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Karin Bishop Books It's live now, and the links all seem to work. I have yet to see if the mobile version is working, though. If you try out the website, please let me know what you think, especially any difficulties or criticisms, so I can take 'em back to the designer to fix. (I already think he's got some of the text too big but maybe it's my display). And apparently it takes time for the search engines to find and link up, so for the moment a Google search goes to my Amazon and BCTS pages--which is fine with me!.
Meanwhile, back to work on my next book ...
Karin
Comments
Scripts
I always load a previously unvisited site with scripts disabled (NoScript under firefox) to see what the site looks like and whether there are any nasties. karenbishop.com without scripts displays a ton of links and nothing else, not ideal! Google etc looks for content for their indexing, there wasn't much of that visible:
Back to the designer?
Shiraz
(I also build sites!)
Have to agree with you
It also leads to a lot of cross scripting possibilities. Looks like somebody did a cookie cutter website from predefined resources?
Site links
It's not actually as bad as it first looks.
Almost all of the URLs above reference exactly two sites, *.wix.com amd *.parastorage.com, which I assume host the website and the bulk storage.
Penny
Todo?
That doesn't look right.
Built with Wix.com?
All of the links to wix.com suggest to me that the site was built with Wix, which probably uses scripts to generate the page. It looks okay to me (Firefox 38.0.5 on Windows 7 Professional), but the white text on a grey background isn't the easiest to read with my somewhat older eyes.
Wix.com does have a link entitled "Make Your Website Google Friendly," but following it just leads to a page asking to choose a template. However, the html has a comment, near the top, of:
"Important Note About This Website's SEO
Find the SEO content of this site's homepage via http://www.karinbishop.com/?_escaped_fragment_=
(That is where search engines like Google go to read your homepage's content.)
To view the SEO content of your internal pages, such as "ON THE HORIZON", go here: http://www.karinbishop.com/?_escaped_fragment_=news-and-even...
(That is where search engines like Google go to read the content on your internal pages.)
For more information about Ajax Crawling technology, read Google's explanation here: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/"
Like it
Appearance and content and navigation are fine. It's a nice touch to feature your essay on writing. I hope you keep that.
My only disappointment was that I've read all the books. I was hoping to find that I'd missed something...
looks nice
It looks very nice. Could there be a facebook fan page in the future?
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
Nice, but . . .
The web page looks nice, but I do have one issue. Every book has the same cover. It shouldn't be that way. It makes everything look the same, and uninteresting. Sort of makes me feel that I have entered the Twilight Zone. Add color and variety to your life, find different covers for each story you write.
Keep Smiling, Keep Writing
Teekabell
Keep Smiling, Keep Writing
Teek
That's Explained...
…or defended, at least, on her essay page.
Eric
same cover
Karin uses it as a marketing technique and wants people to judge the writing, not the cover.
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
Baitless Hook
The problem is most people are drawn to a book by the cover long before they actually read the story. The same cover repeated over and over knocks a lot of people's interest down to zero. It is a sure way to run off potential readers.
Also, the same cover on everything suggests that the contents are the same story over and over. I have a couple of KB's books, the same cover on everything has left me disinterested in getting any more. They all start off with the same boring cover and I can look for other stories with distinctive covers to spend my hard-earned money on.
It's like going to buy a new car and finding that every car on the lot has the same mucky yellow brown paint job. Oops, time to find a seller with more variety. Adios!
I went outside once. The graphics weren' that great.
My thoughts about covers
Thank you for your thoughts on this; I've had some of the same.
It's an experiment, as I've said, and other than a flurry of contacts from people and companies who design covers, looking for work, there have been almost no criticisms. On the other hand, your comment about lost sales--which pains me as an author!--also means that I can't truly gauge the negative impact of identical covers.
When I was first getting ready to be published on Amazon (and on a very limited budget) there were all these writers' forums and arguments back and forth about Amazon; whether the cover image was most important, or the brief synopsis, or the categories and tags chosen. The arguments rage on, and grappling with the internal workings of Amazon's ranking algorithms seems to be more important than anything--even more than whether the book is any darned good or not!
I had been reading discussions in the publishing trade papers about the difference in a cover for a hardcover sitting on an end cap at Barnes Noble, versus the impact of a cover the size of a postage stamp on a Kindle, among dozens or hundreds of same-sized postage stamps. There was also the discussion that nobody buys a Stephen King book because the cover is scary; nobody buys a Jodi Picoult novel because the cover is pretty. They buy Stephen's and Jodi's books because they're by Stephen and Jodi, even if they were wrapped in brown paper.
There's also the factor of recognizability; flipping through those dozens or hundreds of Kindle books we all have, you can spot my book(s) immediately. I have received email from readers that they like being able to "zoom right to the book".
Then you have a book, let's say Moby Dick. There are probably a hundred different covers for it over the years; people don't buy the book with a sailing ship more often than the book with the whale on the cover--they buy Moby Dick. And the book cover design isn't integral to the sales of non-fiction, by the way, according to the industry. If they're going to buy something by Dr. Phil, it might help having him on the cover, but not essential, as long as they know it's "Dr. Phil Explains Something to You". The many self-help books by lesser-known authors don't sell, necessarily, because they have a daisy on the cover, or a tranquil beach, or whatever; they sell because they address a concern the buyer has, whether dealing with a problem child or finding inner peace.
There are also precedents for extremely similar cover design for multi-title fiction authors. Patrick O'Brian's "Aubrey & Maturin" series are nearly identical; if you lined them all up and looked at them from a distance (or zoomed through the postage stamps on your Kindle), you might remember that one you liked was "kind of bluish"--and then look through the three or four bluish covers.
There are many like that; from Earle Stanley Gardner and Zane Gray to Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen--just Googling the names shows the similarity in covers, where they change mostly by color. "Oh, I think I liked the yellow one ..."
It gets even more confusing when Hiaasen, for instance, uses one word, one syllable titles: Hoot, Flush, Chomp, Scat ...
(By the way, I love his book Lucky You)
So very close similarity among covers is present in the publishing industry--not that I'm comparing myself directly to any of these authors!
I meant what I said at the beginning; I truly thank you for your comments because they were practical, insightful, and not something basic like "I can't tell which one is which".
Karin
Book Covers
Of course, in the past both Victor Gollancz and Penguin have made a virtue out of having identical covers.
Sometimes it is the name that makes the difference, sometimes the artwork. My thought is that it depends on the type of reader. If you're a committed reader like myself, then the cover probably does nothing except act as an aide-memoire to find it again; if you're a casual reader, just wanting something to liven up a dull journey, then maybe the cover is what makes the difference.
Penny
Omnibus Reply
Karin, I have comments/thoughts/replies to what both you and Penny had to say, so I'm putting them all into one post below Penny's comment below.
**This was supposed to be a comment to Karin, but it shows up below Penny's comment.**
I went outside once. The graphics weren' that great.
Replies to both Karin and Penny
Well, BC is not letting me post a reply to Karin, sorry.
Penny first: There are a few authors whose works I read as soon as something new comes out. They are all hard sci-fi authors such as Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Heinlein, Asimov, Ben Bova, David Drake, and others like them. Obviously Heinlein will not be putting out anything new, I still buy his books because I'm wearing out the copies I have and need to replace them.
I am a committed reader, but I took my last American/English Lit course a very long time ago. Nowadays I read solely for enjoyment. I don't see the two as being separate. I haven't even heard of most of the authors you and Karin mention. The few I do know I haven't read the so-called "great works" they wrote. Never read 'Moby Dick'*, read one book of collected stories, more novelettes, that were pretty atypical of King's normal fare, and the only reason I read it was simply that I was overseas and I had read everything I brought with me. The rest of the authors are nonentities to me, if you had told me they were a team of heart surgeons my response would be something like That's Nice.
*Don't ask me how I got through my Lit classes without reading it. I didn't do it, I wasn't even there, and besides nobody even saw me!
To both of you I'll tell you the cover is the first thing I look at, and there are times when a book gets reshelved because it doesn't look like something worth digging any deeper into.
Karin: I have four of your books that I bought 4 years ago, 3 of them I have never even read. For the life of me I can't even say why I bought them. No offense intended or implied, I just look at them and think "What mindset was I in when I bought these?" It's kinda like opening my closet and finding a couple of miniskirts I purchased several years back (hypothetical situation). I would be like "Why Did I Buy These? Sure, they are great looking, well-made with quality materials, BUT . . . ."
I've only bought few sci-fi ebooks, pretty much everything else I have is in paperback or the occasional hardback. When I see online a sci-fi book that looks interesting I add the title and author to a list on my smartphone so I can look for it the next time I'm in the bookstore. My reading habits were set back when the only phone in the house was hardwired and the only color choice was black. I'm old-school, I like the tactile sensation of holding a book in my hands.
The only author I have purchased online in quantity has been H.P. Mallory, I'm not usually interested in magic-oriented books but she has some really interesting people in her books. I got started with her due to the cover of the first book of hers I saw. (A really foxy blonde drawn very stylized, she was the main character in the book.) Her protagonists in her books are almost always strong women that have some inner issue that must be dealt with. She has done a couple of books telling a male side characters' story. I really didn't care for the covers of those (which were beefcake photos) so even knowing they are by one of my current favorite authors I have passed them over.
So, yes, the covers do matter to me. I may be an outlier but doubt it. However I can't say how many others are like me, skipping over what might have turned out to be good books because of the cover. Oh, yes I do know who Dr. Phil is, let's face it his TV show is like the psych version of The People's Court, and I will never knowingly buy anything of his, he's not getting a red cent of my money. Like Dr. Oz he's a money whore, not to be taken seriously.
So, I hope that explains my book-buying habits a little better. This is pretty much a personal behavior, and I would never of brought it up on my own, but the discussion was already going so I didn't feel rude mentioning it. And you are right, Karin, you will never have any realistic idea of how many lost sales you have had due to your cover policy, it might just be me or there might be many more. But the cover is part of the book buying experience to me and I miss it when that part isn't there.
Oh, I might also mention that Amazon's ranking has never been a factor in my book-buying. I don't care what others think of my reading choices, as an example I have not read any of J.K. Rowlings (sic?) stuff. I haven't read any of Ann Rices' works, or any of a number of so-called popular authors. That some authors' works are so popular just demonstrates to me that it is possible for people with IQs in the negative numbers to function in the world.
Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!
YMMV
I went outside once. The graphics weren' that great.
Book choices
Okay, firstly, Victor Gollancz and Penguin are both publishers. Penguin invented paperbacks way back in the 30's, I think. All have exactly the same format and coloring, where the colors indicate the type of book: Classic, Fiction, Non-fiction, although they have become more adventurous in recent decades. Victor Gollancz is recognizable to me since every single book was bright yellow. If you're a teen, looking in your public library for Science Fiction to read, then bright yellow stood out a mile.
I have around a couple thousand paperback sci-fi and fantasy novels on my shelves, along with about half that number of thrillers, non-fiction and reference works. I like handling books too, but sitting in a courier ready room waiting for work cured me of not liking ereaders. When you can just turn the thing off, stick it in your pocket and go, it makes reading while you're waiting a pleasure. I also had enforced rest stops at the other end of the country where I could read while eating or such. Much of my reading is now done by ereader but if I like a work enough it gets bought dead-tree format as well.
I have read some classics, a few were given me when I was young (and couldn't appreciate them) and a larger number since. Others I read because they were my father's and I am a compulsive reader. Classics on ereaders are mostly free from Gutenberg but I have also bought some paper ones. In fact, I'm currently reading Tom Sawyer, since I haven't read that for... um, a hand of decades?
Amazon? I'll never buy anything from them, nor use Ebay nor PayPal. It is possible that the products they offer are 'good enough' but what I have heard concerning those occasions when a transaction doesn't go right means I'll keep them at bargepole distance, even if that means I'll go without.
Penny
Identical vs the Same
There is a difference between being identical versus being the same. You can have covers that have similar patterns and are easily identifiable as from the same author, but they are different in some way. You mentioned one author having the same color except for different colors. That makes it easy for the reader to look at a collection of that authors books and see, oh, I haven't read the yellow one yet. If all the covers are identical however, I flip through Amazon and say I have already read that one.
Just a thought.
Keep Smiling, Keep Writing
Teek
yay, this is great news
yay, this is great news