New Book Covers For the Dream Jumper Series!

Book covers are super-duper important to authors' sales! A great book cover leads to the person reading the blurb. A great blurb leads to... You get the picture.

My Dream Jumper Series was first published in 2013 with a cover I made myself. I didn't have the extra money to commission a cover artist for $150, so I made my own. Looking back, it was a DIY rinky dinker.

I fiddled with probably ten different versions of that photo of the two holding hands on a beach, then finally found a cover designer who charged what I thought was a reasonable rate. By this time I was making money off the book regardless of the home made cover. I filled out her form about what the story was, who my market was, what I hated in book covers, what I loved and she came up with a really pretty, conceptual style cover that conveyed the setting, the danger and a gorgeous font. I'm kind of a font nerd so this was important!


I kept with that pretty blue cover for a couple years. That same designer did the next two books in the series and I loved them all at the time. The second book Secret had a dock which I happen to love on book covers. They indicate a journey, a jump off to unknown waters and that's what Secret is about. A friend of mine later suggested we add in a threatening shadow and that worked beautifully! The third book Pursuit, was a bit of a mish mash and I take full blame for that cover. It was supposed to be the city of Granada in Nicaragua with the heroine going after a child abductor but it turned out a little strange. Still, I loved her font and design of all three books!

Then, two years ago I decided to jump on the Gone Girl style of Book Covers Train and do something really simple on a black background.
Now, it's six and a half years later and this book has done well. Well enough to attract the attention of a literary manager who encouraged me to turn the story into a screenplay.
I did, it won some awards, and is now over at Amazon Studios being considered as a movie. It's a very long shot they'll pick it up but you never know. My manager loves this story and wants to see it as a movie some day. Me too.


I made new covers in celebration of the book needing a shot in the arm. Nothing too strange, different or busy. Same black background and gritty font but a clearer photo this time with a tag line. I'm one of those Indie Authors who, if I can fiddle with my work and change things, I will. I republish one of my books every week, even if it's just because I found a sentence I didn't like. Sometimes I republish the interior of a book because I have a new website, which means all books must be republished to direct readers to my site.
I ended up liking the new covers. They're conceptual. The Promise book does have a lot of underwater scenes but the Secret book doesn't necessarily have a red hall and the Pursuit book doesn't have a scene with a flower that won't burn. I like metaphors and my readers are smart.

I hope you've enjoyed the Dream Jumper series and if so, have blessed me with reviews. One reader in about 300 reviews the book and I find that number staggering. If you spent 4-6 days reading a book, living with the characters that someone created and you finished the book and liked it, I would hope you'd take a moment to tell the world (really, the author) that it was an enjoyable read. I write short reviews for books I read because it's not my favorite way to spend my time. But I review.
And if a book cost me below $2.99, I know the author is making only a few cents off my purchase so I be sure to show my gratitude.

Book Covers are important as the first opportunity an author has to draw you in to the story. I hope these new covers lead you to the next step in buying the book. The Blurb...

THE DREAM JUMPER'S PROMISE on Amazon


Kim Hornsby is the Author of Award-Winning The Dream Jumper's Promise available on Amazon Books. She is a Bestselling Supernatural Suspense Author who lives in the Seattle area where she writes during the rainy months.

Book Covers Drive Me CRAZY!

Book Covers drive me absolutely Bat-Poop, Around-the-Bend Crazy. I want to tear out my hair.

Because it is entirely possible (and probable) to judge a book by its cover, having a compelling book cover that represents the story is absolutely imperative. You don't want a photo of a pretty pastel-colored house with a flower garden if it's Suspense, nor do you want to have a bloody knife, if your story is Women's Fiction. Those are obvious examples but there are so many grey areas that I drive myself to Chardonnay when trying to decide on a book cover.

I am a person who sees everything from 27 different angles so a final decision never actually happens. I have to give up changing, looking, tweaking. I have to actually get so frustrated, tired and broken in spirit, that I give up, like some wild mustang that has to be shown who's boss in the ole corral. Don't get me started on how long it took to decide on this cover:

Recently, I had the opportunity to change my cover for a non-Indie novel of mine published with a wonderful publishing house. Don't get me wrong. Taking away some of my torture by making me a cover and then not letting me have a say in it, was wonderful in a way.
This book (which I LOVE!) had a cover that did not represent my story very well. At least the hero was wrong. The hero on the cover has skinny, adolescent-girl arms, wears a mint green polo and has a very tall head with a clean-cut look. In the book he is described as someone more, shall we say, ruggedly manly. On Pinterest, he is Sawyer, that hunk from the hit TV show LOST.

Don't ask me how I got the publisher to agree to changing the cover but I did. I then went to all the Stock Photo sites and spent about 3 days trying different things, playing around with ideas. I hardly left my office for hours on end.

The story of Necessary Detour is Rear Window (Hitchcock) meets The Bodyguard. The woman is in turmoil as she finds distraction in spying on the strange family next door.

I finally decided that I wanted to have both characters on the cover and eventually came up with this...

I sent my idea off to the publisher and the cover artist came up with this...

I love it! Although I did like the stars and lake in the first one, the new cover represents the two heroes much better. She's a Rock Star, running away from a life and a stalker and he's trying to not get involved with the woman who's moved next door on their remote, uninhabited lake. It's a Romantic Suspense, so this font works really well. Thank you, cover artist.

One cover down.

Then I decided to change a cover I have control over. I wrote a Fan Fiction novel for Kindle Worlds in the Lei Crime category and it isn't doing as well as I'd hoped. The story is a kick-ass mystery whodunit and with the support of the author of the original series, Toby Neal, I just assumed it would take off like a 747 in a tail wind. It hasn't and I can only think it's the cover with the reference to the Rocky Horror Show (bloody font) or the young woman on the cover who might suggest she's younger than she actually is in the story. Because I'm not sure what the novel's problem is, I'm trying cover first.

I asked my buddy Bob, who is a world famous Hawaiian photographer and has the photo site Photo Images Maui, if I could have a lava photo. For free. 'Cause we're friends. He said yes and I tried a few things with his GORGEOUS photos of lava.

I finally ended up with a design that the group of authors at Lei Crime Kindle Worlds Facebook Secret Group approved. Toby Neal too, which is like saying the boss approved. She's very hands on with her Kindle World group and the way she helps us and cares about our projects I have to think she's an amazing mother. Toby suggested the font be bigger in the title and she was right! (We have to leave space at the bottom left so Kindle Worlds can put their logo on there.) Last night I uploaded the new cover but have yet to see the change on Kindle Worlds. We'll see if the new cover helps.

I actually really like this cover.
Today.
Tomorrow is a different story.
See what I mean about indecision?

As of this moment, my other covers are working for me just fine. I think. What do you think? I might get the artist to change the busy box set 3D cover. Check out my Amazon page and let me know what you think of my covers. Kim Hornsby on Amazon

Kim Hornsby is the Bestselling Author of THE DREAM JUMPER'S PROMISE, available on Amazon books. her stories usually involve a Suspense, a Romance, and a touch of Supernatural.

Confessions of a Cover Snob

Can you judge a book by its cover?
You can and you should. A terrible cover could be a reflection on the writing or the story line. A great cover means the writer took the time and money to insure the cover was professional looking and the book probably had that kind of attention to detail too. Here's two examples of cover makeovers.

I see a great cover and think immediately that the author is probably award-winning, uses an editor, invested some money into making the book the best version it can be. Or that the writer has an agent and contract with a major publisher and they paid for an awesome cover, thereby telling me that the writer is 'good enough' to have an agent. I know, I know, times have changed with Indie Authors but I'm still living in the stone age in my sub-conscious and I can't make those thoughts go away.

That's not to say that there aren't some wonderful books out there with strange/bad covers. I have read some and written 5 star reviews. Those books that I'm thinking of now have new covers. Better covers. One that comes to mind that has a weird title and had a terrible cover is The Girl From Long Guyland. This is the new cover (which isn't much different or better than the first one) but in my estimation it doesn't do justice to the book.
 It was a great book especially if you grew up in the 60's and 70's and experienced the hippy days.







Another book that I loved but wasn't sure about the cover was The Dream Student by J.J. DiBenedetto.

He has new covers now that suit the storyline better. I'm wondering if sales are better than when he used cartoonish drawings on his covers. In my opinion the new cover is not only more like the wonderful story but more commercially popular.

I've changed covers many times. Just this morning I received the new, improved, souped up cover changes for my novel The Dream Jumper's Secret. I had my wizard cover artist Jen Henning add more suspense to the photo, make my name bigger, establish a full-time font for my name to be used always, change the tag line, and add some praise/small print. I love it!

For my first cover in this series, The Dream Jumper's Promise, I asked her to add some words too. The New York/Big Five Published look has lots of fine print usually and that's what I'm going for. I did this because I'm a Cover Snob and totally judge a book by it's cover. I look for little print so I can zoom in to see who endorsed their book, what awards were won, what's being said.

Here's an example of a terrific first cover that I think was provocative and unique with a single female on the front. She eventually went with Hachette for this series and after they re-released her indie series she got the standard couple in a state of foreplay for the new cover.

Font is important, placement of the name, the title, how much stuff is junking up the page, or how uncomfortably simple the cover looks.You want the cover to promise the reader something whether it's a crime, a romance, an adventure or even if it's just why is there a rose and a screwdriver on the cover of this book.
The cover models don't have to look exactly like the characters they represent but it shouldn't be a totally misleading promise. The hero in my suspense Necessary Detour has longish hair and looks similar to Sawyer on Lost. You can see that they went with a photo that didn't match the description except for hair color. But then if you sign a book over to a publisher, you don't get final say on the cover. Not really. If you have control over your cover, don't put Harvey Stables on the cover if your hero is slightly lean with blonde hair and glasses. Just saying. Or don't have a provocative cover of a bloody rose and knife if your story is an HEA romance, not crime.

I highly recommend using a cover artist and save yourself about 4 months of obsession with iStock photos, Dreamstime Photos, Hot Damn Photos and every other stock photo site in the world. You will drive yourself crazy if you don't have a very specific idea of what you're looking for and then stick to it. And that's time you could be writing, which is probably what you do well in the first place. Not cover design. Most designers will work with you and your vision anyhow. You can give them a thumbs up or down on anything they suggest. I fear I drive Jen Henning crazy but her emails always make her sound like Mary Poppins. Poor thing.

Covers matter greatly. As the Killion Group said recently in a workshop about covers, it's like the first date your reader has with your book. Show your game face. Put the contact lenses in, brush your hair, present yourself in the best light possible to insure your date doesn't stop at the door when they suddenly remember their grandmother is having surgery and they have to leave.



Kim Hornsby is the author of several full length novels on Amazon and other venues. Her latest series The Dream Jumper will release a third book in February or sooner. Her Christmas romance, Christmas in Whistler will launch December 1st.
Visit Kim at www.kimhornsbyauthor.net