Tout your Kindle and E-Publishing!

Looks good, Amanda!

Kary, I saw this JUST in time and snagged your story. I love your bio!

Nice job on that second cover, Amanda.

The funny thing is that I'm running into some of these stories on Kindle anyway. I picked up The Unbelievers a couple of weeks back without even realizing it was by Thomas K. Carpenter. Well, without making the connection, anyway. (Great story, by the way) And absolutely love those new covers, Ms. Muriel! I was instantly compelled to pick up Of Those Gone into Mania. That's what a good cover does...

I've recently published a previous submission to WotF on Kindle. The details:

Talan is a homeless boy who lives by his speed and wits, but what he wants more than anything is to get into the City of Glass. Beautiful and tantalizing, it beckons to his fantasies of adventure and riches. Yet once inside he quickly learns that all that appears beautiful may hide an agenda both dark and sinister. Trapped and enslaved, he learns lessons of pain, hatred, love and leadership as he tries to free himself and the other lost children from the clutches of the denizens who dwell in the City of Glass.

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/City-of-Glass-ebo ... 007NQ0OP0/

Bard, that is a stunning cover!

Thanks Martin. I'm not at all savvy enough to know how to build one from scratch, but I take advantage of the tools I actually know how to use. I'm always looking for striking illustrations and stock images. The rest is duck soup...

Wow, yes, that is a super cover.

@ Amanda - I like the new cover a lot better.
For me, though, the title and your name are sort of falling into the image. They're a little hard to read. I think it's the combination of the reddish color and the darker value. It's hard to go lighter with red without getting into pinks, so maybe you could play with some of the yellows and lighter greens that are showing up along the left edge? Not too warm, as in, not a sunny yellow or a bright chartreuse, but something muted.

Wow, yes, that is a super cover.

Thank you!

I bet I could go with a burnt or autumn orange and it would look better.

Bard, I love that cover. Very breath taking.

Thank you Amanda!

It's a stunning cover, Bard, imo. Luv the towers, sets the imagination asoaring!

Thank you. My mission to find a glass palace or castle turned to be a complete failure, but this turned out to be a nice find. I think it works well despite not being my first choice, which goes to show what someone pointed out earlier -you may not find exactly what you have in mind, but you can always find a compatible concept piece which works almost as well...

If I might make a suggestion to folks...

Not only should your name be in the proper color to be seen vs. the background image, and seen at a fraction of the size of the original picture. (small enough for an iphone, say.) It should be cover to cover.

Remember this: Publishers don't publish books, they publish authors.

Do you want to read Under the Dome? Or the latest Stephen King novel?
Does the title even matter?
New. Stephen. King. Book.
If I'm a fan, that's all I need to know.

Big name authors just have their picture on the back, (Unless you're Dean Koontz then you have your dog on in the picture with you.) because they are the product, not the book.

Cover to cover.
Take two slots if you need to:

AMANDA
MCCARTER

Make it BIG. It's all about you from here on out.

D

I agree with Dustin's advice.

Of course, with my long name, I didn't have a lot of choice...

Thanks, Dustin. I'm going to play with it a bit more. I'm waiting for Smashwords to push it through distribution before I change it again.

I'm seeing some coolish cover on here, guys! And thanks for the compliments!

Bard, love the City of Glass cover. Simple, yet intriguing. Amanda, I'm going to be a dissenter here. I like the concept in your original cover for Alone in the Night. It needs a touch of work. Maybe blow up the image of the girl and bolden the planets. Perhaps she's literally "sitting" on a window of the ship, which looks out onto the planets below, and she's otherwise swathed in the darkness of the ship, looking imploringly up at us. Anyway, IMO, it's far more alluring a *concept* than cover #2. Yes, yes, Grayson, lol, the font would need different, too. But I'm strictly talking about concept and dynamics of the image here. Not to mention, in the new cover, is that a gun or some kind of weapon she's holding? I hope not, because it looks plastic. It even has that nice seem down the middle of the muzzle, like you see on toy guns.

When I finish my 24-Hour Story, I'll have 9 short stories/novelettes. I still have a slew of them out on submission at magazines, but either way, even if I sell some, they'll ultimately end up as eBooks when the rights revert back to me, so I'll be rendering covers for them all.

Right. In-between child rearing, home making and household management, errand running, secretary duties to Captain (hubs) Muriel, writing freelancing Golden Gazette articles, and squeezing in a second to write--LOL!!!! I have mucho respect for all of you with insanely busy lives who still make time to write (and/or illustrate)!!!!

Keep the covers coming!

Meghan, I am not that good with graphics editing. I'll have to hire someone out and right now the book is not selling well enough to warrant it. Though I did get three sales from Smashwords the first week it went up.

Meghan, I am not that good with graphics editing. I'll have to hire someone out and right now the book is not selling well enough to warrant it. Though I did get three sales from Smashwords the first week it went up.

Yeah, precisely why I haven't e-pubbed anything yet. The whole cover design thing is beyond me. I can do a pretty good job of telling someone what I like/don't like and why, but I'd stumble out of the gate trying to do it myself.

I'm in the same boat as you with no experience with fonts and cover creation. But that shouldn't be a roadblock to getting a satisfactory cover. The thing is there are tools and resources out there that basically do the work for you. Example: for the covers to both The Aberration and City of Glass, I used Createspace via Amazon, which not only provides you with printed copies, but also lets you use their nifty cover creator tool. The only thing I needed was a striking image and to enter my cover information (title, author name, type of font, etc).

There are many ways to purchase stock images -some cheap, some expensive. Or you can commission an artist to whip one up for you at differing rates. The point is: once you get the image, that's all you need for a great cover using Createspace cover creator. You don't actually have to publish the book through Createspace, either. Once you save the cover image you can always go back and delete your manuscript if you don't want printed copies. I'm sure there are other similar tools out there besides that, but I'm relating from my personal experience.

I'd love to have the artistic and design skills to create a cover from scratch, but for right now those talents are outside of my range. In the meantime, I utilize the tools available. My covers may not be exactly how I'd like, but they convey the concept I want to present. Just something to keep in mind for those who like me are handicapped in the talent of cover design...

Oh wow, I had no idea. Very cool! I'll have to try it out.

Cool covers Amanda, Bard, and Martin!

I updated the cover for my fantasy novel "A Heart in Sun & Shadow":

Beautiful cover, Annie!

Gorgeous, Annie!

Technically this isn't e-publishing, but it's still ultra-cool to hear my story read by a professional audio producer. So I'm super excited to announce my novelette The Cageless Zoo is now available on Amazon, iTunes, and Audible in audiobook form. For those keeping score, this story scored an HM in the contest and then went on to be a best seller on Kindle for a brief and glorious time.

Visiting the galaxy’s only Cageless Zoo should be a special treat for Melandre and her children. Except she’s still trying to reckon with her husband’s recent death and how she’s going to raise two highly independent children on her own. As their visit quickly falls to chaos, Melandre learns that family is the only thing left she has to rely on.

The Cageless Zoo audiobook can be found at Amazon, iTunes, and Audible for $6.95. Free copies are available with a trial subscription to Audible.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Cageless-Zoo/dp/B00833FADI/ref=ntt_at_ep_edition_1_2

W00t, Tom!

My first audiobook is out, too. It's one of my Gryphonpike Chronicles novellas: Witch Hunt
http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=mp_ja_1_1 ... B0082D7B9K

W00t, Tom!

My first audiobook is out, too. It's one of my Gryphonpike Chronicles novellas: Witch Hunt
http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=mp_ja_1_1 ... B0082D7B9K

Awesome, Nobu! The sample sounds great.

Very nice cover. Totally looks like something I'd find in a bookstore.

My apologies for the spammer that got through the screening process.

Those spammers are always interesting because they are 95% likely to be real, live people.

I hope someone is paying them well? For the effort it must take to actually go around signing up for forums and then posting those cookie-cutter spam links?

Anyway, spammer nuked, and his posts too.

I should have just eaten him....

Synopsis:

When her twin sister kidnaps her daughter, Lorna Jassan must return to Kuwar to find her. The mission forces Lorna to seek help from Weslin, a man she never wanted to see again. In the midst of her search, Lorna must keep a sixteen-year-old secret hidden, but Kuwar has secrets of its own. Can Lorna unravel them in time to rescue her daughter?

I also have two freebies available: Demon Song & Duel on Hakkojji Bridge