Day 152: Covers and titles
WOW today has been busy and I didn't get any editing or writing done!
I had a phone call with my cover designer first thing and we talked about the covers for my Hawaii Christian Contemporary Romance series, as well as my Hawaii Christian Romantic Suspense series, and then we also segued into my Christian Regency series. I had forgotten about the cover for my Reader Magnet, The Gentleman Thief, so I talked to her about that a bit.
She needed the stock photo image for The Gentleman Thief, so after we got off the phone, I decided to spend a little time to look for one. Except that I ran into the problem of what model to choose, since several would have worked. I also realized I hadn't picked the covers (or the models) for the other books in the series, and I didn't want to choose a cover model for The Gentleman Thief that I would later wish I could have used for a book in the series.
I had always planned to have a single model on the cover who would be the dominant character in the book. So I decided to go through and figure out what models went with which character. I managed to pick a few, but then I also realized that the models might change depending on what poses they have available, because certain poses would be appropriate for some titles but not others.
So then I decided to figure out the titles for the books, first. I had thought about it a week ago or something like that but never really wrote down anything. So now I spent some time figuring out what the dominant theme was for each book and searching the thesaurus for words that would be perfect for the titles.
And I'm glad I did, even though it took a long time. I ended up changing a few titles because the first one I picked didn't fit the dominant character for the book. Because of the title changes, I also switched around which character would feature on which book, since some books didn't have a strongly dominant character and it could go either way between two or three characters.
I also ended up switching which models I chose for which characters because of the title of the book whose cover I wanted them on. For example, for my character Keriah, I decided to put her on the cover of the 9th volume, but the model didn't have a pose that was the right look for the title, which is "Masquer" so I picked my second choice for model instead.
Another thing I realized was how the covers would look next to each other. I looked at them all in a contact sheet in my PDF viewer and was able to see certain things that were too similar between covers, like two men with arms held at the same position for volumes 2 and 3, and two women in the same pose of looking over their shoulder. So I also picked different poses so that the covers would look more distinct from each other.
It took a really long time! But now it's all done. I also sent the links to the photos to my cover designer and told her to go ahead and buy the licenses now, especially since some of the models are very popular and there aren't many photos left in the gallery. I think there's an option to buy exclusive use of a particular photo, and that's why. I also asked her if she thought there might be an issue with some of the poses I chose.
And then I had to get online to check my email, especially the messages for one of the box sets I'm in. It only took 30 minutes, but there was a lot of stuff to cover.
So now it's almost dinnertime and I didn't get any editing done! I did get a lot done for my marketing, so that's good, and surprisingly, I'm not feeling too tired. I think I'll eat dinner and then see if I can get some work done afterward on editing the book. Maybe this break from doing the edits helped refresh me? Here's hoping!
***
I had a leisurely early dinner and then decided to try doing more editing on my book, and I got about 90 minutes done!
Unfortunately, my experiment to edit within 4thewords didn’t work. I do too much deleting and so when I paste the edited chapter, it shows I’ve only deleted words instead of adding them.
I guess the only way to edit within 4thewords.com is to start a long time duration monster, but I could only edit for a couple hours before I had to switch to writing for a couple hours to defeat the monster. However, for the next day or two, I want to focus on editing so I can finish revisions on this manuscript and send it to my proofreader ASAP. I also need to prepare for NaNoWriMo, which starts on Sunday!
Well, hopefully I won’t be in this position for the other books in my series because I’ll have been cycling and so by the time I finish the rough draft, it will have been already self-edited. I guess I just have to push through.
I think I will try doing a little more edits for tonight.
***
I got another 90 minutes done! I wonder if the break from editing really did refresh me, mentally?
Now I think I will go to bed.
Editing: Time spent: 3 hours, 31 minutes
Writing: Time spent: 0 minutes
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 8 hours, 8 minutes
My takeaway for today: I can only do editing on 4thewords with a long time duration monster, and only if I’m working on a manuscript so I can use the writing to finish it after a couple hours.
I had a phone call with my cover designer first thing and we talked about the covers for my Hawaii Christian Contemporary Romance series, as well as my Hawaii Christian Romantic Suspense series, and then we also segued into my Christian Regency series. I had forgotten about the cover for my Reader Magnet, The Gentleman Thief, so I talked to her about that a bit.
She needed the stock photo image for The Gentleman Thief, so after we got off the phone, I decided to spend a little time to look for one. Except that I ran into the problem of what model to choose, since several would have worked. I also realized I hadn't picked the covers (or the models) for the other books in the series, and I didn't want to choose a cover model for The Gentleman Thief that I would later wish I could have used for a book in the series.
I had always planned to have a single model on the cover who would be the dominant character in the book. So I decided to go through and figure out what models went with which character. I managed to pick a few, but then I also realized that the models might change depending on what poses they have available, because certain poses would be appropriate for some titles but not others.
So then I decided to figure out the titles for the books, first. I had thought about it a week ago or something like that but never really wrote down anything. So now I spent some time figuring out what the dominant theme was for each book and searching the thesaurus for words that would be perfect for the titles.
And I'm glad I did, even though it took a long time. I ended up changing a few titles because the first one I picked didn't fit the dominant character for the book. Because of the title changes, I also switched around which character would feature on which book, since some books didn't have a strongly dominant character and it could go either way between two or three characters.
I also ended up switching which models I chose for which characters because of the title of the book whose cover I wanted them on. For example, for my character Keriah, I decided to put her on the cover of the 9th volume, but the model didn't have a pose that was the right look for the title, which is "Masquer" so I picked my second choice for model instead.
Another thing I realized was how the covers would look next to each other. I looked at them all in a contact sheet in my PDF viewer and was able to see certain things that were too similar between covers, like two men with arms held at the same position for volumes 2 and 3, and two women in the same pose of looking over their shoulder. So I also picked different poses so that the covers would look more distinct from each other.
It took a really long time! But now it's all done. I also sent the links to the photos to my cover designer and told her to go ahead and buy the licenses now, especially since some of the models are very popular and there aren't many photos left in the gallery. I think there's an option to buy exclusive use of a particular photo, and that's why. I also asked her if she thought there might be an issue with some of the poses I chose.
And then I had to get online to check my email, especially the messages for one of the box sets I'm in. It only took 30 minutes, but there was a lot of stuff to cover.
So now it's almost dinnertime and I didn't get any editing done! I did get a lot done for my marketing, so that's good, and surprisingly, I'm not feeling too tired. I think I'll eat dinner and then see if I can get some work done afterward on editing the book. Maybe this break from doing the edits helped refresh me? Here's hoping!
***
I had a leisurely early dinner and then decided to try doing more editing on my book, and I got about 90 minutes done!
Unfortunately, my experiment to edit within 4thewords didn’t work. I do too much deleting and so when I paste the edited chapter, it shows I’ve only deleted words instead of adding them.
I guess the only way to edit within 4thewords.com is to start a long time duration monster, but I could only edit for a couple hours before I had to switch to writing for a couple hours to defeat the monster. However, for the next day or two, I want to focus on editing so I can finish revisions on this manuscript and send it to my proofreader ASAP. I also need to prepare for NaNoWriMo, which starts on Sunday!
Well, hopefully I won’t be in this position for the other books in my series because I’ll have been cycling and so by the time I finish the rough draft, it will have been already self-edited. I guess I just have to push through.
I think I will try doing a little more edits for tonight.
***
I got another 90 minutes done! I wonder if the break from editing really did refresh me, mentally?
Now I think I will go to bed.
Editing: Time spent: 3 hours, 31 minutes
Writing: Time spent: 0 minutes
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 8 hours, 8 minutes
My takeaway for today: I can only do editing on 4thewords with a long time duration monster, and only if I’m working on a manuscript so I can use the writing to finish it after a couple hours.
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