Status for Laeryk's Proving

My last post rambled on a bit longer than I'd intended, so I didn't get the chance to post the current status for Laeryk's Proving.

The manuscript for Laeryk's Proving is complete, coming in at approximately 147,000 words. I've actually compiled the book in epub and mobi formats. Technically, it is ready to be released for sale.

Technically.

But as any book seller will tell you, the pages inside a book aren't what makes a potential buyer stop to look at the book. They lack the ability to grab a passer-by's collar and "Hey, I'm damn good, READ ME!!!" And if they could, who would want to go inside a book store? I already feel like my shelves groan enough just from the weight of the books; their potential collapse and the resulting "landslide" is more than enough threat for me, thank you very much. So what makes us stop and give that book a first and then a second glance?

The cover.

Beautiful, glossy images boldly declaring the author and title of the book, and offering us a visual scene which may (or, seemingly just as often, not) have something to do with the book's contents. These are the things that make us stop and glance at books we might otherwise never spare even a cursory first look.

One of my favorite authors that I've read over the last few years is Brent Weeks. If you haven't heard of him, Brent Weeks wrote the Night Angel Trilogy and the second book of his Lightbringer series releases today (if you want more information, check out www.brentweeks.com - you won't be disappointed!). My first encounter with his books was in the local Borders Books before it closed. His books were a staff pick, and had been given a place of honor on an endcap. The cover for the first book, The Way of Shadows, is fairly simple, but eye-catching. A black-cloaked an stands partially visible on the cover, set against a white background, his weapons drawn while streams of purple mist or fog rise from his body. The font for the title is nothing fancy, and a single tagline "The perfect killer has no friends - only targets." helps grab your attention immediately. The other books in the trilogy are similar in style.

I walked past them. Twice. They caught my eye each time. Finally, I stopped to look at the back of the book, where I read about a boy named Azoth who gets trained to be an assassin by the greatest killer in his city. I put it back on the shelf. Assassins aren't really my thing, so the idea of reading a trilogy dedicated to them wasn't appealing. One of my best friends, however, loves assassins. I wrote the title of the book down so I could recommend it to him, and ended up checking the book out at my local library so that I could give him an informed opinion. That was when the words inside the book grabbed me, shook me around a little, and left me wanting MORE. And thus, I became a Brent Weeks fan.

But it all started with a cover that caught my eye.

His books were displayed on an endcap. Three smart covers, each roughly 4 inches by 7 inches. How could I not have noticed them? I'll tell you how - if they were just thumbnails on my screen. Which is what I'm going to be dealing with. Thumbnails are small, and depending on your eReader device, possibly done in grayscale. They need to be eye-catching, but simple. "No problem," you might think. "There are plenty of talented artists who can produce that for you!" Indeed there are... but you need the money to pay them.

It's possible to design a cover without hiring someone to do it. You need the right software; fortunately, GIMP is 100% free, and something I've used for simple projects in the past. But you need images to do anything with GIMP. I'm no artist, at least not with visual images. I can scratch out something that people will interpret to be a face (it's really a chicken - I'm that bad at drawing!) but I can't produce anything worth putting on the cover of my book. My wife is actually pretty talented at drawing, but she's got her plate full with schoolwork at the moment. Which has left me look for royalty-free stock images I can use to create my cover, which is taking longer than I'd thought it would.

Beyond getting a cover (which I've devoted most of this post to talking about), I still need to acquire the ISBN numbers for my book, and I'd really like to run my eventual cover design through a professional graphics designer to make certain it's eye-catching. All of this costs money, money, and - you guessed it - more money. With a family of five, money's always in tight supply, so I'm looking for sources of outside funding.

Which leads me to my plans for trying to raise the funds I need for Laeryk's Proving through Kickstarter. If you're not familiar with it, Kickstarter is a program which allows people to pledge money toward a project. Various entrepreneurs create a project on the Kickstarter website (www.kickstarter.com) and offers certain incentives for individuals who pledge at certain levels toward their project. If you've ever listened to your local NPR station during their fund drives, you've heard of this concept. It's just like when the NPR station offers you a gift for your donation of $100, or whatever dollar amount they've assigned to the gift. In most Kickstarter projects you have a scale of gifts; Get x for a $5 pledge, y for $25, z for $50, and so on and so forth. Each project has a set amount of money it is looking to raise, and Kickstarter only takes pledge money once the goal is reached, though it is certainly possible for the goal to be exceeded.

I'm determining my incentive levels and how much I feel that I need to raise now, and I would like at least a mock concept for the cover before I post, that way I can help grab the eyes of potential pledges. I feel like a contestant in the Hunger Games. Quick, someone set me on fire!

Once the Kickstarter project is up, I will post the address. Until then, I'll keep posting updates about the cover, and maybe an image or two once they're available!

Next Time: I'll present some information about the setting of Laeryk's Proving, specifically the nation of Valdaran where our hero hails from!