New Look for the Texans

I wanted to give you all a peek at the new look.

These new covers will be replacing the old ones beginning this week, and within a few days they'll be at all retailers and here on the website as well.

In the old days, a book would sell just about all the copies it as ever likely to sell within the first month of its release. But today, that old paradigm has been turned inside out. My older titles are selling more today than they did when they were first released, and the growth continues to trend upward. So keeping them fresh and relevant is crucial.

I hope readers respond positively to this updated look

A bit about the process…

We discuss and look and discuss and look. We first need to come up with a “look” for the series. Something each cover will have in common. We look at other covers in our genre as well as tons of stock art images. That takes the longest, deciding on a look. For this series, we landed on using couples, the outdoors, lots of flowers. Then, just to convey that the stories aren't all sweetness and light, (most have some suspense, intrigue, danger, even a murder or two on the way to happy ever after) we decided there would be a hint of moody, colorful sky backing each.

Alterations come next…

Sometimes my artist can tweak the images to more closely match, but the more photoshopping we do, the worse the art tends to look, so we try to keep it minimal. Photoshopping long hair on this guy would've resulted in a mullet. So we captured the essence.

The alternative to this method would be to hire models and a photographer and it would cost thousands. Even the major publishing houses don't do it this way anymore. I just recently spotted a super star author's book where the publisher had used the same image on the cover that I had used on one of my own. However, Jessie (my daughter/designer) had tweaked the clothing, background, and hair color so it wasn't readily obvious. Whereas the big publishing house had used the image exactly as it was found on the site.