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My road through publishing has been twisted since Funnel Vision, Tornado Pinball and Zap Bang. How can writers choose their happiest path?

The release of Twisters this summer has me thinking a lot about fictional accounts of storm chasing—and my own writing.

I’m a storm chaser, and I took the movie for what it was: big-budget entertainment. The film’s science stretches credulity, and the actions of the storm chasers seem unlikely at best, but it’s always fun to watch Hollywood’s take on your life’s passion. The tornadoes looked better than they did in Twister, and I appreciated the inside references to our hobby and the original movie. Yet I think I’ll always have a special place in my heart for the geeks of Twister.

When I wrote my novels about storm chasers, the books’ quirky, obsessed characters were at least as important to me as the action. I’ve felt a need to revisit the books given all of the chaser stuff appearing in media lately.

Everything I write means something to me, but these “books of my heart” still give me a thrill. They remind me there’s value, perhaps the ultimate value, in writing about something you love.

 

TWISTER, chasing and writing

 

I saw Twister before I ever went chasing, though I’d seen scientific storm chasers in documentaries and had a lifetime fascination with tornadoes. So Twister didn’t push me into storm chasing, but it reinforced my curiosity.

A random Internet search got me into Plains chasing for the first time when I discovered Cloud 9 Tours back in 1997. That experience sparked a lifelong love of storm chasing, led to hundreds of thousands of miles on the road, and fueled my photography and imagination, including my writing.

 

 

Chasing is seasonal, so it was never my job. For years, I worked in newspapers and occasionally toiled in fiction on the side. Like most writers, I suffered rejections that discouraged me for way too long. But my immersion into chasing culture compelled me to write a novel—which became more novels—about storm chasers.

That first novel was influenced by a lot of factors: my passion for chasing, obviously. What I learned in creative writing classes in college, which had a strong literary bias. And a compulsion to get inside these characters’ heads.

First novels sometimes come with baggage as writers find their way. Funnel Vision wasn’t my first novel (my unpublished novels likely will remain so), but it became the first I published and then the first in a series. If I wrote it today, it would probably be very different. I’ve since learned that if you think you might write a series, start as you mean to continue. Conceptualize. Plan. Write more than one book before you publish. Plot a few books out, even if you don’t nail all the details.

 

Funnel Vision has several storm-chasing action sequences, including a page-turning chase that takes up most of the last third of the novel. But there’s also lyrical scene-setting and serious stuff, including a shock and a lot of emotion—it is, shall we say, a little more literary than books two and three. As in the other books, there are romantic elements, with a couple of steamy scenes, though it’s not a romance, either.

Judy, the heroine of the first novel, is a photographer who chases for art and therapy after surviving a tornado that hit her town when she was a child. The main male character, tornado researcher Jack, is obsessive and impulsive, and it takes him three books to figure out his life. They’re part of an ensemble cast.

Funnel Vision is wildly cross-genre. And cross-genre books are really hard to market.

Ignoring conventional genres was just one of the “mistakes” I made when I decided to self-publish, but I was a newbie at indie publishing. I didn’t know that books that fit neatly into a category sold better. Or that those books should have clearly defined genre covers that looked a lot like other books in their category. (I changed the covers later.)

And I didn’t realize that action-adventure wasn’t a very popular category to begin with. These days, there are a lot of erotic romance books with weird AI covers polluting the category on Amazon. (I have no problem with erotic books with AI covers, but they shouldn’t be in action-adventure. I know. I digress.)

Truthfully? I didn’t care about writing to market, even though I tried to find the right niche for the books. I have a passion for these stories, and I wanted to write them regardless of their marketability.

After a bunch of agent rejections for Funnel Vision, a fallow period after my mother’s death, and the rise of indie publishing, I revised it one more time and launched it into the world in 2012. Indie publishing experts fondly refer to this era as The Gold Rush. It wasn’t golden for me, as I published one book a year for three years and didn’t sell all that many. But it was satisfying to have the books out there—and a bit terrifying as well.

 

 

A second look, ten years later

 

The books became a series, and they evolved. Sometimes I think Funnel Vision is almost a prequel, for the reasons cited earlier, though any of the books can be read on their own. Tornado Pinball and Zap Bang continue the stories of Jack and some of the other characters, and they are assuredly adventure novels, though they still have characters with issues and a few steamy scenes and an often humorous, satirical bent.

They also have driving plots that would totally work as a movie. In Tornado Pinball, my hero acts as a consultant to a TV crew trying to launch a human tornado probe as a rival chaser complicates their quest. In Zap Bang, he and a badass pilot—a woman and war veteran—are drawn into a dangerous lightning study even as they’re drawn to each other.

 

And since I’ve been thinking about fiction starring storm chasers and my own books, I just did something I’ve been longing to do for a while—another read of these novels, with a light edit. I was relieved to find that I still love them.

Why a light edit, and what does that mean?

A little history: I started my newspaper career as a copy editor. (Or as some style guides would have it now, copyeditor.) I transitioned into reporting. And when I wrote the books, I was still working in AP Style. I learned best practices for fiction that served me well when I left newspapers and eventually began editing books as my day job.

Now I use Chicago Manual of Style (with a few quirks—that’s a privilege of indie publishing) and Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary as my standards. So the light edit ensured the books meet current standards. I polished a sentence here and there, but I refrained from a rewrite. And I tweaked a few of the outdated tech and other references that might’ve pulled readers out of the story, without changing the plot or timeline.

As I say in the notes at the back of Funnel Vision, it will always be a product of its time. But a few subtle changes make it more timeless. At least for the next few years! If you download the Storm Seekers Series ebooks or order the paperbacks, you’ll get the most up-to-date versions.

 

Authenticity in writing (and marketing)

 

There’s been a lot of tornado-rich fiction on big and small screens—and some in books—in the years since Twister, from the cheesy awesomeness of the Sharknado franchise and other bad TV movies to more earnest attempts like Supercell. (Which has a character named Zane, as do I. Huh.)

It’s hard for storytellers to resist the eternal conflict of human vs. nature, ramped up to F5 levels (or EF5, for the weather geeks). The sometimes ludicrous scripts of disaster movies probably shape what readers expect of books with storms in them. But I appreciate stories that get at least some of it right.

I think readers who loved Twisters might enjoy novels written by an actual storm chaser. Of course they’re fiction. The characters are fictional. The research projects and TV stunts are fictional. But the stories are authentic.

I’ve been thinking a lot about authenticity, which has become kind of a buzzword in marketing that often translates to “go on social media and show the real you.” Which is hard if you’re a private person. I think authenticity means a lot of things—not just an authentic presence but, in writing, authentic details and emotions and, especially, an authentic voice.

I am my writing. But my writing is several different things, and I like writing in multiple genres.

 

In a New York Times interview, mega-bestseller Colleen Hoover, who writes in several genres and has a massive TikTok following, said, “I kept being told that authors need to brand themselves as one thing. And I was like, well, why can’t I brand myself as everything? Why can’t I just brand myself as Colleen Hoover?”

I don’t expect to get anywhere near her sales level, but I like the way she thinks.

I’ve been writing mysteries under a pen name, Lucy Lakestone, which I kept on the down-low for a while, partly because Lucy’s first series was steamy romance. I wasn’t sure people who knew Chris Kridler the Journalist/Storm Chaser were ready for that. Eventually I realized that hardly anyone cares.

Then I (well, Lucy) started the Bohemia Bartenders Mysteries, which are funny mysteries I call quasi-cozy. What does that mean? Cozy mysteries are usually set in a closed environment like a small town; my bartenders travel. Cozies tend to be tame, curse-free, with violence off the page and no sex. My mysteries teeter right on the edge of the category. They have occasional cursing, they hint at heat but don’t show anything explicit on the page, and there’s always action and danger. So calling them “quasi-cozy” in every book description is my way of saying, hey, these defy genre expectations, and you’ve been warned.

You’d think I would’ve learned my lesson with the storm chasing books when it comes to writing to market and fitting into a genre. But life is short, and while I want to make a living, I also want to write books that mean a lot to me, pigeonholes be damned. I know some people do both. I’m working on it. But with my time getting shorter, I’m committed to writing authentic stories I care about.

Writing is hard. And publishing can be brutal. I have friends who are killing it. Others are struggling to break even, break out. The quality of a book doesn’t necessarily determine its success in a flooded market.

I have a long way to go before I declare myself a success. The big question is, what is success to you? And is the struggle worth it? If I’m going to work this hard at the dream, I want to love what I write.

If you care about what you write, your passion will show through, as long as your skills match your enthusiasm. While it helps to write something you love that also fits into a marketable category, I hope your joy comes first.

“If you’re just chasing the algorithm,” Mal Cooper of The Writing Wives said in a recent video, “… you’re losing your authenticity and you’re just shifting toward the mean. You’re making the most average thing that you can. That’s what the algorithm is looking for, right? It’s looking for the most average thing that’s going to appeal to the largest group of people, and you’re going to sacrifice your authenticity when you do that. So that thing that actually makes you unique and interesting and have a draw is the very thing you get rid of when you chase the algorithm. So that’s why I’m not a fan of doing that. I’m a fan of being out there and honest and real about yourself and your stories and your marketing.”

I love this philosophy. My books aren’t for everybody. Heck, no one’s book is for everybody, and if you’re selling yours like it is, you’re missing the point. I’m looking for the readers who get it.

If I write any more Storm Seekers books, they’ll be authentic, as they always have been. And for me, the storm chaser who can’t get enough stories about twisters, the experience will be a whole lot of fun.

 

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Thanks to The Writing Wives for permission to quote from the video on achieving success; they also offer a free workbook if you want to check it out.

Learn more about Chris Kridler’s Storm Seekers Series.

Time equals money, especially for authors who become indie publishers. That equation becomes all too real when you hire an editor, designer, formatter or author assistant.

Sometimes you pay for time explicitly — for instance, you’ll pay an assistant to work ten hours a month to do everything from social media to dealing with distributors. Sometimes you pay a flat fee for a service based on word count or complexity. But when you go beyond the scope of that fee, your hired expert may charge you by the hour.

Efficiency and planning are the best ways to meet your budget. Here are five ways to keep costs from spiraling out of control.

1. Know what you want.

It’s easy to say “I just want to write” and give up every other task to an expert you hire, but that choice can also be expensive. If you are publishing as an indie, take a little time and read some of the many, many free sources of information online. Listen to relevant podcasts. Or buy a book, such David Gaughran’s Let’s Get Digital, and learn some of the basics for yourself. That way, you can speak intelligently with the person you hire to help you, and you’ll have an idea of what to ask for.

Just some of the questions you’ll want to answer before hiring someone: Do you want a paperback as well as an ebook? What genre is your book? What publishers/distributors do you want to use? Do you want to buy ISBNs or use free ones? (There are good posts online that can help you decide all of these things. Google is your friend.)

2. Be clear about the scope of the work.

Make sure you understand what you are getting from your expert help and that it is what you want. You may or may not have a written contract; an email can be the equivalent of a handshake.

Ask questions. Will this editor provide the editing that you need? Will your editor go back and edit your post-edit revisions, too? Is your formatter willing to do a handful of reasonable corrections at no charge after you’ve seen the formatted product? Either way, endless revisions are probably not going to be covered in the initial cost.

If you’re hiring an assistant, how much do you want them to do? Social media? Graphics? Metadata? Marketing? Quantify your expectations and make sure they can meet them in the time allotted.

Also think about what you can do yourself. While many of these tasks have a learning curve or require a level of expertise, some — like uploading your book to various distributor sites — are not as hard as you might think. Social media can benefit from a personal touch. You can retain control, look for opportunities and save money if you do some things yourself.

3. Don’t rush.

There’s a reasonable expectation of getting a book back from an editor or a formatter in a week or two, especially if you have scheduled those services in advance. But if you rush into any aspect of publishing, you are likely to forget things, change your mind, or otherwise require changes after they’ve done all the work. Changes mean more time. Time means more money.

Take your time and do each step well. For instance, if you ask for a cover design without knowing your final trim size (print book dimensions) or change the title or back-cover copy, the cover designer will have to redo the cover. Cover changes are rarely simple.

In the same vein, editing a book once it’s formatted can be especially time-consuming/expensive if you have a lot of graphical elements, photos, featured quotes, or anything that makes pagination more challenging. Just deleting one sentence can change the layout of a complex book. Changes aren’t as easy as they are in a word processor, so they may take more time than you think. Besides, every time you touch an edited manuscript, you run the risk of introducing more errors.

You may end up paying double or triple for these services because they have to be repeated. A formatter may be willing to do small corrections as part of the original fee, but your rewrites should be over at that stage.

4. Do things in order.

This point is a corollary to “Don’t rush.” You should not ask for a formatted copy of your book when you haven’t completed revisions or edits. You may have a front cover in the works during editing, but you should not have your print cover (i.e. with back and spine) created before you know all of the points listed below. Otherwise, your hired help will end up doing the same work over and over again and will charge you for that time.

In addition, your expert helpers are busy. They have other projects on their schedule and other clients who have booked their time. They may not have time to completely reedit or reformat your book with every change you want to make immediately. You will face unexpected delays as well as costs.

Here’s a reasonable sequence of events when you publish:

• Write.
• Revise.
• Edit (a developmental edit, if you get one, should happen before a copy edit, and then a proofread should follow; I also recommend that you, the author, read the book one more time).
• Finalize copy before formatting!
• Buy ISBNs (if you aren’t using free ones) and have metadata filled out at Bowker for each edition (at myidentifiers.com). As part of this process, determine a preferably unique name for your publisher imprint, e.g. Jones Press, and create that in your account at Bowker. (Optionally, have a logo designed for your imprint; it can appear on your book spine and sometimes back cover, and on the title page.)
• Establish accounts on distributor sites (Kindle Direct Publishing, Draft2Digital, Smashwords, iTunes/iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or whatever you choose) and fill out financial/tax information.
• Have your title, author name, book description, author bio, review quotes, potential categories (BISAC and Kindle, which are different), potential keywords, additional metadata (like series title and book number), imprint name and ISBNs (if relevant) gathered in one document, especially if you are asking someone else to format, upload and publish your work.
• Provide this information along with the final manuscript, high-resolution front cover, and interior graphics/imprint logo (if you have one) to your formatter to format your book for print and ebook.
• Upload files to distributors.

In parallel, you may have a designer working on a cover, but you should:

• Know your print trim size (cover dimensions) at minimum before commissioning a front cover, including an ebook cover, and let your designer know if you plan a print edition so they can allow for the bleed (where the design is trimmed at the edge of the cover). Kindle Direct Publishing has a list of standard sizes here.
• Make sure you’ve communicated what you want to your designer, including mood, genre and specific imagery, but also be open to taking her advice on what works. This is why you’ve hired her. Saying you want a “science fiction cover” will mean many iterations until you get what you want; saying you want “a cover with a spaceship, stars, planets and a battle” is a lot more specific and will save you time and heartache.
• When it’s time to complete the full print cover, know what interior color paper you want (for instance, white or cream on KDP), which affects spine width.
• Know how many pages your book interior has (after formatting). This number also will determine the width of the spine.
• Make a decision about your cover finish as well (glossy or matte).
• Finalize your title, subtitle and author name.
• Write your back-cover copy (or have an expert do it) and have it edited.
• Know your genre (primary BISAC category, which is often placed on the back cover). See the BISAC category list here. Note that Kindle has different categories.
• Provide all this information and your print ISBN (unless you are using one provided by the distributor) to your cover designer.

If your formatter is also your cover designer, then a lot of this communication will be easier. You may outsource some of these steps, but if you do, include deadlines in your plans so you have everything done in sequence.

5. Be patient and publish.

If you’ve planned well, you will have scheduled all of these steps and allowed a little time for the unexpected. Maybe you’ve put your book on preorder and you have to meet that deadline, so building in a little extra time for life, glitches and hurricanes isn’t a bad idea. Plus you’ll want to allow time to build buzz and market your book before publication. Publishing is not instantaneous; sometimes it takes a while for a book to hit stores even after you hit “publish.” Allow enough time and be patient.

You want your book to be perfect. I know the feeling. It’s important to be meticulous and publish a great product, but at some point, you have to let it go. You have to stop making revisions and publish the book, especially if you’ve done your due diligence and reached the formatting stage. Worst-case scenario: You make changes later. The beauty of indie publishing is you can go into a book and change a word or two — this is fairly easy with ebooks — and hit “publish” again if you must. (Perfection is still desirable; with print, more steps are involved in re-publishing, and if you are publishing with, say, IngramSpark, every change costs you money. Yes, more money.)

If you plan ahead and allow yourself enough time to complete each task properly, you can publish with confidence — and without breaking the bank.

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Chris Kridler is a writer and editor who specialized in copy editing in journalism school and went on to have a career in newspapers. Now she writes books and works with other authors, when she’s not shooting photos and chasing storms. Learn more at SharpEditor.com.

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Illustrations licensed from DepositPhotos.

Once upon a time, I created book covers for my storm-chasing adventures, the Storm Seekers Series. I was striving to capture their cross-genre nature — they include adventure, romance, drama and humor — and I thought it might be cool to be a little different. I’ve learned a lot since then, and one thing that’s clear is that cross-genre covers are just confusing to readers. Another lesson is that “different” isn’t necessarily good. And the third, obvious lesson to anyone selling books these days is that books have to look great at thumbnail size, too, because the majority of sales of ebooks and print books happen online.

I’ve been designing covers for other authors and decided it was time to give some attention to my original trilogy. Using photos I took while chasing storms and a couple of smaller licensed elements, as well as the magic of Photoshop, I created illustrations for the covers that I hope will convey the excitement I still feel when I think about these stories.

I like romance in my adventures and interesting characters who grow (it takes Jack three books to complete the journey from cad to hero). I love action and, of course, the thrill of seeing a supercell come together and produce a tornado. Add elements of a science thriller and some kick-ass women as heroines, and you have the Storm Seekers Series. The first three books are also available in a virtual boxed set.  I say “the first three” because I am contemplating more. In the meantime, I’ve been writing romances under a pen name. More on those later.

The new covers are percolating through the online bookstores.

Want to chase some storms? Check out the books on Amazon or learn more and get links to other stores here.

Professional editing is essential, but you must be the first editor on your book.

I’m a writer and an editor. I’ve been both for a long time. And despite my training in copy editing and years of experience, I still need an editor.

We all need an editor. The big question for indie authors: What kind of editing do you really need?

There are multiple types of editors. Self-published authors are most likely going to deal with one or more of these:

Developmental/story editor: This editor reads your book for the big picture. She looks for plot holes, characterization issues, clarity, continuity, tone, and whether you’ve fully exploited the themes of your book. She may make suggestions regarding structure, chapters you can cut, and more. She may also include line edits and light copy editing.

Copy editor: A copy editor corrects grammar and spelling. She looks for factual errors, including geographical goofs or anachronisms, such as a song that didn’t come out until a decade after your characters go to the prom. She will catch inconsistencies and continuity errors, such as when a character’s name changes halfway through. She pays attention to style, which is another way of saying she will make your book conform to standards, like those detailed in The Chicago Manual of Style. (Though the beauty of indie publishing is that you can set your own style on certain terms, as long as you’re consistent – like how you handle blond vs. blonde or whether you prefer the Oxford comma.) She may make wording suggestions or point out sentences that could use a rewrite for clarity or tone (line editing). She may also find plot holes and point out bigger issues. I tend to do the latter as well as the former, so my copy edits have a touch of developmental editing, but your mileage may vary.

Proofreader: The proofreader reads your book after all the other editing is done. There shouldn’t be many errors for him to find. A proofreader might find a missing word or quotation mark or the occasional typo.

Do you really need all of these editors? Do you need any of them? Maybe you’re thinking, hey, my mom is a big reader and got top grades in English in high school and loves reading my books. She’ll catch those errant apostrophes, right?

Alas, unless your mom is a trained copy editor, her loving ministrations are unlikely to be good enough. And you might not be ready for copy editing anyway. Writing is a process, and so is editing. You shouldn’t hire an editor until you have done everything you can to make your book as good as it can be.

In other words, you are the first editor on your book.

The editing before the editing

You shouldn’t ship your book to an editor as soon as you’ve typed “The End” unless you have a lot of time and money to spend. While it’s great to get professional feedback, you’ll get the most out of an edit if your manuscript is refined before you send it off. As a writer, I know what it’s like to be sick of a book, to have lived with it for so long that you’re ready to hand it over and walk away. But making your book great is YOUR job. You’ve spent the time to write it; don’t rush revisions.

Start by getting feedback from fellow writers, if you can. Often, a critique partner or critique group can take the place of a developmental editor. Whether you exchange work by email or sit around a friend’s living room, drinking wine and reading your latest chapters to one another, you can get invaluable input into your story’s strengths and weaknesses.

When I’m done writing a book, I give it a first read to make sure it has all the basics. Usually I feel pretty good after that read. I’m like, hey, I’ve written a book! And it doesn’t suck! By the second read, I’m grimacing and slashing my way through it. Its faults become manifest. And there are multiple reads after that, or as most writers call them, revisions.

I’ve heard a couple of famous writers say they never revise. I congratulate them on their superhero powers. But I believe that just as everyone can benefit from an editor, everyone can benefit from a revision. And then a beta reader, if you have one, can help you pinpoint some of those story and tone issues that you didn’t catch in revisions, before you ever send your work to a copy editor.

Preparing for the copy edit

Many editors will edit a free sample to make sure both of you know what to expect and to gauge whether you’ll work well together and if the manuscript is ready for a copy edit. I’ve occasionally turned away copy editing clients when I thought a copy edit would be a waste of their time – at least, a waste right now. It didn’t mean the book was bad. It just meant it wasn’t ready.

After you finish your first draft, a revision, a critique process or a developmental edit is in order. A copy edit should be considered the very last step before publication (or second to last, if you have a proofreader). You should consider your book darn near perfect when you hand it over.

One reason you shouldn’t just hand over a rough draft is that copy editors are not going to fix big plot holes and sloppy characterizations. They don’t do wholesale rewrites. That’s not their job. Another is that they’ll do their job a lot better if you give them as clean a manuscript as you can. Even though a good copy editor will go through a manuscript two or three times, she will occasionally miss things. A copy editor will miss more things if you give her a really messy manuscript.

If grammar isn’t your strong point, you can address some of the technical stuff with software, such as Grammarly or ProWritingAid. There’s a good comparison of these kinds of helpers here.

Be prepared to deliver a manuscript to your editor electronically in a commonly used format. Word is an industry standard and is my preference, especially because I’m on a Mac, and Word can go back and forth with PCs. Not many editors want paper these days, because electronic editing is so efficient for the editor and the author. A readable font (for instance, the dull but practical Times New Roman in 12-point type, double-spaced) is also necessary. No cursive or sans-serif fonts, please. Paragraphs indented using the paragraph formatting tool instead of tabs are helpful, too, in anticipation of later formatting. Insert page breaks or section breaks at the end of chapters instead of hitting the return key a dozen times.

If you’ve never hired a copy editor, ask for references or get recommendations from fellow writers. Ask if the editor will edit the aforementioned sample, usually a few pages from the start of your book. And then be prepared to reserve that editor’s time. Allow at least a week or two for editing, though some may work faster.

The most popular editors are busy and scheduled out months in advance. And that means that you need to give yourself deadlines and stick to them. Being indie these days also means being professional and planning ahead. Do you have your writing projects mapped out for the year? Then you should also know when your manuscript will enter each phase of editing.

After the copy edit

You also have to allow time to review the copy editor’s changes. A good copy editor respects your voice and your opinion and gives you a chance to answer questions and make changes as you see fit. For instance, I make edits using Word’s Track Changes so the author can see exactly what I’ve done and accept or reject the edits. The writer can see my comments and make decisions about my suggestions. Don’t expect to get your book back from the copy editor and hit “publish” on your e-book the same day.

Finally, after your (careful) post-copy-edit edits, a proofreader is always helpful, even if it’s just a grammar-savvy friend who can catch a missing word or bad punctuation. If you know you’re one of those writers who’s oblivious to grammar, then make sure you have an editor or proofreader backstop your post-edit changes.

It’s always good for the author to read the book one last time. To make your last pass as fresh as possible, read it on a different computer, in a printout or on your e-reader. It’s amazing how a change in format helps you see glitches you missed before.

Do you need a copy editor? Yes, you do. I read constantly – indie books and traditionally published books in a variety of genres. Even “trad” books usually contain a few errors. Readers may forgive a few errors, but when there are mistakes on every page, readers may leave bad reviews and never pick up your books again.

Errors in early drafts are to be expected. Even brilliant writers make errors. Even grammar wizards make errors. Thus savvy editors are friends to us all.

“Indie” doesn’t mean you have to do everything yourself. It means you are your own publisher, and a publisher needs good design, editing and marketing. A professional indie author will publish edited books.

There can be a happy ending to your story – a cleanly edited book you can be proud of. But you have to make the investment of time and effort before and after your editor reviews your masterpiece to make it happen.

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Chris Kridler is a writer and editor who specialized in copy editing in journalism school and went on to have a career in newspapers. Now she writes books and works with other authors, when she’s not shooting photos and chasing storms. Learn more at SharpEditor.com.

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Illustrations licensed from DepositPhotos.

Book covers fascinate me, especially for fiction. They’re a portal into a story and can be as creative as the novel itself. Sometimes, they’re so creative, you have no idea what the book is about, especially when it comes to literary fiction. They can be art unto themselves. But does the cover matter?

I’ve decided that it does, and it doesn’t. I’m designing covers now for a romance series that more or less falls into the New Adult genre. (That’s a fairly new genre defined in different ways – but it’s loosely about college-age and twenty-something characters, often romantic, possibly angsty and sexy.) Honestly, genre definitions make me crazy, because I always seem to write across the lines, and covers are seen mainly as marketing tools that let readers know what they’re getting. Look at any genre, from political thriller (the White House at night) to Regency romance (ooo, pretty dresses!), and you’ll see easily identifiable image and design similarities within.

That said, I asked folks on Facebook what helps them find new reads while browsing online: Cover art? Category on sites like Amazon? Or something else? I was asking about first impressions, of course, because after that first impression, reviews also had an impact on buying decisions.

It wasn’t a scientific survey, but the answers surprised me a little, mostly because they were so mixed. Some looked for category first. The promotional copy – the “blurb,” as many called it – often took precedence over the cover. If the cover was a factor, it was just a gateway to more information about the book that helped a reader make a decision. Title was a big factor, too.

But having a bad cover is almost always a turn-off. You can have the best reviews in the world and the slickest summary, but paired with an unprofessional cover, all those good words count for naught.

I’m not sure if my question got me any closer to resolving my quandary: What kind of cover should a New Adult book have, if it’s also a steamy romance (as many of them are)? I’m fascinated by looking at what’s out there now. Sylvia Day’s Crossfire books (and many of her other titles) clearly draw on the Fifty Shades of Grey presentation of an isolated object on a dark background. There’s an implied swanky opulence as befits the rampant billionaire bad-boy theme. That said, her self-published version of Bared to You, pre-Penguin-publishing contract, featured a stock photo with a sexy couple that was artfully shadowed for the cover; a high-heeled shoe appeared on the U.K. cover. (See them here.)

Her books fit into what I consider a subset of New Adult. They are New Adult/erotic romance. And in that genre, abstract or symbolic covers (featuring fabrics, flowers, liquids, keys) compete with covers showing scantily clad people, especially men who spend way too much time at the gym. Why the sexy dudes? Apparently, they sell books. Do they sell as well as the pretty, non-people covers? For an unestablished writer, probably better, is my guess, but I have no data on that. The sexy dudes range from well-dressed men in ties to darkly lit, scary, young (and clearly troubled) guys in hoodies who are probably into mixed martial arts.

Now that I’m attuned to such images and have browsed countless stock photos looking for them, I see the same sexy couples/dudes appearing over and over again on different book covers. I was considering the use of such a photo in one of my designs and thought I’d better do a TinEye search (a reverse image search) to see if it had been used elsewhere. And, how! It had been used on perhaps a dozen book covers. So I guess I have really good taste in images! Ahem. Once I got over my disappointment, I decided I didn’t want to use the same photo that had appeared on so many book covers.

At the top of this blog, I’ve posted a comparison of five covers that use the same image (this was not an image I had considered using, but it’s clearly an evocative image that screams “hot!” – and many authors/designers thought so). All of these covers have merit, and some designers have attempted to set the image apart by changing hair colors, backgrounds and textures – even adding a tattoo. The repetition, however, illustrates a danger of using stock photography. (In fact, there were even more book covers featuring the same image that I didn’t post here.)

I’ve had a taste of this phenomenon myself. I saw the same handsome model who portrays Jack on my Storm Seekers book covers appear in an ad on the same Amazon page as my books. The similarity wasn’t that obvious, since I’ve significantly altered the images, but it was still startling to see them on the same page. And in researching this blog post, I found him on another book cover. I’m not surprised; he’s gorgeous, and stock photos are cheap.

The question is, does it matter if an image is used again and again? Most authors, I think, would like to make a unique impression with their book, unless they consider their fiction disposable. But if the cover is attractive and sells books, who cares?

I care. Being like everyone else bothers me a bit. So for the book covers I’m designing, I’m leaning toward more abstract or people-free images using original photography, rather than stock photos.

The trick for any designer is to pick an image that broadcasts your genre while not looking like everything else – and in the worst case, exactly like something else.

If you are into the New Adult genre, does it matter to you if the cover has a flower on it or an amorous couple? Do you care if you’ve seen the cover image before, or would it be confusing? Once you’re shopping in your favorite literature category, any category, is the description your primary enticement to buy a book?

What do you think?