Who's Directing My Novel Sales?

Analogies are a terrific way to explain, teach or get a point across. They allow listeners to apply those analogies to situations they've experienced or can relate to, instead of being told something and then just expected to believe or trust in it. With that said...

I love watching well-written movies and TV series like "The Bible" TV series (on the History Channel), "Jesus of Nazareth", "The Ten Commandments", etc. I love how well they are made. There have been many other movies/series created of the same stories, but only a few have been great and done so well. What makes some few better than others? The story? The writing? The actors? The settings? The wardrobe? The score (music)? The editing?

Yes, all of those help.  However, those movies are not great because of the talented actors reading fabulous lines and wearing era-specific wardrobe.  It's not because they are shot in relevant settings to the stories with period music being played, or because they were shot with a certain camera angle and professionally edited. It's the combination of all those fields at their best that helps make movies great.   However, it's not as simple as putting all these talents together and letting them do their thing. There is someone who chooses the professionals for each field, someone who approves or rejects the decisions each of those professionals make, which in turn, creates the finished movie. That "someone" is the director.

It is a great director that doesn't accept just any choice the casting director makes for the roles of each cast member, or just any way an actor chooses to read their lines, or any direction the director of photography chooses their camera angles and zooms, or just any choice the wardrobe stylist makes for each outfit, or any music the composer chooses for each scene, or any way the editor decides to edit the film. The director is the one who instructs (directs) how every aspect of the movie is to be performed and played out.

This does not mean that the hired professionals from each field don't know what they are doing. It just means that they are not the director, so they can't completely see what the director sees/wants for the overall story. If it was merely the individual professionals from each field who make great movies, then there wouldn't be a need for directors. So since great movies cannot be made by everyone just showing up and doing what they feel is best for their job, in essence, it's a skillful, talented"director" who makes a movie great.

A movie producer, and screenwriter, has a great story they want to share with the world by turning it into a movie for all to see and experience. To be a successful movie though, the producer must choose and hire the right director, one they feel will make the very best movie out of their story. Once the producer informs the director of their "vision" for the movie: what they want it to be like, how they want it to "feel",  the producer trusts the director to make the right and best decisions. It is then the director's choices throughout the entire production, from start to finish, to make that movie spectacular and stand out from all the others. It's the director's job to make sure "feelings" and "emotions" are there, to tell the story the movie is about and to show the vision they were hired to create. It is the director's job to have viewers not only interested in watching it, but to have them feel like they are actually in the movie, experiencing the passion in the scenes, whether sadness, empathy, hatred, disgust, intensity, fear, intrigue, love, lust, etc.

Stay with me, the analogy is coming...
Once the movie is made, it needs to have a pitch to convince viewers that they want to see it. This is done by means of a movie trailer. Since there are so many other movies by many other producers also wanting to share their stories, the movie trailer (the pitch,) has to be one that will not just grab the viewer’s attention, but will hold it strong enough to sell them on the thought that this is a movie they want to see; a story they want to experience. To do this, the pitch must be great and consist of two emotional stimuli: visual and verbal. With these two stimuli the viewer will decide whether they want to watch the movie and experience the story, or not. The visual stimulation comes from various parts of scenes within the movie. The verbal stimulation is from dialogue spoken throughout the movie trailer. The movie trailer; the pitch, reveals what the movie is about, a 3-minute mini-movie of the full-version the director has created.

Ok, so what does this have to do with romance novels, you're thinking? Well, let’s let my analogy explain...
Authors (self-published) are like movie producers/screenwriters; they have a story they want to share with the world. Their objective though, is not just share to their story via words read, but to have readers (viewers) feel they are within the story, watching silently as everything unfolds. And to feel like they are actually experiencing the era the story is in, the location, feelings and passions - this is done through the author's writing ability. However, since there are many other stories by many other authors wanting to share their stories as well, readers need to be sold on the idea that this story is one they want to read and experience. So there needs to be a pitch, a pitch that will not just grab the reader's attention, but hold it strong enough to sell them. To do this, the pitch must consist of two emotional stimuli: visual and verbiage. With these two stimuli the reader will make their decision.

So the author has a great story to share, but only half the pitch - the written half. Getting that written pitch seen and into the hands of readers, along with engaging their visual attention, still needs to be done. To achieve this, a professional in the field is needed (as even a great story with a great pitch, is just another story out of the thousands if no one knows it’s out there and is reading it). The professional needed is the one who will get your written pitch noticed and read, who will get your novel more attention, and will cause your novel to be seen as a great story, without even reading it first.

This is all done with one thing - your novel cover.  This is the other half of the pitch and  the visual stimulation... your novel cover. Your novel cover is not just an image with a title and name on it, it needs to represent a single-frame, still movie that tells your story from all the design and artistic aspects that created your cover. That professional is your cover artist.

Cover artists are like movie directors. They are hired to make the producer's vision come to life in that one final image; their novel cover. This one image is what needs to portray feelings and emotions to the reader (viewer) - not just the knowledge of what the novel's sub-genre is. The cover has to evoke feelings and emotions so strong that they temporarily transport the reader into the cover and into the story itself, within seconds of viewing that cover. To make this happen, cover artists need to select the best and most appropriate images, fonts, colors, art, etc. So like a movie director, they must choose their professional cast and crew, direct them in developing that vision, and decide how they are going to work together as one to create a one-image movie; the novel cover.

Stock Image Websites are the “casting directors” and “wardrobe stylists” providing choices of the cast (actors) and the wardrobe they are to wear. They are also the set designers supplying the choices of settings/backgrounds, and the directors of photography providing images with specific lighting, and shot from different angles. Great stock image websites provide all the choices needed to be used to create great romance novel covers. However, just like in the movie business, there are also stock image websites with bad casting directors, bad actors, bad set designers and bad directors of photography. So professional choices need to be made by cover artists, from their knowledge and experience, as to what makes a great novel cover.

Now and then you hear or read people say that novel covers don't matter to them, that they decide to buy novels on whether they like the blurb on the back or not. What they don't understand is that something made them pick up, or click on, that particular book to read the blurb on the back. There is a reason their eyes stopped on that particular novel. Even if they are looking for a specific author, the cover still matters. If an author had 10 novels, all with solid white covers and all with the same plain font text of the author's name and novel titles, the reader would have to read each novel's title to see which they haven't read yet, and then decide from the different titles, which one sounds  like a title to a story that may interest them, before turning that novel over to read the blurb on the back. However, if one of those novels had cover art on it, the reader’s eyes would go straight to that novel first, drawing their attention because it stood out from the others. This works the same for great cover art standing out from the other novels on the shelf, or web page, without great cover art.

Knowing the roles and the process of what gets novels the attention they need helps authors make the right decisions when it comes to hiring those involved, and helps cover artists understand how big of a role and responsibility they actually have in an author's career. That cover needs to be taken very seriously and not just thrown together in minutes. It is the product-packaging of the author's hard work and should be viewed as such, by both the author and the cover artist, with the highest respect to the creation of that cover, knowing the power the cover has in helping or hurting the author's career.