Books need covers. Even books that never appear in physical form, which the majority of mine don’t. But where to get the covers?
This one came from Lot’s Cave, which is where the majority spring from. Sis and Her Friend is filled with the same incestuous behavior as are the bulk of my books. The bulk written under this particular name, at least. These are the easy covers. I just send them the manuscript and they take it from there, formatting the file for various outlets, and commissioning a cover design. It takes a few weeks this way, but the finished product seems worth the wait.
There are a couple of exceptions, naturally. Two of my books were written for a more mainstream audience. Mostly, that means nobody is fucking a sibling or parent. Amazon won’t carry books where that sort of thing is going on. They seem to be okay with characters fucking unrelated people, though, as long as everyone is an adult. They don’t allow any underage sex, and that’s probably as it should be, even if it makes writing “high school” sex stories a bit predictable, since everyone has to be a senior.
The cover for One Room, which was done by the nice people at C.E.B. Pubs (who publish my Amazon-rated books), was one where I had a bit more input. Some things are obvious about this one. To begin with, the model is wearing sexy lingerie, but everything is still modestly covered up. You can’t have naked tits on Amazon’s bookshelf. I’ve often thought it would be nice if you could, as nudity sells more books than semi-nudity.
For this book, I selected the photo from a set I’d purchased for my website. The full set ended up in the members’ section, where, so far as I can tell, no one has ever seen the rest of them. I’m seriously thinking of shutting down that section. I don’t have the money to make it big and comprehensive, and not too many people want to spend the money on a subscription when there isn’t very much material there.
I have to suspect that I might sell a few more copies of the book if I could put this image on the cover instead of the one that was used. But I can’t. I have to use what the sellers will allow and, again, I’m not in a position to become a major publisher and sell my own books through a big on-line store.
I’ll admit I had a little help with this one. The girl holding the candelabra is a stock photo, and the license says we can’t sell more than 50,000 copies of the book without paying an additional fee. So far, I’m afraid, there’s very little danger it’s going to cost any more. The blood dripping down at the top is another stock photo, superimposed on the first. Then that background image was imported into InDesign, where the title and my name were added.
This one, unlike the others, also had to be made in a high-resolution version suitable for print reproduction. Lust for Blood is currently available in Kindle, ePub, print, and audiobook editions. That almost wasn’t possible, by the way. Originally it had a bit of incest added to the mix. Somewhere along the line I realized it was potentially a more mainstream title, so the incest came out. Lord Muntglare and his sister, Lady Anna, may still end up naked in his photographic studio, but she only has sex with her friend, Suzanne, and it’s their guest his lordship jerks off over. A simple change such as that is the difference between a book that can be sold on Amazon and one that can’t.
I can’t help thinking this shot would make a great cover for the book I’m currently writing, but I’m afraid it would be too limiting when it comes to markets. I’m fairly sure this will be another Lot’s Cave title, since it contains some obvious fetish content, and may include a certain amount of incest as well (I haven’t got quite that far yet, but I think it’s coming). Even with some carefully-placed text, I don’t think Amazon would ever allow that image.