Questions With No Answers

Someone bought a copy of Sweets then immediately got a refund?  Was it not worth 99 cents?

Since the cover change on Bad Apple 1, 3 copies sold.  Does that mean guns sell better than apples?
That's a serious question regarding cover design.  I usually look for an image that suggests the story.  Schtupid Cupid--looks like an old Jewish woman to me.  Nothing Serious--summer colors, summer hat, the breeze is blowing, beautiful girl with a flowing dress, nothing serious there.  Sweets--a plate of candy.  Blue Raja--"out of the north an evil shall break forth" there you have Khryza Zentral, on the water, Northern Lights, foreboding castle.  NLM--lawsuit against Viva.

These are all central to the story.  Gun?  Yes, there are guns in the Bad Apple books.

Have you seen that movie with Jennifer Lopez?  I haven't.   I think it's called Enough.  She's abused and then learns how to fight back.  That's worthy of a gun.  Neal doesn't spend 200 pages learning to fight back.  She's trying to get away from Joe and the violence.  Is the book about violence?  Yes.  Was violence done to Neal?  It sure was.  Was there a murder?  You betcha.

I guess here's the bottom line for me.  I'm sorry if a gun on the cover is what it takes to get people to find this series.

Now I'm going to spend the rest of the morning making the gun bigger.

Old

New

At least font wise, the newer one is better because the name shows up better.  This was a problem with this image.  Half was light, half was dark.  It meant neither dark nor light would work across the image.  I did what I tell you not to do--use an outline (stroke in layer styles)  I used a barely darker color at 50 % opacity to make it as unobtrusive as possible while still defining the text against the background.  Totally my fault when I took the photo and I probably should have just gone out to reshoot.  But I was losing my light so I didn't and made the best of it.  It's still a good image.  A really good image.  It's just got that issue if I insist on having my name on the cover.

Update:  Amazon worked faster with this change.  Good for them.  The larger gun cover is the one on the page and it sold a copy.  So I'm not going to look at the numbers (they're numbers, come on people) for Jan. but there were 2 free days so there is no way I can do the math.  Let's just say it was freebie downloaded 500 times and sold 1 copy.  In Feb. with the old cover it sold 1 copy.  Since the gun cover, it's sold 4.

I find this sort of disheartening.  Design-wise the apple cover is as strong a design as the gun.  And there's more of it in focus.  With the 40 mm lens, what is not directly precisely in focus falls off when you're that close.  There's no depth of field.  The barrel could be a pipe for all you can really tell.  Luckily I actually had a gun because I didn't have a pipe.  People are buying this because it's a gun on the cover.

I took a photo for my pal Chris and I was so close to the thing, it was actually under the lens hood.  I LOVE that 40 mm lens.  Way to go, Nikon!