Author Crush Month: Jacqueline Diamond

As I mentioned last week, this year I’m going into Author Crush month in a slightly different way. I want to see what other people are doing in the self-publishing world. Last week, James Scott Bell talked about how he is self-publishing short story and novella collections. This week, my friend Jacqueline Diamond is going to talk about self-publishing her out-of-print back list. Please welcome Jackie!

Judging a Book by its Cover

When I began my journey into reissuing my older books, I wasn’t worried about covers. It seemed to me, in my naiveté back in late 2010, that simple blocks of color with text—accompanied by low prices—would work fine. What did readers expect, anyway?

Well, not simple blocks of color with text. The buzzword, I later learned, is Discoverability. This means standing out among all those thousands of tiny rectangles on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Plus instantly conveying the genre.

Not asking much, are they?

My friends said, Hire a designer. But that’s expensive. Besides, you need to have an idea of what you want your covers to look like, and I didn’t. For instance, should I pick a unified theme, even though I write romantic comedies, Regency romances, mysteries and paranormals? I didn’t like that idea, but how should I choose?

In case you’re wondering, I’ve sold, to date, 93 novels. I’ve regained all rights to about 16 and own the digital rights to 11 more. In addition to reissuing my older books, I currently write the Safe Harbor Medical miniseries for Harlequin American Romance. My February release is The Detective’s Accidental Baby (at Amazon, and at Barnes & Noble).

Some friends steered me to websites where generous and talented designers from around the world upload photos and pictures for free use. So I taught myself to use Photoshop Elements and set to work adding titles etc.

Flowers on the Regency covers. Various and sundry stuff on the various and sundry books. I was learning as I went. One stunning but subtle picture of lavender flowers in an old teapot entranced me but didn’t entrance readers for my romance Old Dreams, New Dreams. Out it went in favor of a funny silhouette of a couple, with the woman obviously pregnant. You can see all my current covers at www.jacquelinediamond.com/books, in the right-hand column.

Nor was I just sitting around playing with Photoshop. I was revising and updating the books and reformatting them. Writing three Safe Harbor Medical romances a year. Teaching writing through Long Ridge Writers Group. Serving on the board of the Orange County Chapter of Romance Writers of America. Occasionally sleeping.

What I needed was a vacation. What I got were further adventures in covers.

My Regency covers, it seems, might be pretty but fellow author and Regency blogger Anne Glover felt I could do better. She introduced me to a wonderful designer, Kelly at customgraphics.etsy.com, who created a charming period-authentic cover for my Regency The Day-Dreaming Lady (at Amazon, and at Barnes & Noble), which I posted at the end of January. I’m planning to post more of her covers as well.