I can’t believe I’m actually writing a post on Monday! Usually, my Mondays are jam packed with house cleaning and errands to replace snacks eaten during the weekend. That, and I just forget.

So a couple of posts ago, I went into the dubious joy of changing covers. They’ve not made a bit of difference. While I received some valuable feedback on the text inside and why the story might not be working, that doesn’t explain the lack of sales. No one is buying it to give bad reviews to hamper sales. The covers and those male torsos aren’t leading readers to buy just to lick the covers, either. Alas, I must market and that’s a future post. My business partner and I are throwing all sorts of marketing spaghetti on the wall and I’ll report back what sticks.

Meanwhile, because pretty pictures are fun, here are some before and afters in the manual cover art. This is for Unfortunate, Daggart’s story. A short work for those who’ve read Undeniable and wondered whatever happened to their favorite villain.

It’s pretty, crude, monochromatic, much like the characters and their landscape. There’s even a horse trough where Daggart is found at the beginning of the story. Hooray, right?
Not so much. I kept getting a lot of critique on it, about how one tone, the buildings, just eh in general from those I polled. I liked it, but not a lot of other people did.

So what was next?

This!

Unlike the picture above, this one wasn’t painted with precise little strokes. It was done with bold colors and a bold hand. I was afraid of the style being too different from the prior paintings. So, I made sure to use the exact same colors in this painting as I did in every other one. While the colors are carried from one painting to the other, the ratios aren’t and that gives them a familiar but different feel.

I also wanted to highlight the warm arid feel of California. The only tough part? Not painting a covered wagon and who knows? I might go ahead and add one in later.

In the digital age of publishing, everything is fixable.