Covers, covers

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book covers, cover design, e-book, writing

I’ve done the initial edit for the ebook edition of Something Stupid  – a lot of exclamation marks and qualifiers have hit the dust and I expect more will go on a second read through.  Now I’m handing it over to the copy editors (daughter and husband) to check for basic mistakes and inconsistencies.  I’m never sure whether to put the names of books and publications in italics or not, I think it’s largely a matter of personal taste now, but one thing I do know is that you’ve got to be consistent.  I’m pretty sure that the Daily Mail, which gets mentioned a surprising amount of times I realised, wavers from normal type to italics and back again on successive pages like bulrushes in a light breeze.

Now I’ve got to tackle the cover design.  The original cover designs, even if I had a right to use them which I doubt I do, are over ten years old and tastes have changed.  Something Stupid did stand out from others of its type when it was first published;

most similar books had covers in bright colours and with photographs of a face, or hands or legs.  I always thought the cover made it look like it was aimed at teenagers, it was an unabashed light read but actually appealed to a wide age range.

Then they came up with the cover for Seven Week Itch;which stood out for different reasons.  A friend told me she was embarrassed to be seen reading it on the tube.  Not surprisingly I asked for something different for Up To No Good;this was very of its time but it bugs me because my heroine had blonde hair, not dark.

It’s good fun having a free hand to create a theme for the covers of three books.  It’s also extremely alarming, because to start with I’m no expert in what makes a cover work; for instance I loved Katie fforde’s original covers such as a painting of a woman with a cup of tea done by a really good artist, they made you enjoy looking at the book as well as reading it.  Her recent covers are pastels with line drawings of women lying in the grass or racing across the page, I don’t like them anything as much, but apparently they’ve increased her sales a lot.

I’m pushing the knotty question of whether I can trust my own taste to one side for the moment and concentrating on how I’m going to get the cover designed.  Do we try and do it ourselves?  Technically it’s not that difficult if you have the right programme and are reasonably computer literate – which counts me out.  There are stock sites on the net to search for illustrations which are either free or shouldn’t cost too much.  After four days my eyes are spinning in their sockets and I’ve only found one drawing which is even a possible.

Do we pay a professional?  Even though a recent article I read about ebook publishing said it was worth the money, I’d rather not.  It gets expensive and in my opinion the examples of really good design that were used to illustrate the article were c**p.  But then that might be because I can’t recognise a good cover when it hits me in the face.

And in any case all this deliberation about who does the cover is pretty redundant when I can’t even decide what sort of cover I want; photograph, drawing, graphics, figures, landscapes, animals, cartoons, brights, pastels…  I trawl endlessly through book sites on the net looking for ideas, my eyes are spinning again, and nothing seems quite right.

It’ll get sorted eventually.  In the meantime it gives me something to bore the family with over dinner, and at least it makes a change from the rugby.

 

Revising

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e-book, revising, Something Stupid

Every How To Write book will tell you that once you’ve finished your magnum opus you should put it in a drawer for at least three months before starting to revise it so you can look at it with fresh eyes.  It’s excellent advice though I have yet to meet anyone who hast typed ‘The End’ and then not gone promptly back to page 1 to start tinkering with the precious work of art. It’s what I’ve always done myself and yes, you lose a certain amount of distance by revising immediately – that’s why you get others to read it to point out plot holes and dull bits – but you gain in immediacy and freshness.

I’m now in the really weird position of revising something that’s effectively been in a drawer for 13 years as I’ve started editing Something Stupid so I can publish it as an e-book.  I wrote it in 1998 and checked the proofs in 1999.  When it first came out I must have picked it up and read a few pages, or more, every week, revelling in seeing my own words in print and feeling pretty pleased with myself about it too, but I don’t think I’ve even so much as glanced at it in five years.

One of the things that just leapt out at me was how much my style has changed in 14 years.  I’ve got to cut the book down as it’s long for an e-book but I’m beginning to think I won’t have much of a problem.  Those adjectives and adverbs!  In my own defence I should say that I acquired the adjective habit trying to write for Mills and Boon and it’s a difficult one to shake off.  One of the reasons they’re so easy to read (and hard to write) is that every action, every emotion, every view has to be spelt out clearly which means lots of adjectives and adverbs.  I thought at the time that I’d largely cured myself, but sadly no.  They’re everywhere. I read a story ages ago, I think by O Henry, about a struggling and mediocre writer who was given a magical device to improve his writing.  He waved it over his manuscript and every adjective disappeared and he had the most superb piece of literature in front of him.  I need one of those.

The book is also peppered with screamers, exclamation marks, which surprises me as I didn’t think I’d ever over-used them.  Amazing how you can fool yourself.  Anyway now I’ve gone right in the opposite direction.  With the current work in progress if I’m stalled and doing a little light revising – also known as not getting on with it – I actually have to insert the odd exclamation mark here and there for emphasis.

There’s also the thorny problem of whether I should update the book or not.  Do I put in mobile phones and computerize everything which involves re-writing several scenes or do I simply put a note at the beginning saying that it takes place in 1999?

One thing I’m really enjoying though is being able to take out some of the phrases the copy editor inflicted on the manuscript.  Back in 1999 I was much too much in awe of the whole publishing process to say that I do not accept that “emoted” can ever be a synonym for “said” in any circumstances whatsoever.  My friends were all too tactful to comment on such excressences (fortunately there weren’t many) which is a great shame as for years I haven’t had the opportunity to deny that  “she emoted” is part of my normal writing language.

It isn’t.  It was the first edit I made.