So to get the big news out of the way, iUniverse sent me my book proofs yesterday. These would be electronic proofs — don’t do physical proofs for some bizarre reason.
Anyway, here are my initial thoughts on the cover/interior:
The Good:
- title looks super cool
- spine looks super cool
- back cover looks professional
- interior is freaking awesome
The Bad:
- they randomly stretched my author photo sideways so I look oddly disproportionate
- the back cover text they tweaked from the original version I gave them is poorly written
- the silhouettes on the front cover are terrible – the girl is fine, but the guy looks like an overweight balding man – plus he randomly has a shiny silver pistol (this is a sci-fi story, people! they don’t have pistols!)
As you can guess, I am fairly concerned about “The Bad”. Most important to fix are the silhouettes, obviously, since they are on the front cover, but most annoying to me is that they stretched my author photo. What could possibly possess them to do that? If they needed it to fit a certain width, they could have just cropped the top and bottom. It makes no sense. Did they think no one would notice?
Anyway, this is just the first draft (I get one more), so I will make up a list of all my revisions and send it to them. And then the cover will be perfect! Or else!
Moving on to the real reason I called you here …
So as I mentioned above, the back cover text they “revised” is mediocre at best, so I had to re-write it. I’m going to share with you my version of the back cover text, so please let me know what you think! I haven’t sent it in yet, so changes can definitely be made if you find something you don’t like.
High school junior Eris Miller thinks she’s having a bad day when her roommate’s boyfriend catches her stepping out of the shower wearing nothing but a towel. Then she gets abducted by aliens, and her day suddenly gets a whole lot worse.
After being forced to drink a vial of glowing blue liquid, Eris is knocked unconscious. When she awakens, she discovers that she is imprisoned on a spaceship. Her abductors are menacing six-armed reptiles with a strange fondness for the color blue, and their captain is straight out of Eris’s nightmares. Her only solace is in her fellow captive, a wise, fluffy-haired alien named Miguri. But just as Eris begins to fear she will never see her home again, fate lands her in the arms of Varrin, a handsome space pirate who promises to deliver her safely back to Earth. He claims to have her best interests at heart, but Eris soon discovers that her rescuer has a devious hidden agenda.
Join Eris on her thrilling journey across the galaxy as she struggles to save her planet, her life, and her heart from the clutches of imminent danger.
Thoughts? Opinions? Comments?
Unrelated image of the day:
Michelle Proulx - Author 