coversareus.com started out simply doing covers for Kindle books.
We then moved into formatting.
NOW we are going beyond these two "mechanical" type functions and into Active Marketing Aids.
Our new venture offers each book an exclusive web page [or Portal] which features a unique "Page Flip" sample of the book as well as a Blog underneath.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
The Art of Cover Design
Contrary to popular belief, IOHO the art of making a good Kindle Cover [Product Image] is an Art of Marketing and not an Art of Graphic Design.
That is because we are not talking of an Art Competition but a means to SELL YOUR BOOK.
So the cover should simply do its job to GET the putative buyer [surfer] to download a Sample of your book and thereafter the book must stand on its own two feet [which then morphs to the FORMAT question of how well did you do THAT task].
TASK #1
A surfer generally first meets your book [from a search, in this case "stranger"] as a tiny thumbnail in a column of thumbs, as seen here for Strangers on a Bus:
The thumb is 115 x 115 pixels so the first piece of logic says use ALL of that. As seen, the other two thumbs use only 66% of the space. Secondly we are of the belief that "Roadkill" is OK for the INSIDE cover but 3-D "pops" far better, looking like an actual book.
Next obvious logic says make sure the title can be read at this size as most people will be scanning [very quickly] down the column of images and not the description on the right. You have only several milli-seconds to grab them as they flash by.
TASK #2
So IF you DID stop the surfer halfway down the wave and they clicked on your thumb, the next task is to KEEP his/her attention, ie to click the SAMPLE button and not the BACK button to go back to the list of thumbs.
On your side is the fact that Amazon has grown your thumb to 300 x 300 meaning the surfer can get a better look at your cover as seen below:
However you need to be aware that Amazon lobs a Kindle into the bottom-right corner, so for author's name or the red icon in this case, best to keep it to the left if you want people to read it at this size. Remember that the surfer always has mouse poised on the dreaded BACK button so YOU have to make it EASY for surfer to like your offering.
If the surfer retains enough interest to click the 300 x 300 image it then goes to 500 x 500 [and without the Kindle icon] which is as big as it gets [but see under re Zoom], but as we said from start this is NOT an Art Exhibition and surfer is far more interested in the question "What is the book about?".
TASK #3
As seen later the description requires the surfer to scroll down the page, and that is asking a lot if your Attention Grabbing at above TASKS was lacking, meaning there is far more chance he/she will press BACK and you have to wait for the next surfer [who will probably do exactly the same].
But here is another bit of Amazon genius that you can use. In the image above you will see that we provide a FREE rear cover with "mini description" to our Customers as a Customer Image, and if the surfer just passes the mouse over that image he/she gets this:
So here is the answer to the surfer's question WITHOUT needing to scroll down, and if it is hard to read, a simple mouse click gives the full 500 x 500 size, per:
But let's see how a cover selected at random [this was sitting under at "last viewed"] measures up.
The law of averages says it WILL be roadkill and it is, per:
Firstly the author name is partly covered up by the Kindle, but the Double-Whammy here is if image is roadkill, the Kindle is moved further to the left, thus obscuring more of the already undersized image.
Secondly Amazon is trying to forget about their Zoom feature BECAUSE it distracts surfers from going to the Sample, so they say MAX size of upload of 1280 pixels, and if you obey [we upload 900 x 900] then no Zoom.
But thirdly, and most importantly, there is no rear cover description so the surfer is asked to scroll down the page, which few will do with 100 more thumbs to be examined from the search.
If we look at the description down the page it seems like a very interesting book BUT the question is how many surfers go out of their way to SEE it, per:
Finally we can backtrack to the thumb per:
At thumb size the title can only just be read, and for sure does not "pop" at all to grab the surfer passing by at 5 to 10 tps [Thumbs per Second].
So our final comparison [on a Lester Bangs take it or leave it basis] of these two essentially random selections is that the latter with its sepia tones and eerie feeling would win an Art Competition hands down over our Greyhound Bus "commercial" rendition, BUT the Bus one would sell more books.
That is because we are not talking of an Art Competition but a means to SELL YOUR BOOK.
So the cover should simply do its job to GET the putative buyer [surfer] to download a Sample of your book and thereafter the book must stand on its own two feet [which then morphs to the FORMAT question of how well did you do THAT task].
TASK #1
A surfer generally first meets your book [from a search, in this case "stranger"] as a tiny thumbnail in a column of thumbs, as seen here for Strangers on a Bus:
The thumb is 115 x 115 pixels so the first piece of logic says use ALL of that. As seen, the other two thumbs use only 66% of the space. Secondly we are of the belief that "Roadkill" is OK for the INSIDE cover but 3-D "pops" far better, looking like an actual book.
Next obvious logic says make sure the title can be read at this size as most people will be scanning [very quickly] down the column of images and not the description on the right. You have only several milli-seconds to grab them as they flash by.
TASK #2
So IF you DID stop the surfer halfway down the wave and they clicked on your thumb, the next task is to KEEP his/her attention, ie to click the SAMPLE button and not the BACK button to go back to the list of thumbs.
On your side is the fact that Amazon has grown your thumb to 300 x 300 meaning the surfer can get a better look at your cover as seen below:
However you need to be aware that Amazon lobs a Kindle into the bottom-right corner, so for author's name or the red icon in this case, best to keep it to the left if you want people to read it at this size. Remember that the surfer always has mouse poised on the dreaded BACK button so YOU have to make it EASY for surfer to like your offering.
If the surfer retains enough interest to click the 300 x 300 image it then goes to 500 x 500 [and without the Kindle icon] which is as big as it gets [but see under re Zoom], but as we said from start this is NOT an Art Exhibition and surfer is far more interested in the question "What is the book about?".
TASK #3
As seen later the description requires the surfer to scroll down the page, and that is asking a lot if your Attention Grabbing at above TASKS was lacking, meaning there is far more chance he/she will press BACK and you have to wait for the next surfer [who will probably do exactly the same].
But here is another bit of Amazon genius that you can use. In the image above you will see that we provide a FREE rear cover with "mini description" to our Customers as a Customer Image, and if the surfer just passes the mouse over that image he/she gets this:
So here is the answer to the surfer's question WITHOUT needing to scroll down, and if it is hard to read, a simple mouse click gives the full 500 x 500 size, per:
But let's see how a cover selected at random [this was sitting under at "last viewed"] measures up.
The law of averages says it WILL be roadkill and it is, per:
Firstly the author name is partly covered up by the Kindle, but the Double-Whammy here is if image is roadkill, the Kindle is moved further to the left, thus obscuring more of the already undersized image.
Secondly Amazon is trying to forget about their Zoom feature BECAUSE it distracts surfers from going to the Sample, so they say MAX size of upload of 1280 pixels, and if you obey [we upload 900 x 900] then no Zoom.
But thirdly, and most importantly, there is no rear cover description so the surfer is asked to scroll down the page, which few will do with 100 more thumbs to be examined from the search.
If we look at the description down the page it seems like a very interesting book BUT the question is how many surfers go out of their way to SEE it, per:
Finally we can backtrack to the thumb per:
At thumb size the title can only just be read, and for sure does not "pop" at all to grab the surfer passing by at 5 to 10 tps [Thumbs per Second].
So our final comparison [on a Lester Bangs take it or leave it basis] of these two essentially random selections is that the latter with its sepia tones and eerie feeling would win an Art Competition hands down over our Greyhound Bus "commercial" rendition, BUT the Bus one would sell more books.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Coversareus Guide to making perfect kindle book
In case you have not read our blurb on formatting at our website, here it is repeated:
However, complex "guides" for Word to Kindle continue to pour out from those wishing to CONTINUE the confusion [presumably to wait until Newby throws arms into air and says "this is way too hard, just give me an arm and a leg price to do my book"].
SO, we now give you the KISS guide to all this
So that is the dead set foolproof way to get a perfect [no frills] book first time off, and is what maybe 50% of authors do.
more to come as to frills
The reason people have problems formatting for Kindle would seem to be because of two very similar "contradictions". But whatever, while we expound on these reasons below, our SOLUTION is to simply offer a service where WE take all the pain away and format it FOR you.
But to briefly explain the contradictions, Kindle uses a form of html but most people write their book in a Word Processor, usually MS Word, SO somewhere in the middle the twain must meet, and therein lies the problem.
Contradiction #1 is that in order for certain Word type styles [eg toc1, toc2, heading1, heading2, normal etc] to automatically render to Kindle, one must first have a good understanding of USING styles in Word [and most people don't, because they use Word as a glorified WYSIWYG typewriter], but then one must FORGET 90% of the styles because Kindle does not render them.
Contradiction #2 is that in order to "tidy up" an html file which has been "converted" by whatever process from Word etc, one must first have a good understanding of html, but similarly one must then FORGET 90% of html [eg tables, CSS, frames etc] as Kindle does not use them.
Sounds totally moronic? Well, in a way, yes, but that is the only way it can work. However, as we say, all of that is OUR "problem", but in fact is not much of a problem as we have 20 years experience in Word and 15 years experience in html and every day we "LEARN more about what we have to UNLEARN". So yes it IS moronic, but please simply leave it there, and be thankful you have found a service that understands these contradictions.
However, complex "guides" for Word to Kindle continue to pour out from those wishing to CONTINUE the confusion [presumably to wait until Newby throws arms into air and says "this is way too hard, just give me an arm and a leg price to do my book"].
SO, we now give you the KISS guide to all this
1. Open Word on your PC or Mac
2. Forget all the WYSIWYG jazz that surrounds you and take yourself back 60 years to the Remington Rand typewriter where all you did was bash the keys.
3. Bash the keys - 'cept you don't need to do a carriage return as Word has all that figured, but you simply press Enter [carriage return] at end of each paragraph. You can press enter twice or more to give blank lines to help you visualize the book but kindle don't take any notice, so just up to you
4. Save book and upload to amazon platform.
So that is the dead set foolproof way to get a perfect [no frills] book first time off, and is what maybe 50% of authors do.
more to come as to frills
Monday, April 4, 2011
Understanding ppi and dpi
We are once more left scratching our heads about posts in the Kindle Forum [and in general] about "saving as 300 etc ppi/dpi".
The ref to dpi [dots per inch] can be easily be dealt with, dpi is purely a function of how many dots an inkjet printer might lay down and is NOT necessarily same as the ppi, BUT Kindle has nothing to do with print so let's forget that totally.
The simple path then says forget all about ppi as well as far as Kindle is concerned, but THAT will take a bit more explaining.
Here is a cover image we were about to feature as The Chainmakers. This blog layout will resize/scale images to 400 pixels wide max, so in order to save upload time we are taking our standard 900 x 900 image as supplied to customers and resizing to 400 x 400.
So to show the absurdity of "saving at 300 ppi" etc we saved the image twice, one "at" 96 ppi and one "at" 300 ppi, and guess what, they are both exactly the same and here is a screenie from Windows Explorer.
So chain96.jpg and chain300.jpg are BOTH 175KB and BOTH 400 x 400
To explain, it is simply a matter of showing the other 2 images in that list, per:
And of course, because these show text, the "rules" say save as a gif and not a jpg
These screenies are from Jasc Paint Shop Pro and because it is designed to be used by professional image editors it does not say "Print Information - FOR INFORMATION ONLY" because users KNOW it is for info only.
So for the benefit of those thinking they are actually saving "at" 300ppi etc we have added the GREEN arrows to show that the ppi and the inch size of a PRINTED image are contained in an INFORMATION BOX, but in both cases the saving is simply the SAME 400 x 400
So here is the actual image
Now part of the confusion might be caused by info in the Kindle Guide saying save images at 300 ppi, but what that means is SCAN at 300 ppi.
For example you have a 4 inch by 4 inch photo you want to appear as same size on the screen, so assuming your PC is set up at 96 ppi then if you scan at 96 ppi the image will be same size on the screen, BUT it won't look too good.
That is because a scanner is a transducer and all transducers have less than 100% perfect transduction. SO, if we scan at 300 ppi we have 9.76 pixels to be resized down to ONE pixel meaning the software can do all manner of "dithering" to grab the best of the 9.76 pixels in coming up with one near perfect pixel.
Simple as that.
here is a gif to show graphically [or maybe gifically]
on LHS is a "blowup" of a scan at 100 ppi and 300 ppi on RHS. Look at letter "F" to see it has only 3 pixels on LHS to do its thing, so it is blurred, but has 9 pixels on RHS so is able to render clear lines
The ref to dpi [dots per inch] can be easily be dealt with, dpi is purely a function of how many dots an inkjet printer might lay down and is NOT necessarily same as the ppi, BUT Kindle has nothing to do with print so let's forget that totally.
The simple path then says forget all about ppi as well as far as Kindle is concerned, but THAT will take a bit more explaining.
Here is a cover image we were about to feature as The Chainmakers. This blog layout will resize/scale images to 400 pixels wide max, so in order to save upload time we are taking our standard 900 x 900 image as supplied to customers and resizing to 400 x 400.
So to show the absurdity of "saving at 300 ppi" etc we saved the image twice, one "at" 96 ppi and one "at" 300 ppi, and guess what, they are both exactly the same and here is a screenie from Windows Explorer.
So chain96.jpg and chain300.jpg are BOTH 175KB and BOTH 400 x 400
To explain, it is simply a matter of showing the other 2 images in that list, per:
And of course, because these show text, the "rules" say save as a gif and not a jpg
These screenies are from Jasc Paint Shop Pro and because it is designed to be used by professional image editors it does not say "Print Information - FOR INFORMATION ONLY" because users KNOW it is for info only.
So for the benefit of those thinking they are actually saving "at" 300ppi etc we have added the GREEN arrows to show that the ppi and the inch size of a PRINTED image are contained in an INFORMATION BOX, but in both cases the saving is simply the SAME 400 x 400
So here is the actual image
Now part of the confusion might be caused by info in the Kindle Guide saying save images at 300 ppi, but what that means is SCAN at 300 ppi.
For example you have a 4 inch by 4 inch photo you want to appear as same size on the screen, so assuming your PC is set up at 96 ppi then if you scan at 96 ppi the image will be same size on the screen, BUT it won't look too good.
That is because a scanner is a transducer and all transducers have less than 100% perfect transduction. SO, if we scan at 300 ppi we have 9.76 pixels to be resized down to ONE pixel meaning the software can do all manner of "dithering" to grab the best of the 9.76 pixels in coming up with one near perfect pixel.
Simple as that.
here is a gif to show graphically [or maybe gifically]
on LHS is a "blowup" of a scan at 100 ppi and 300 ppi on RHS. Look at letter "F" to see it has only 3 pixels on LHS to do its thing, so it is blurred, but has 9 pixels on RHS so is able to render clear lines
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Featured Customer #1 Shana Hammaker
We are delighted to have Shana as a Customer for many reasons.
Here is her
Author Page
... and her "avatar"
Shana's marketing plan is simple but brilliant. She is publishing 12 Short Story Thrillers, one a month, in 2011 - here are first 4
January
February
March
April
That marketing combines beautifully with Shana's ability to write crisp fresh and unexpected thrillers, with each one in its own unique style and twists and turns.
That means most of those who read one of her thrillers are hooked, and can't wait till next month to pay 99 cents for the next, and those that come in later, eg April, tend to go back and buy from the previous months.
As for the covers, she shares our exact thoughts on the Product Image in that it should not try to tell the whole story but just grab ONE main theme from each thriller, so it can be identified in the tiny thumbnail of 115 x 115 which is first place a surfer MIGHT become interested enough to click further.
Plus, we have agreed with her to have the same basic format, colors etc for each book so as to establish a "cult" thing where Shana's Thrillers can be instantly identified as part of the series AND stand out from similar books.
From our point of view, it makes our job so easy that we were able to offer Shana three for the price of one - so a Win-Win situation for everyone.
and we are sure Shana won't mind us giving a sneak preview of
May
June
For Shana we don't do format, just covers, so we have to wait along with everyone else to get Thrillers #5 and #6 - Harry Potter eat your heart out!
Here is her
Author Page
... and her "avatar"
Shana's marketing plan is simple but brilliant. She is publishing 12 Short Story Thrillers, one a month, in 2011 - here are first 4
January
That marketing combines beautifully with Shana's ability to write crisp fresh and unexpected thrillers, with each one in its own unique style and twists and turns.
That means most of those who read one of her thrillers are hooked, and can't wait till next month to pay 99 cents for the next, and those that come in later, eg April, tend to go back and buy from the previous months.
As for the covers, she shares our exact thoughts on the Product Image in that it should not try to tell the whole story but just grab ONE main theme from each thriller, so it can be identified in the tiny thumbnail of 115 x 115 which is first place a surfer MIGHT become interested enough to click further.
Plus, we have agreed with her to have the same basic format, colors etc for each book so as to establish a "cult" thing where Shana's Thrillers can be instantly identified as part of the series AND stand out from similar books.
From our point of view, it makes our job so easy that we were able to offer Shana three for the price of one - so a Win-Win situation for everyone.
and we are sure Shana won't mind us giving a sneak preview of
May
For Shana we don't do format, just covers, so we have to wait along with everyone else to get Thrillers #5 and #6 - Harry Potter eat your heart out!
Friday, April 1, 2011
Marketing Tip #1 Customer Images [CIs]
Amazon provides a very interesting feature where anyone [incl the author] can upload a Customer Image. The Rules are:
Firstly for service providers such as us we get to show our wares, albeit one is not allowed to directly promote their service.
Secondly Amazon does a compilation of all the CIs from each person, and [as for tags etc] allows people to vote on the CIs.
This is our Gallery
Thirdly your Gallery is arranged as "most votes" or one can select "last added".
So based on the "All Roads Lead to Rome" theory, when a person views a CI the source book is shown on RHS, completing the loop in the win-win situation, or yes, it vos goot for me too!.
Additional benefit as posted 28 June 2012
Since Amazon introduced the Look Inside feature one gets TO it by double click on the Product Image.
This means there is no longer a way to ENLARGE the image to 500 x 500 as before UNLESS someone [can be the author] posts a Customer Image.
If someone DOES then CIs appear as 500 x 500 BUT also the Product Image gets included in the thumbs underneath so now the Product Image CAN be enlarged once again.
Here is an example we did after buying a secondhand copy of Stephen King's Firestarter and making into a 3-d rendition
Firestarter
You will note that the caption at the bottom of his cover can now be read, hence the win win situation has even more wins.
Nice one Amazon
Image sharing rules of etiquetteMarketing wise this is [in American] a "win-win situation" and in Russian "vos eet goot for you tu Natasha?"
Have fun sharing images and let your imagination run wild. Please also treat the Amazon community with respect: behave as if you were a guest at a friend's dinner party. Don't write inappropriate comments or show inappropriate pictures.
Firstly for service providers such as us we get to show our wares, albeit one is not allowed to directly promote their service.
Secondly Amazon does a compilation of all the CIs from each person, and [as for tags etc] allows people to vote on the CIs.
This is our Gallery
Thirdly your Gallery is arranged as "most votes" or one can select "last added".
So based on the "All Roads Lead to Rome" theory, when a person views a CI the source book is shown on RHS, completing the loop in the win-win situation, or yes, it vos goot for me too!.
Additional benefit as posted 28 June 2012
Since Amazon introduced the Look Inside feature one gets TO it by double click on the Product Image.
This means there is no longer a way to ENLARGE the image to 500 x 500 as before UNLESS someone [can be the author] posts a Customer Image.
If someone DOES then CIs appear as 500 x 500 BUT also the Product Image gets included in the thumbs underneath so now the Product Image CAN be enlarged once again.
Here is an example we did after buying a secondhand copy of Stephen King's Firestarter and making into a 3-d rendition
Firestarter
You will note that the caption at the bottom of his cover can now be read, hence the win win situation has even more wins.
Nice one Amazon
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