It’s been two years since I wrote this post and, looking back, the hours spent searching for just the right picture have definitely paid off — both in print and as an e-book! Not that the story doesn’t “have legs” — page reads are a great way to measure your readers’ engagement — but there’s nothing like al little “curb appeal” to get them there!
Picture Perfect!
It’s an oft-used cliché, but sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. And finding an image that supports both the book’s title and its story line, is magic.
Take Making Up is Hard to Do. It started life as a romantic suspense novel, lost its way, went through multiple rewrites and three different titles before it was deemed ready to publish.
Once we’d sorted out the cover.
As a contemporary romance with the bedroom door only slightly ajar, we needed a photo that would let the reader know what to expect. Not that we have any objections to a set of well-toned abs.
There are literally millions of images available from aggregates like Shutterstock, Can Stock and Adobe Stock. The trick is to narrow your search parameters along the way. We started with couples in love, couples kissing, dating couples, couples at the beach and so on. Big smiles and bikinis wasn’t what we had in mind.so we tried “couple from behind on the beach” and voilà! We had our image.
The dock was an unexpected bonus. With a title like Making Up is Hard to Do what was a natural pose for a couple gazing across the water was suddenly open to interpretation. Were they getting back together or were they still worlds apart?
The answer is on the page!
We like the look of Making Up is Hard to Do so much we’ve made it part of our Stephanie Browning brand. And used it as the cover for Love Me Now, Love Me Forever, our three-book boxed set featuring Outbid by the Boss, Making Up is Hard to Do and Undone by the Star.
As voracious romance readers, we love the idea of boxed sets, and hope you do, too!
Love Me Now, Love Me Forever is available on…
Kobo, Kindle & Apple Books