Woo!

Nov. 25th, 2024 11:40 am
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Another romantasy premade book cover up on Etsy! And it's not muddy-dark like so many of the ones I see online are! Which might be a mistake if that's what sells! Wheeeeee!

And I screwed up my wrist--left, thankfully, as I'm right-handed--yesterday making over half a gallon of béchamel sauce for lasagna for our friend gathering next Saturday. I dislike the texture of ricotta and prefer the variant that uses béchamel instead, and needed to make A LOT. My right arm got tired of whisking as I was doing the slowly-pour-milk-into-the-flour-and-butter-mixture thing, so I swapped to my left. Which was apparently the wrong thing to do. Not that I knew anything about that immediately. My left---argh this wrist brace keeps hitting the control key and the windows key--my left wrist was tired, and I had to very quickly call for backup from [personal profile] myrialux instead. But I woke up this morning with something on the outer edge of my wrist hurting when I do things like HOLD MY PHONE or APPLY PRESSURE WITH MY RING FINGER (as I apparently do when allcapsing). [personal profile] myrialux hunted up one of our wrist braces for me, and I have been finding out what movements hurt.

Hopefully it'll get better shortly as I would love to make deviled eggs for Saturday, my favorite finger food. Lasagnas (yes, 3--two 9x13" pans and one 8x8" when it became clear there was too much Stuff to fit into 2 pans) are in the freezer to be defrosted ahead of time and baked, there are plans afoot for Caesar salad, as we've got a recipe we know to be good, and friends are bringing other things.

We used this recipe, which is meant to be a shortcut, faking a Bolognese sauce with jarred marinara, and zhuzhed it up with fresh herbs, a can of Mutti pizza sauce to round out the marinara (it wanted 4 32-oz jars and our store carries 24-oz jars) and one of those small bottles of red wine you can get in 4-packs. Yum! Add the béchamel, Parmesan, and two pounds of cubed mozzarella because we couldn't find the Cuisinart to round it out and I think it'll be good.

How do you misplace a Cuisinart? No idea. We don't remember tossing it (it's a little bit busted and we do plan to replace it), but apparently it was packed...somewhere? And maybe not unpacked yet? We're down to just a few boxes and thought we already got all the ones that were labeled "kitchen" but who knows?
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In posting here about my premade covers over on Etsy (for SEO purposes).

I've been spending the past couple of months running ads on Etsy and making covers to see what people like, as calculated by visits and favorites. And using a plugin that I subscribed to for a year to analyze whatever stats it can grab from public Etsy stuff. Which is not TOTALLY accurate but at least gives me a rough idea of what might sell.

Also, I've joined the Etsy Black Friday sale, in which you'll get 30% off if you spend over $100. I have CUNNINGLY PRICED most of my ebook covers at $99 to tempt buyers into adding on a paperback or hardcover that way. Woo. (If it's over $99, it should be a full wrap cover already created. I also have a variety of prices in order to see what price points appeal and are workable for me, although I haven't sold enough to have any real data. :D

Anyway, here's a list of new premade covers. Apologies in advance for the terribly SEO-centric titles, but these days it's all about the ~Algorithm~ and Etsy has some specific things it responds to when grabbing listings and presenting them as search results. And honestly not that many people are judging by the few characters of the title visible in the search listings; they're looking at the picture. (Some of them have "No AI" in the title, just to see if that attracts people or not. None of them are made with AI.) You're getting the full glory of the titles because I'm hoping search engine spiders will pick them up.

In chronological order, from the oldest to the most recent.

Full wrap Regency Christmas cover, in an illustrated style:
Premade Book Cover: Christmas Regency Romance with an illustrated couple embracing under mistletoe. Customizable. No AI.

Regency Christmas ebook cover with the usual photomontage.
Premade Ebook Cover: Christmas Regency Romance with a lord and lady in front of a Christmas tree. Customizable. No AI.

Mystery or thriller full wrap cover:
Premade Thriller or Mystery Book Cover. Suspense, mystery or action. Ebook and paperback. Customizable.

Mystery/thriller/spy ebook cover:
Premade Book Cover: Thriller, Mystery or Spy Ebook Cover | Suspense | Action | Customizable

Historical Christmas romance (yes, you can tell what my biggest sellers have been to date)
Premade Book Cover: Christmas Historical Romance with a lord and lady in front of a Christmas tree. Customizable. No AI.

For a bit of a change, some rendered crowns as transparent PNGs to plop onto your characters' or photo clients' heads.
Royal crowns for queen or princess. Digital overlay PNG. Fantasy, Medieval, Historical, Romance, Magical. Instant download.

What is this? A Regency romance cover that isn't Christmas??? I disbelieve.
Premade Book Cover: Romance Regency / Historical / Victorian / Romantasy A woman standing in front of an atmospheric morning landscape

Then I branched out into romantasy and dark romance. Here we have my currently Most Popular (as judged by favorites) cover. It has never had a different title, so I'm judging this a Success for Etsy searches and am pretty much using the formula for the others. Sorry!
Premade Book Cover | Romantasy & Dark Romance | Fairy Tale | Fantasy YA Aesthetic | Ethereal Atmospheric Design for Young Adults

These next two were an experiment to see if I could replicate the uncanny valley feel of AI images using 3D renders and the type of post-processing in Photoshop that turns people's skin plastic. Visually, I succeeded, I think. Are the covers popular? Not that much, mostly because if you've got a person's face on the cover it's got to match the author's mental image of their character so it's a harder sell. But I proved the concept, so they fulfilled their purpose.
Premade Book Cover | Romantasy & Dark Romance | Fairy Tale | Elf | Fantasy | Ethereal Atmospheric Design
and
Premade Book Cover | Romantasy & New Adult | Fairy Tale + Dark Romance | Fantasy YA Aesthetic | Atmospheric Ethereal Design for Young Adults

Back to the formula of the popular one above, with flowers and a sword this time.
Premade Book Cover: Romantasy | Fantasy | Flowers & Sword | Dark Romance | Aesthetic | Atmospheric | Ethereal

I wanted to try to picture a rose frozen in ice. I did it, stood back and went "Um...yeah that's absolutely the cover of a spicy romance, not a sweet one." (If you ever wonder if the entendre on the cover of a romance is accidental...no, they know damn well that it's there.)
Premade Book Cover: Romantasy | Dark Romance & Fantasy | YA | Young Adult | Aesthetic | Atmospheric | Frost and Ice

Replicating the popular one without copying it exactly.
Premade Book Cover | Dark Romance | Romantasy & Fairy Tale | Fantasy YA Aesthetic | Ethereal Atmospheric Design for Young Adults

And the one I finished today, a more flat illustrated look. I learned how to make seamless patterns in Photoshop with this one!
Premade Book Cover | Romantasy | Fairy Tale & Dark Romance | Fantasy YA Aesthetic | Atmospheric Custom Design for Young Adults

If you ever wanted to know what my most popular items are, they're these, digital backdrops of Santa's toy workshop. I got the most sales during the height of the pandemic as professional Santas and grandparents wanted appropriate Zoom backgrounds for calls with kids, and then a few sales at the end of each year since as photographers professional and amateur wanted backdrops to composite their subjects into for holiday photos.

Digital Background - Santa's Toy Workshop Christmas Scene, Festive Holiday Backdrop for Photography, Instant Download

Digital Backdrop - Santa's Workshop Christmas Scene, Festive Photography Background, Winter Wonderland Backdrop
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I've got 3 new Christmas-themed romance premade covers up on my Etsy shop now, two Regency and one contemporary. (Note: if you have an urge to crit them,please read my previous post first. Thanks.)

A premade Christmas cover of a Regency couple sitting in front of a fireplace.

A premade cover for a Christmas-themed Regency romance in which our noble couple is inexplicably standing outside their manor house in a snowstorm!*

And finally, a contemporary Christmas romance with a couple sitting in front of a fireplace with a Christmas ornament and a vast amount of green.

* Stock photos in historical winter clothing are difficult to find, and my quick research into other covers shows that nobody actually cares very much: the background is Symbolism and not Actual Illustration [tm].

I should really write a bunch more text here so that ~The Algorithm~ believes this is a substantial article with good information that people will want to read and thus rank it higher--well, assuming that any discussion of ~The Algorithm~ doesn't immediately rank links on that page lower--but we all know that y'all are mostly here for cat pictures and not text. So thus you are rewarded by cat pictures below the cut.

Cat pics for those who read through the post )
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This one's a suspense/thriller cover. Done while watching a tutorial on "Hollywood processing" of images and completely ignoring everything the narrator said.
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Yup, went ahead and made the image in the previous post into a premade fantasy cover and posted it to Etsy. We'll see if anyone likes it!. :) (or if my SEO attempt there works...)
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New listing in my Etsy shop! Another 3D character with 5 poses suitable to composite into your book cover or other artwork. Destiny--I have no idea why I name my 3D characters but I do--is a Black woman suitable for urban fantasy, paranormal romance, new adult, or college (Amazon categories) genre book covers.

(It helps The Algorithm[TM] if you favorite my shop and listings if you like them.)
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New premade cover up on Etsy! It's a fantasy cover this time, featuring a woman with a sword advancing on you with purpose. (Also note the nifty 15-sec video I made for it. Etsy really wants us to post videos of products, and I'm guessing that the algorithm pushes items with videos a bit more, so this is a test.)

I think I forgot to mention the science fiction book cover I posted there last week, featuring a stock photo woman holding a gun on a digital background.

I've also started posting digital backdrops and characters for people to use in their own work. There seems to be a reasonably large market for portrait photographers, pro and amateur, to use digital backgrounds to composite their clients into, and I already know there's a book cover market for digital characters and backgrounds, so purchasers get full commercial rights (barring selling the image with no changes to it) as well.

If you wouldn't mind helping me a bit with Etsy, favoriting my shop and/or various items in it pushes them higher in the algorithm, much like thumbs-up and comments on YouTube videos. If you favorite the shop, you'll get notifications when I post something new, and if you favorite items, you'll get notifications when they're on sale (and you might also get a coupon for the item within a few days...at least I've set it to do that, and Etsy occasionally actually sends them). I'm pricing the digital backgrounds and characters with the intention of holding frequent sales for deep percentages off and doing most of their sales at those times.

Also, a tip about Etsy reviews...Read more... )
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Got a couple more premade covers up on Etsy. Still all romance, using stock I bought from Period Images a while back and never used.
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If you're on Etsy, you may want to check your privacy settings. Short version: they rolled out a new function to make Etsy work more like a social network, which includes letting YOUR REAL NAME, if you've put it in, and ALL YOUR PURCHASES, if you haven't opted out of that, show up if someone searches for you.

I've only ever bought catnip eyeballs and a vintage toast rack on Etsy but I'll be damned if THEY get to make the decision to let that be public. (Luckily, I hadn't ever bothered to fill out my profile, so they didn't have my real name. I'm "telophase" on there also, and haven't really tried to hide the connection between my online presence and my real name but IT'S THE PRINCIPLE OF THE THING, DAMMIT)

Finally!

Dec. 11th, 2008 05:44 pm
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Etsy shop up! The kanzashi that didn't sell at Yulecon are in it! :D

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