People Do Judge A Book By It's Cover... Or At Least Mine

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Spread Some Indy Love Blog Tour

I'm delighted to be taking part in this blog tour and thank you for taking the time to stop by and check out my website.  Please check out the links that provide information about my books, as well as my bio and other great tidbits about me.  Below is a post I'd written reflecting on my cover changes.

People Do Judge A Book By It's Cover... Or At Least Mine

Finding Our Way Series Cover Art Rainbow Banner

Ever since I published my very first book, Finding Our Way, I always had a problem with the cover.  This seemed to only bother me.  After two years and three books into what became the Finding Our Way Series the covers were still bothering me.  In the mean time I kept on getting requests from readers asking if I was ever going to put out a series collection, which I later did.  The cover I designed for this collection bothered me even more than the original covers had.

Although I was alone in this feeling, I set out to design some new, exciting covers.  The idea was to create a theme that would later be extended to cross over books.  These books would take the characters from the series and put them into different contexts, such as Derrick and Justin having super powers and being seen in a context I've never presented them as before.  As well as giving deeper insight to characters, putting them as the main ones in a book.  It might take me a few years but Tyler and Tyson Hensley will have their own book, it seems to be coming along in stages.  With this, it was my intent to design covers that would work for the current books in the series and I could modify slightly for upcoming books.

The consensus amongst my friends was an overwhelming "the covers are fine as they currently are."  However, this did not detour me from setting forth to a redesign.  Even though the books in my series were selling well, I was sure a cover change would only improve the sales.  I was convinced this change would give the books the extra push they needed to rise on the best sellers lists.  I eventually came up with a cover that looked sharp and I set forth not only change the covers, but also to promote the change in covers for the books. 

Based upon what I've seen in book sales over the last few months, I think it is safe to say that the new covers were not received well by potential readers.  To all those who told me that I should leave the covers alone, I know now that I should have listened.  The covers have been restored back to their original design.

I'm happy to have plenty of people buying and reading my books, not judging a book by the cover.   Even though I've never gotten used to sharing my drawing talents, I do appreciate all the kind words people share with me regarding using my artwork for the covers.