What do you do for the book that won’t sell?

Echoes has a lot going for it. I think it’s actually the best of the three books I have out, but sales have never been all that strong. I’m going to try some different things with it in the coming year, just to see if I can bump up its sale rate a little bit, and step one was a new cover.

When I published Echoes and GNW (I think they were about three weeks apart?) I was flat broke and had no money for cover art. I did have an old copy of Photoshop and some classes under my belt, along with some photo manipulation skillz left over from a previous magazine gig. My covers weren’t great, but they were serviceable. When GNW took off, I promptly hired a real cover artist, Steven Novak, and he gave it a new look. Steven also did the DBG cover.

I left Echoes alone. Maybe not the best thing I could have done for it, but sales were so meh anyway, I found it hard to justify sinking money into it. But while updating my Facebook page, the Echoes cover looked so…sad…next to the GNW/DBG covers that I emailed Steven to inquire about a redesign.

The bottom line is that I think Echoes is a good story. Despite its poor sales, it’s been extremely well-reviewed, and if I can give it a chance to shine, well, I should do that.

Steven out-did himself on this one. He listened to my vague ideas of what I was going for and knocked together a beautiful cover for Echoes. I’m going to have to dig up the original file to add the cover to, so that will be tomorrow’s task, along with re-upping to B&N and Amazon. I’ll also upload the cover to the site tomorrow.

Now all three of my books have proper covers. I’d squee, but that would be undignified.

Oh, all right.

Squee!