I've read where authors say it is important. From my own limited experience, I don't know.
At present I have 3 ebooks published. Two of which have covers I have paid somebody to make for me. I think they're good covers compared to the generic one from Amazon I'm using for the other book. BTW, I'm going to get another cover done for Coming Home
.
However of my three books, Coming Home is the one I'm selling the most of. By a big margin too. My next book will feature a paid cover also. A raunchy cover for a raunchy book. It will be interesting to see if it the losing streak I have with paid covers.
Tomorrow marks the end of one month(I published Coming Home on April 1st) of my selling ebooks. While I'm not making $1,000 a month like Katie Leone, right now I estimate will be within ten U.S. dollars one way or another of $300 in Worldwide royalties. I guess there's a market for TG fiction stories about soldiers coming home, cannibals, dung beetles*, Ground Hog Day like plots, lesbians*, and other assorted topics I write about. Either that or I got lucky this month.
* These books aren't published yet but will be in the next 5-7 days.
Comments
Cover Page
The cover of a book reflex what the story is about and can draw a buyer/reader to it especially if your a new author with no following to base you on.
Richard
Important? YES!!!
Robert Heinlein enjoyed a modicum of success when he released his book 'Friday'. It had a primarly red cover with a silouette of a woman running.
When the book was re-released it featured a picture of a spritely and very busty woman in a very tight jumpsuit with a fair amount of cleavage showing and short blonde hair looking like she just got outta the shower or a marathon of sex...
It sold many times more copies than the original.
So you decide. The story wasn't rewritten, only the cover changed.
Dayna.
Hmmm
Soooo...always make your cover be a well endowed woman wearing skin-tight outfits?
Melanie
YEP
You have got it!!!! lol. but seriously, as in anything "sex sells" suggestive pics that go along with parts of the story at least are successful. now if its not an adult themed book at all, then something eye catching, cute, funny etc. depends on the book.
the title, and the "cover" are the two first things someone notices, the more it catches attention, the better chance you will sell it. if someone doesnt know you exist, or the book exists, you cant get anyone to buy it. now well known authors, with established genres, niches etc will have to worry less, their name will be enough. but for a new author, it is a big factor.
Teresa L.
Teresa L.
I had the copy
with the second cover, I'm leaning toward marathon of sex lol
Don't take me too seriously. I'm just kitten around. :3
For BETTER sales
I still am somehow making the 1000 level but sales have been waning for me as of late, but I have hope it will rebound.
I put this in public because I think this will help other authors who want to sell on Kindle, so PLEASE don't take this as an attack against you in anyway, because it is designed to help. But Yes book covers matter,.
One of the reasons why Coming Home is selling better is because it has the blurb (product description) that would appeal to the community more than the other two. But that being said, your blurbs are really to short to grab a lot of people's interest. In "Guess Who is Coming to Dinner" you have one sentence. Readers need more than that to grab their attention. I wouldn't gather that either of those books were transgender or had anything to do with the genre.
Two, all three covers are lackluster. I know you said you had a professional do them, but they each look like someone took a stock photo and stuck the title and author name over it. That really isn't going to draw a lot of attention. In Always Born a Girl, the cover photo and the blurb don't match up unless it's an age regression story. Take a look at some of my covers and see which books you think sell best just by looking at that.
Three, price points. Unless it is steamy erotica, charging over .99 cents for a book under 50 pages really isn't going to sell and even if it is erotica, under 50 pages will see a lot of returns. Same thing with Dinner. 1.59 is an odd price point for Amazon and I would suggest lower both shorts to .99 cents. Yes, on Born you will make less royalties but will have more sales. I never priced The Dress Punishment over .99 cents but the first three months I sold 100 copies or more each month and it is still one of my better sellers.
Four, No reviews. You have no reviews and that will keep people from buying. Do you ask for reviews at the end of your book. I do. Look at how many reviews my books get, that makes other people curious (even the bad ones if there aren't that many). Make sure you hit some people up for reviews, friends or BC maybe. Make sure you leave reviews for other authors too, sometimes what goes around comes around. I don't leave reviews on my personal account too often (I have reviews Wanda Cunningham and Dorothy) but I do make sure I encourage others to do so for authors who help me out.
That being said. Anyone can feel free to contact me whenever they want for advice. Though I am not the most popular writer on the site, I've enjoyed success and have learned a thing or two.
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
You're forgetting the obvious
The stories are categorized transgender fiction. Do we have to assume a reader is so dumb that they have to have a sex change spelled out. They find the heir in a Port Moresby zoo and he's a purple with pink polka dots talking female rhinoceros who does online sermons against lefthanded Albanian bartenders who tapdance. Or is Guess Who's coming to dinner about something else. My upcoming story Tahae(The waray word for what the real title is) would apparently have the same problem. A long synopsis and you give away the plot. After you take all the suspense out with the synopsis- who's going to read it?
Not complaining about my sales at all.
Daniel, author of maid, whore, bimbo, and sissy free TG fiction since 2000
What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.- Oscar Levant
there is no transgender fiction category
It has the keyword of Transgender fiction, not a category (because Amazon doesn't have that available). Coming Home is listed under Occult Horror and Romance. Always/Girl is listed as Occult Horror and Short Story. Dinner is listed as Science Fiction and Short Story. None of those category suggest gender change.
Your author page doesn't list you as being connected with any other authors. If you look at my page, you will see on the right hand side other author's associated with me (Tanya Allan, Karin Bishop, etc. etc.) If you go on their pages you will likewise see my name. This is something Amazon does, so it might take a little time.
Like I said, it wasn't meant as an attack, just suggestions.
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
What I meant
was keyword. Without a transgender category there isn't a way of categorizing a story as featuring sexchange.
My stories don't contain a whole truckload of stuff that are staples or cliches of TG fiction. No cheerleader football player body swaps, forced feminization, abuse of underage characters, sex involving underage characters, stories that are just one long sex scene, bigots turned into minority women, maid stories, cheated on wives taking revenge, etc etc and I don't hesitate on making that clear even though I'm sure it will cost me readers and sales. While I do write an occasional joke story(Cannibals, dung beetles, Gorgon like creatures, The singing priestesses protected by Mothra, Francis the talking mule, and another story where Martha Stewart is shown how to make Chocolate Moose. That's not a misspelling.) I write serious TG fiction that probably doesn't appeal to but a small niche who are out there who read the stuff. Because, and I'll admit it, the topics I write (Yakuza, baseball, conversions to Judaism, chess, golf, figureskating, an alien spaceship crashing in Kansas, people suffering some type of loss) usually don't appeal to many people. I poured my guts into a serial here, but the dedicated readers I had based on the comments I was getting could be counted on both hands. Lots of readers want what I call tg fiction schlock or what I listed above. I don't write it.
Don't know how to connect to another author's work. I seldom read tg fiction, so my commenting is just as nonexistent. Never bought a kindle ebook either.
I've had a good day of sales today. So I'm likely to earn over 300 US dollars in royalties this month. Next month I might do better or worse. I'll write on topics that interest me. Maybe there's somebody out there who will buy it.
Daniel, author of maid, whore, bimbo, and sissy free TG fiction since 2000
What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.- Oscar Levant
Under the wrong cover?
I have not bought an e book because of being attracted by the cover but have definitely skipped lots because the cover showed what I didn't like,
In paper editions a cover might attract my attention but the blurb counts more
Rhona McCloud
Not for me
When I buy an e-book, it's always through my Kindle, not by going to Amazon's website. The little pictures of the covers are so small on a Kindle (and in black ans white) that you generally can't make out clearly what they are! So not important in the first instance, unlike in a traditional bookshop. And books are not tagged by categories or keywords at all on Kindle. I go by a) author (if known to me) b) title c) blurb d) reviews, if any, though they wouldn't usually outweigh other factors, and e) price. If it looks promising I'll probably download a free sample before buying.
I'm afraid Katie is right. Your blurb for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner has no suggestion of transgender subject matter at all; Coming Home only the vaguest hint, and for Always Born a Girl only a hint in the title. So I wouldn't have known that your books were within my range of interest unless they appeared in the '100 recommendations by amazon based on my previous purchases' - but that tends to be rather inaccurate, or in 'readers who bought this also bought...' You haven't been selling long enough to appear in either list.
So do please think about your blurbs, and without giving the whole plot away, make them more of a hook for your potential readers.
kandijayne
Not sure ...
... but I'm convinced that for a lot of TG fiction for sale on Amazon the writer spent more time on the cover than the writing. There's a lot on there with fewer than 20 pages and I've even seen one with a page count not even in double figures. They take an evening to write at best.
Katie, you say that there isn't a Transgender category but using the search function reveals Transgender Fiction. What other search function is there? I've never found a way to search a category other than the search function. Also, once an ebook is accessed for details it doesn't indicate any means of searching for similar topics.
Robi
genres vs. keywords
Genres group thing according to type. Romance - Thrillers - Biographies. On the Amazon site you can search these categories and it will bring up not only titles, but rankings, top 100 lists, top authors, so you have a way of getting to the good (or at least the better selling) stuff first. Keywords are a search feature but not as accurate, kind of like google. Amazon allows authors to put in seven keywords to help people find their work. For example, if you put in the keywords transgender fiction christian in the little box, I'm sure most of my work will show up. But there are no rankings or anything like that. You can also go to the author page to see who that author is linked to. There are several people I get linked to because enough people buy our works in pairings.
Also, though there are a lot of transgender books that are 20 pages long, that goes across the board throughout all amazon. But there are a few of us that right substantially longer works. I have 4 epics out there and am working on a 5th.
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
Everything about the "package" sells...
...if it's designed well. That includes the front cover, the blurb, the first reviews, and the first pages of the text.
I purchase many books, and have turned down many because of cheesy covers, blurbs that are badly written and edited, bad reviews, and the first chapter or two of text, if this initial sample contains so many typographical errors that they set my teeth on edge, which almost always prompts me to return it for credit. Careless errors annoy me, since I usually assume that the author doesn't particularly care what sort of experience his or her readers actually enjoy (or fail to enjoy). I know that this may seem excessively Darwinian to some, but survival of the fittest and most persnickety has a long history of success over the lifetime of the Earth, which is why we aren't all trilobites and archeocyathids scuttling about on the ocean floors. One hates to let the side down.
As for short-shorts, one runs the risk of it being so short that a reader can easily finish it before the "return window" closes, in which case the author is running an unpaid lending library.
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Really?
I agree with you about illiterate blurbs, bad reviews, unproof-read chapters etc. But '...have turned down many because of cheesy covers..'??? I can't believe you wrote that. Covers are a 'come-on', and it's nice if they are aesthetically pleasing, but they are totally irrelevant to the contents. Even more so in the case of e-books than printed works; for e-books virtually their only function is to assure us that this is indeed a published e-book. I can't imagine anyone returning a book on the basis that they don't like the cover. Or have I misinterpreted what you've said?
kandijayne