A few novel announcements…
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| Now 99 cents! |
#1: The revised edition of A Shadow in the Flames is now just $.99 on Kindle, and will be staying at that price for some time in honor of the upcoming Kindle release of the sequel, A Memory in the Black.
#2: Speaking of A Memory in the Black, I’ve just picked a cover design from my design contest on 99Designs. The winning designer is Amalia Chitulescu (link goes to her Facebook profile). I’ll be posting a look at her winning design here soon, once everything is officially official.
For those of you who haven’t heard of 99Designs (and I hadn’t heard of it myself until quite recently), it’s essentially a crowdsourcing website where you submit a design need and put up a sum of money as a prize for the best design. Then designers look at your request and begin submitting designs for you to rate, comment on, and request changes for. I started my contest about a week and a half ago, and I spent about 2 hours each day just going through designs and giving my feedback. Over the course of the contest, I wound up getting 320 total designs from 36 designers. (Of course, some of those 320 were adjustments to already submitted designs that I’d requested, but I still got a LOT of variety.) All of the designers were responsive and helpful in trying to meet my needs.
After four days of open submissions, the contest moves to a “final” stage, wherein I had to pick 6 designers to continue on and work with me for another 3 days to create their final submission. Just narrowing it down to 6 was difficult. When the final stage was over and it was time to pick a winner, that was an even harder choice. I spent three days agonizing over my options, going back and forth, and trying to choose from 6 final (and unique) choices, some of which had multiple versions for me to decide on.
But hey, now I’ve got a great, professional looking cover.
Most of the designs I received were combinations of photographic images – there wasn’t too much in the way of painted artwork, though there was some. I think if I were doing a fantasy book cover, I’d either go elsewhere or create a contest with a higher reward (you can increase the amount you’re offering, which I’m told brings in even more, and possibly better, designers). But I’m more than happy with my results here.
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