Change of Cover Already

Yes.  I was working on the cookbook and had taken a shot of a dessert this morning when I noticed how much I liked the colors, so I turned it into a new cover for Unspeakably Desirable.  I wasn't crazy about the banana tart to begin with so this will be a good if perhaps temporary change.

I think here's the funny part to this.  I had that Nikon D70 for years and hated it because I couldn't get it to be knife edge sharp.  I get the D7K and all I can talk about is how sharp it is, right?  So I take this photo and blow it up past being sharp and use that.  Aside from the fact that it's shot through glass that's fogged over and that's what I love about it.

It's remarkable to me that even given those 2 elements, glass fogging and the blowing up past sharp, how sharp the cake part still is.  I do wonder if that will bother some people.  The drunk trolls I suppose will be really annoyed.

The white is mascarpone which is ridiculously expensive and you can make it at home.  It's really just about reducing the liquid in the cream.  I used to do it in a double boiler but yesterday I did it in the microwave.  Use a large bowl because it will boil up.  Heat on high in 1 minute increments, stirring between, until the cream has thickened.  Then you can try draining it with a coffee filter, I did but the only thing that happened was the coffee filter got wet and I had trouble scrapping the cream off it.  I left it uncovered in the refrigerator and this morning it was the exact correct thickness.  I  saved like $5 or more and it took about 15 min while I was doing other stuff.

Now I'm going to make some polenta for the book.  You can make that in the microwave, too. 

Still Standing

Don't you know I'm still standing better than I ever did
Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid
I'm still standing after all this time
Picking up the pieces of my life without you on my mind

--Bernie Taupin, of course

 

Borders didn't find a white knight to buy them out.  Now why would that be.  Surely Borders could be turned around by a savvy business team.  But the reality is, even if the business guys aren't thinking it,  there's nothing to turn it to.  It's a failing industry.  Say Borders did get bought, okay maybe not this year or next, but at some point who is going to be there to produce all the books needed to stock these stores?  The writers the publishers have treated well can fill the tables at Costco.  The rest of us have or are migrating to digital.

For those of you who haven't made the transition yet, I don't know what's holding you back.  Legacy publishing is not trying to do you any favors by publishing you.  It's not a mark of distinction to be published by them anymore.  It's more downside than up.  Get off the Titantic before it sinks.

I'm researching for my new novel.  Yes, it's started!  No, it's not in the Bad Apple series.  Even though it's a topic I'm more than passingly familiar with, I am reading up about it.  I got 2 used books from Amazon Marketplace for some background.  I don't know that there's anything there I'll use but it's understanding, it's about having a different perspective.  Then there was a book I wanted.  In hardcover it was $125.  No, I'm not paying that.  Paperback is $28.  Kindle is $17.  Wait, I have a Nook (that I haven't rooted yet).  BN doesn't have this book.  Kobo does.  It's $28.

This is part of what's killing legacy publishing.  Are you serious, people?   $125 for the hardcover and $30 for the digital?  I'll do without it, thanks.

Then you download the sample and it's 10 pages of crap acknowledgments, front matter, table of contents, dedications, "This page left blank on purpose" and if you're lucky you get a page from the actual book.

In a digital world, you have to put that stuff at the end.  I do now.  I don't even put the cover image up front anymore.  I was sorry to see it go, but while nice and attractive, it didn't help in the sample.

Here's the cover I was going to use for Unspeakably Desirable (I had a border on later versions).

I liked the...you could say strength but I was always going for violence of the fork stabbing the petit four.  People who looked at it, didn't get it.  If the banana tart cover starts to bore me with its rotundity, I'll switch back to this.  I did place a similar image to this one with a stock photo agency so apparently some people do feel its marketable.

I think about covers a lot.  We don't have the resources of legacy publishing (altho I can't imagine how Avalon could have used fewer resources on the cover for my book with them this year--I feel cheated, they couldn't even give me a good strong cover, I would have done the cover and given it to them for free just to have something marketable).  Some people can pay for a professional cover which might cost $500-$1000 or more.

The rest of us have to work around and make it happen.  Covers aren't going to look like the ones from tradpub.

I don't have an art department here helping me out but I can do something else.

I get the feeling, maybe wrongly but it's based on what I've heard, that readers are on one hand really thrilled with the 99 cent price and really angry at the same time.  They expect everything traditional publishing offers but at 99 cents.  Unrealistic.   Even traditionally published ebooks have formatting issues.  As for all the other things writers are accused of...it's wearing thin, people.

 

 

Unspeakably Desirable

It took about 7 hours but it has been uploaded to Amazon and BN.  No I don't bother with Smashwords anymore.  In a few hours Unspeakably Desirable will be available at BN and available whenever Amazon gets around to it as a Kindle.

Having learned from Rise, I put the html document into Expression Web and checked all the image links manually.  That took a long time between the actual photos and the whisk image I used to separate the text.  (Sometimes it's hard to see those couple spaces in a reader even when it's so obvious in the word processing program.  I suggest you try to do something even if it's *** to let readers know there's a break.)  I fully expected there would be problems but I'm not very psychic and I didn't see anything horrible.  Amazon didn't kick the file back to me.  (Remember, it has to be in zip)  So I'm done with that.  For the time being.

What am I going to do next?  I'm staying away from adult fiction for at least the rest of the year and perhaps longer.  I have the cookbook to do and then think about the prequel to Blue Raja.  I would like to do Bad Apple #4.  Yes, at some point the audience will arrive!  What did you have to do to make Tinkerbell stay alive???  Believe?  Think Happy Thoughts?  Sing about packages tied with string (what's so great about that?)?

This coming week I'm going to talk about a YA series I'm reading now.  A bit on the fence if I should specify what it is but I think there's much to be learned from the books.  They're very popular and easy enough to read without needing to lash your reader to your wrist so it won't  be thrown against a wall in desperation.  Always a good sign.

PS if you want to read more about Unspeakably Desirable go over to http://barbaramorgenroth.blogspot.com.

Update:  Wow.  BN is FAST!  Three hours later.  Bel is live  Unspeakably Desirable

Unspeakably Desirable

That's the real title of Not Low Maintenance 2.  And I send Bel Miller out into a world that's probably nuttier than what she experienced in the book.

It's not live yet.  (I haven't finished proofreading it to make sure NONE of the sentences make any sense.)  Here's the latest review for NLM.  Definitely an encouragement not to stay at the 99 cent price point.  If readers are going to waste money, let it be a substantial sum.  You can't buy a Snickers bar plus tax for that where I live!



Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible.
This book is incredibly poorly written. There is no character development, the grammar is a mess, and some of the sentences don't even make sense. Do not waste your $0.99!! Read more

Published 1 day ago by EmilyMcCartney