is into Hellboy, Lovecraft, and D&D.
I was stunned....
There are not many of us, after all. :)
So, I emailed him, using a link from
his blog. And this is where it gets interesting.
I've dealt with artists in the past and I know that they are busy, eccentric folks. I love them for that, actually - it's one of the things that makes them so interesting to work with--however, they generally reply back to emails that reference giving them money....
So after I'd not heard back from him after a couple of days, I sent a second email. Then, I waited for a couple more days and I still had heard nothing. So, I went to his deviantart profile. You see, another neat thing about deviantart is you can Watch artists in whom you are interested. You get a notification whenever they post new art. It just so happened that M. S. Corley had recently posted some new stuff, which excited me - he was out there - on the Net! I had only to connect with him.
So, instead of email, I used deviantart's messaging function, which is called
Notes. I dropped M. S. a note and he replied almost immediately! We discovered that he'd never received my initial emails, and was very interested in my project. One thing led to another, and now he's working on a brand new cover for
Something Under the Sea is Drooling! I'm super excited about it and I will be blogging over the next few days and showing you the process as we head towards a striking new cover! I hope you will enjoy the series and I hope this blog post has been helpful.
The takeaway: be determined and don't give up! Try several different ways to contact someone (but remember - Don't be Pushy)! Be nice, but be persistent!
Until next time, please feel free to share this blog post and if you'd like, drop $0.99 on
Something Under the Sea is Drooling - if you like romping, wild sci-fantasy filled with Elder Gods, angels, steampunked orcas, and undersea battles--you won't be sorry!
