Recently I purchased Jessica Sorensen's The Coincidence of Callie & Kayden. I'd been watching it on the Kindle Top 100 paid list, and decided that for $1.99 I could give it a shot. I don't read a lot of chick lit (which I consider this to be) but it's been very interesting, if a little melodramatic so far, and it's taught me a few things about writing voice and what you can and can't get away with.
Firstly, this book had thousands of great reviews on Amazon, and that's partially the reason that I decided to click "buy" when I was browsing. I'm notorious for reading all the reviews I can before deciding on a purchase, and in this case, since I couldn't read all 3,000+ reviews, I read a few from each star point (five stars, one star, etc.). Most of the reviews praised the characters and their struggles with different inner demons and scars, so I anticipated an emotional read.
The first thing that surprised me was how simple the story is. The book begins at a point in time before the main bulk of the book's timeline (don't worry, no spoilers for those interested in reading the book!) where Callie witnesses Kayden in an abusive situation. She rescues him from the situation and then resigns herself to the fact that she will never see him again. On top of that, Kayden will most likely not even remember her.
Fast forward six months to move-in day at a college. Callie has been there with her flamboyant new guy friend, Seth, and is getting over her eating disorder. As predicted, Kayden is also going to the same school and he remembers her! The rest of the story follows them building up a relationship despite Kayden being taken by a stereotypical cheerleader and Callie not willing to open up and be herself around an attractive guy from her past.
So, back to my surprise at the simplicity of the story. What did this teach me?
Well, it taught me that I don't need to jump through a million hoops to keep my reader interested. My plots tend to be pretty intense, but what really matters in the case of Miss Sorensen's book - and any work of fiction, for that matter, is the characters and their inner demons. What are they struggling with? What do they have to overcome to get x? It's very cool to see that a story about two college kids can be so engaging. True, it wasn't masterful writing, or even that involved stylistically, but it still kept me coming back when I had spare moments to dip into the book.
The second thing that this book taught me was that it is possible to pull off first person narration with two separate characters telling the story. I haven't written anything publishable yet in the first person, but I love using the character's voice to tell their own story. I guess I'm a sucker for the unreliable narrator. Sorensen differentiates the two narrators by beginning each section with his or her name in bold. I liked this, and if you are wondering if her two voices were unique enough for each character, I can say that yes, they were. Kayden sounded rugged and was peppered with curses, and Callie was shy and introverted.
Lastly, this book taught me that simply withholding the details of the past event that made the character so scarred and damaged is enough to keep the reader moving forward through the story. More than once in the first quarter of the book, Callie continually mentions "that day years ago" that led to her eating disorder. What is she talking about? I had to read to find out. I wanted to know! If I can get a hook like that into my own work, maybe it will be all the better for it. Suspense is excellent.
There is a sequel to this book that I will most likely be checking out, as well as an expanded universe of sorts with side characters getting their own books later this year and in 2014. I applaud Miss Sorensen for being able to flesh out so many characters and franchise her work. It's something that I hope to try one day with my own characters (the ones that demand their stories to be told, of course! Sometimes they won't shut up until I write them down.).
Showing posts with label #KindleTop100. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #KindleTop100. Show all posts
Monday, September 9, 2013
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Covers Count!
I just recently finished the cover for my soon-to-be-published novel and I'm pleased with the result. Now, before anyone gets all uppity about me creating my own cover, I will say that I am an artist who took six art courses during my time at the University, and I also have a degree in multimedia where I worked extensively in Adobe Photoshop and After Effects to hone my skills, so I am not just a hack here. Whether or not my cover sells me a bunch of books remains to be seen, but I feel that it is an attractive piece that will entice people to at least give my book a click to read the description.
Covers are the most important thing about a eBook. This is purely my opinion, but I think it's valid. When I go to Amazon, the first thing I see in the Kindle Store is a spread of twenty-five to fifty eBook covers. No descriptions. No long pages of text with a zillion quotes endorsing the book. Just plain, visual book covers. The advantage of digital publishing is that all books have their covers "face out" like they would be at the front of Books-A-Million. The tricky part is that this cover is my first encounter with all these books, and I'm a judgmental guy.
Anyone who says that you can't judge a book by its cover is crazy because that's exactly what we do as eBook shoppers on any of these sites - Amazon, Kobo, Nook, and Smashwords. Does this cover look unique, interesting, and tasteful? If yes, I'll click on it to see what the description says. If not, I won't give it a second glance. I believe that the cover is the doorway between your book and the reader, and if it doesn't catch their attention, then you've lost a customer.
But, how do you ensure that your cover is the best that it can be? Well, if you aren't a graphic designer and don't know how to use Photoshop like a pro, then I would suggest hiring someone to make a cover for you. Luckily I can create my own, and I'm also a photographer, so getting digital elements isn't a chore for me. However, that doesn't mean that I took one of my pictures and slapped it into the correct dimensions and put any old font on it!
Designing a cover takes time and a lot of hard, hard work. On my cover alone I worked for eight hours overnight to get a rough draft - and the only elements that remain from that first pass are the background photo and my author font. I showed this cover to five or six different people, all in different age brackets, who gave me their opinions. Most loved the images, but the font I chose for the title was too hard to read.
Armed with this feedback, I went to creativemarket.com and purchased a font that I thought was unique and had enough flourish for the genre I'm aiming for and adjusted my title. I also purchased some Photoshop color presets that I used to get a warm color effect on all my image pieces. This gave the cover a feeling of completeness that is lacking in some of my other attempts.
With the revised cover completed, I loaded it into my Kindle Paperwhite and also my iPad Mini and showed it again to those same five or six people to get their reactions. It appears to be a success, and now I am ready to move forward with the rest of my book design.
It's a very tricky thing to create a cover for a book you've worked so hard on for a year or more. You want to make sure that it accurately portrays the type of book you wrote, but you also want to make sure that it is eye-catching for when it's on an Amazon page alongside fifty other book titles. Check out the Amazon Top 100 list to see what's there. I definitely did before I set out creating my own cover, and it helped me enormously in my pursuits. If you do end up making it yourself, you have complete control with little monetary loss other than your time. I preferred to do it myself and see what I could come up with. In the end, the cover is the first and most important thing that a customer will see. Since I've put so much effort into controlling my final manuscript, why wouldn't I put that much more effort into my cover design?
Covers are the most important thing about a eBook. This is purely my opinion, but I think it's valid. When I go to Amazon, the first thing I see in the Kindle Store is a spread of twenty-five to fifty eBook covers. No descriptions. No long pages of text with a zillion quotes endorsing the book. Just plain, visual book covers. The advantage of digital publishing is that all books have their covers "face out" like they would be at the front of Books-A-Million. The tricky part is that this cover is my first encounter with all these books, and I'm a judgmental guy.
Anyone who says that you can't judge a book by its cover is crazy because that's exactly what we do as eBook shoppers on any of these sites - Amazon, Kobo, Nook, and Smashwords. Does this cover look unique, interesting, and tasteful? If yes, I'll click on it to see what the description says. If not, I won't give it a second glance. I believe that the cover is the doorway between your book and the reader, and if it doesn't catch their attention, then you've lost a customer.
But, how do you ensure that your cover is the best that it can be? Well, if you aren't a graphic designer and don't know how to use Photoshop like a pro, then I would suggest hiring someone to make a cover for you. Luckily I can create my own, and I'm also a photographer, so getting digital elements isn't a chore for me. However, that doesn't mean that I took one of my pictures and slapped it into the correct dimensions and put any old font on it!
Designing a cover takes time and a lot of hard, hard work. On my cover alone I worked for eight hours overnight to get a rough draft - and the only elements that remain from that first pass are the background photo and my author font. I showed this cover to five or six different people, all in different age brackets, who gave me their opinions. Most loved the images, but the font I chose for the title was too hard to read.
Armed with this feedback, I went to creativemarket.com and purchased a font that I thought was unique and had enough flourish for the genre I'm aiming for and adjusted my title. I also purchased some Photoshop color presets that I used to get a warm color effect on all my image pieces. This gave the cover a feeling of completeness that is lacking in some of my other attempts.
With the revised cover completed, I loaded it into my Kindle Paperwhite and also my iPad Mini and showed it again to those same five or six people to get their reactions. It appears to be a success, and now I am ready to move forward with the rest of my book design.
It's a very tricky thing to create a cover for a book you've worked so hard on for a year or more. You want to make sure that it accurately portrays the type of book you wrote, but you also want to make sure that it is eye-catching for when it's on an Amazon page alongside fifty other book titles. Check out the Amazon Top 100 list to see what's there. I definitely did before I set out creating my own cover, and it helped me enormously in my pursuits. If you do end up making it yourself, you have complete control with little monetary loss other than your time. I preferred to do it myself and see what I could come up with. In the end, the cover is the first and most important thing that a customer will see. Since I've put so much effort into controlling my final manuscript, why wouldn't I put that much more effort into my cover design?
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