If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you likely know about my Very Manly series of books. All two of them. There’s four in the entire series, but the last two won’t see the light of day if the sales for the first two don’t pick up. I’m an artist and a business owner. Do I want to spend my time writing and then spend the money on editing and book covers to do so at a loss? No.

Here are the two covers for the series, before. Notice how the photography is professional, the fonts clear? There’s some color and detail but not so much it’s overwhelming or difficult to see as a thumbnail. You can also see them in their natural habitat over at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, and everywhere else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nice, right? Not huge eye catching best sellers in the contemporary romance department, either. And by ‘not huge’ I mean sad, very very sad.

So what to do? To take my editor’s sage advice and give them a professional makeover. I hired someone to help me ratchet up the sex, which I did by having Carrie at Cheeky Covers help me out. I’d admired her work done for a friend of mine, Ava Branson, and needed her expertise.

This is what she came up with.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nice, right? It’s way too soon to tell if the covers affect sales. Probably in six weeks, if nothing has seen a bump in downloads, I’ll have my answer. The stories are solid and professionally edited, so I know they’re good. Every time I go over a proof, I love what I read so if nothing else, there’s one person who loves these books. I’m not sure if that’s enough to write The Very Rich Man and The Very Poor Man, but I have those stories and covers planned just in case.

So. What do YOU think? Enticing or meh?