Celebrating the 12 Days of Christmas – One Day at a Time

The 11th Day of Christmas

The Eleven Pipers Piping in the Christmas Carol has been said to represent the eleven disciples (since Judas was out) who went on after the Resurrection of Christ. Thinking about the birds though, could it have originally have been a reference to sand pipers? Also, the eleven pipers piping is symbolic of having a great team!

These guys are pretty cute, but probably shouldn’t be given as a gift.

“But Jiminy Crickets, it’s after December 25th! Is it not too late for the 12 Days of Christmas?” you say.

Not to fear, Chanticleerians! The 12 Days of Christmas begins on December 26th! And it continues to the 6th of January – Three Kings Day. The four weeks leading up to Christmas is known as the Advent.

So if you haven’t finished wrapping presents, sending out those cards, and baking cookies—don’t worry—you still have time!

And only two days left to sign up for the Roost at the Special Holiday Rate. 

Happy Holidays to You from the Chanticleer Team! 

On the Eleventh Day of Christmas, my true love sent to me

Eleven Pipers Piping

Ten Lord’s a’Leaping

Nine Ladies Dancing

Eight Maids a-Milking

Seven Swans a-Swimming

Six Geese a-Laying

Five Golden Rings

Four Calling Birds

Three French hens (Chanticleer’s favorite #justsaying)

Two Turtle Doves

 And a Partridge in a Pear Tree 

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, Chanticleer brings to me…

Eleven Cover Design Tips

One of our key articles about this is here depicting the Essential Book Cover Elements by our own Kiffer Brown. We’ll talk about those, but first we want to start with the bigger picture on cover.

Viewing Online

Let’s start with the beautiful cover of A Spying Eye by Michelle Cox, our most recent Overall Grand Prize Winner. For seeing on online, this size used to be the number one display on places like Amazon, and Goodreads. Michelle Cox has a great team for designing her cover, the title is clearly legible, you can see her name, it fits well with the other books in her series, and the flash of light across the eye on the woman’s face really draws the reader in. You can even see, without squinting too much, that it’s a Henrietta and Inspector Howard Novel. All the key information that’s needed online at a glance is there!

Of course, it’ll be a lot bigger on the shelf. How much time do you think your book will have a chance to make an impression?

Go ahead and give a guess, we’ll give you the answer after the image below.

Village Books and Paper Dreams in Bellingham, WA

Your book has 3-5 seconds to attract a potential reader

Most people think about readers being bookstore shoppers (or shoppers at places like Walmart or even the airport). However, it also includes booksellers at trade-shows, librarians at the ALA meetings, and browsers on Amazon.

What Does Your Book Need to Accomplish in Those Seconds?

It needs to communicate these key elements:

1. The Genre (Historic? Thriller? SciFi? Romance? Cozy Mystery? Literary? etc.)
2. The Primary Targeted Group (Age/Gender/Etc) (Adult for the Trade? Guys? (think Tom Clancy) or Gals? (think Rebecca Wells), General Audience? Young Adult? Middle-Grade? Clean reads market? (think Jan Karon) etc.)
3. Mood (Humorous? Suspenseful? Adventurous? Dark? Light-hearted? Romantic? Horror? Spiritual? etc.)
4. Timeframe (Current? Futuristic? Regency? WWI? Western? Classic Roman? etc.)
5. Place or Cultural Reference (India? New York? Africa? Outer Space? California? Paris? Russia? Japan? etc.)

If your book doesn’t stand out, it is considered invisible, and invisible books rarely sell.

Daniel Radcliffe in the first Harry Potter Movie

While an invisibility cloak might be a great personal gift, it doesn’t work out out great for books.

Let’s pause for a moment and take a look at a wide variety of colors and answer the questions above.

Jane Austen covers through the years

First off let’s consider the Genre

While there are definitely some plain and simple covers that don’t say much, but the ones with art show the Victorian Era, the focus on Elizabeth Bennet, and one clearly shows that a brilliant movie was made about it. The frequent inclusion of Mr. Darcy hints at the romance and long-distance longing. Even the most recent cover in the bottom right with the peacock feathers speaks to the questions of wealth and class that we encounter in the book (as well as the literal peacocks that are there).

Onward to the Primary Age Group

While Pride and Prejudice is one of the great classics, you can tell that the primary audience is going to be women, probably ages young adults and up. Preschoolers don’t tend to rate the book very well, and it’s obvious why from the cover.

How’s the Mood?

Victorian. Romantic. All the things we know and associate with Jane Austen. The very first cover tells so much – the two of them are at a dance, but Elizabeth isn’t even looking at Mr. Darcy! In other covers you can see that Elizabeth is often looking forward – a forward thinking woman, while other people look on at her, showing that she’s the focus of the story.

Timeframe

Easy, the mood is Victorian and so is the time. This overlaps with the Regency era in many ways, which you can also feel in the cover design. Only the very stark covers don’t fully portray this, and instead rely on how well known Pride and Prejudice is. Once your book is being taught as part of regularly curriculum in high schools and universities around the world, the cover can do things like that.

Place or Cultural Reference

Again, this has been so well-integrated into the mood that we know it’s England.

What’s Next for Cover Design?

Magazines are often great examples of specific target audiences

Before we move on, remember that we have this original article by Kiffer Brown that has a lot of excellent compare and contrast of covers before and after being revitalized to different degrees.

The final piece of advice we have is for the text that goes on your book. As mentioned above, the title especially needs to be big enough to view online. The spine, likewise, should be easy to read as that’s often all readers at a bookstore will be able to see.

The Back Cover

For the back cover regarding text, we really recommend summary text and blurbs. That’s it. Author photos and author bios are fine to go on the inside of your book, but most people won’t be looking at the back of the book to learn more about who wrote it, but to find out why they should read it. This is valuable real estate, and it’s the perfect place to spark imagination and make the sale. The most powerful tool for selling your book will always be the book itself!

You can see above that everything for this To Kill a Mockingbird cover is doing work. While something as famous as that doesn’t necessarily need blurbs, but you can see the accolade on the front that it won a Pulitzer Prize.

Remember, it’s your book! 

At the end of the day, one of the biggest benefits to being an indie author is that you get to do what you want to do. These are best practices, but in the end it’s you who makes the decision.

Take Your Time and Celebrate!