Thursday 9 July 2009

A New Cover - Your Help Needed

Many, many thanks for the many congratulatory and supportive messages I have received, both as comments and as emails, on the first anniversary of my blog! I was initially quite unsure as to how my approach - and the subject matter of my blog - would be received. Indeed, with the publication of my first book and after my initial postings here, I was bracing myself for a deluge of judgemental condemnations - or at the very least, bemused misunderstanding. It is so gratifying to have met so many like-minded - or at least, tolerant - people willing to explore beyond the accepted bounds of 'conventional' spanking, S/M and D/S literature.
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But work goes on and now I have a favour to ask of you: As you probably know by now, I have been hanging back from more widely publishing INSTITUTIONALISED Vol 2 because I am not particularly happy with the cover as it stands. I have come to the conclusion that I would like to have something of a uniform look running through the entire series if at all possible - a sort of 'brand identity', if you will. As volume 1 has already been published through conventional channels its cover can not be altered; thus for better or for worse if I want to go down that particular route then the other covers - in this case, volume 2 - will have to be based around it. This is where you come in: below are three versions of the proposed new volume 2 cover design I have knocked-up today. The question is... which one (if any) do you like or prefer? Or should I stay with the present cover (as at the top of this post)? Or do you have any ideas of you own - some preference perhaps? What would make you want to look inside?

Let's call them version A,B or C respectively: Well, what do you think? Or are they all equally crap - which, incidentally, is how I'm feeling today. I'm pretty much confined to home: sore throat, aching limbs, high temperature - all in all a bit 'flu-like. Blimey! Grunt, grunt, grunt! My next posting will incorporate some of the stuff I have recently scanned in from my long-lost collection, now retrieved from the loft.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The C version is the sexiest, but I would go for the A version to keep the look from Volume 1.

SPANKEDHORTIC said...

C clicks my buttons as well. Similar to volume one but has a little more graphical impact without being too "in your face".

Prefectdt

Anonymous said...

I would go for number two, thats the best one

Toyntanen said...

Hi

Many Thanks for the feedback. folks. C is my preference, but I think there is too much repetition of the cane motif and I think I shall experiment with removing the two horizontal canes that bracket the volume title at the foot of the cover. Saying that; I have not yet entirely given up on version B (or 2) - and at least one other contributor prefers that one (see above) The next stage will be to come up with a decent title for volume 3 and also for the 'inbetween' volume I have planed - so as I can have a page declaring 'coming soon'. Then I aim to add various combinations of relevant key words to the chapter heading pages to help make the thing more visible to google and the Amazon search engining (volume 1 is virtually invisible and other than on LULU gets very few hits). Actually, if I had my time over again I would call the series by some more obvious title; something mentioning caning or spanking or what ever (which is why vol 3 has such a long and winding sub-title on LULU despite what it is actually called on the front cover).

Anonymous said...

Hi Garth!
I prefer the C version except that there's an incongruous detail: the painted nails!!!
I've read all your posts starting at the beginning a year ago and I'm quite sorry there are only two months left.