RE: Indie Publishing: Making a Book Cover
I actually like the original cover because of the overtly antique feel with the parchment-colored background and the worn look of the word “bird”; but the new one is definitely better for marketability, has way more pop, and is a technically stronger design.
Your thinking on all this sounds spot-on. I could never bring myself to do it, because the second I start to feel marketability creeping into my thinking, I become irate.
The artist is confronted with an impossible problem (as is the philosopher, the freedom advocate, or anyone with a shred of wisdom or true conscience), namely that to have your voice heard, you must be popular, but to be popular you must appease the inane, irrational, impatient, immoral and uninformed. In other words, the culture is one of deliberate dumbing down and reptilian-brained money worship.
That doesn’t mean works of integrity can’t make it - they do - but they always have to bend, to yield, to account for the mongrel in the room. By rights, the beast doesn’t deserve an inch; in fact, he’s not fit to be in the same room. It’s an affront that his voice can even be heard, that his presence is permitted to taint the air with his wretched stink, and yet there he his - making the edits, calling the shots, ruling the entire world, while the Godly starve in the streets and beg the devil for a crumb. Pathetic.
If you can pump out quality content rapid-pace - and some can - then have at it. You seem quite capable and thoughtful.
In school they teach you "don't judge a book by it's cover." Completely the opposite when you get to self-pub and making books from what I've learned. Have a good cover, good blurb. Whatever high-minded artistic notions you have, throw 'em out the door, because you're ultimately in it to sell products. People read your book by looking at it's cover first as a thumbnail on Amazon and yeah, if you can't catch 'em in that second, you lose a potential sale.
A lot of these indie authors also talking about writing to market. Read what's there and make something that hits those checkboxes/tropes while walking the thin line of holding onto your artistic integrity (or not, I dunno). I can't really argue against it, because it worked for them. It doesn't mean it'll work for me -- I realize that. Although the guy who started the 20BooksTo50K (indie author) group interestingly doesn't quite fit that mold of writing to market.
This leads me to the other interesting thing I've seen in the self-publishing world (and webcomics, indie games too): quantity over quality. The quality comes later, but to get there you gotta pump content out at a rapid pace. I'm kinda wondering if that's also a way to attract attention. Everyone, even the introduction to Steemit talks about making content regularly on a schedule, tag it proper, and don't get discouraged because the people will come over time, but you need content first. And then to learn the marketing stuff to make it palatable.
The indie authors talk about doing 50k novels in 21 day cycles repeatedly. If you look at user reviews they'll have 4-5 stars overall, but lots of 1-star reviews that go along the line "The writing sucks, but I love the story." You see that on every book in the series. Not to sound like I'm compromising, but damn if that isn't a bad thing. You hated every book I wrote, but you bought them all anyway cause you want to know what happened. It almost makes me think I'm putting too much effort in to revising, but then hey, I have a certain integrity as an artist I want to put into each book/thing I make.
Definitely making things your own way makes them harder to sell. When I worked at a big game publisher, I never understood why we had to bend to marketing. Shouldn't we make a cool thing and they figure out how to sell it?
That's my entire mindset with my original work. Like, in reference to my comic, a gothic lolita deity as a hero? That's a look that's hard to sell. It doesn't fit a formula. Marketing wants a formula because it makes their lives easier and I don't blame them for it. So I can see why you'd want to tick off tropes because that makes it easier to blend in.
Absolutely. Your analogy to Steemit is highly relevant. I think a decision has to be made - not just about this particular topic, but about nearly everything... Bend to the culture and win, or carve your own path and lose. Now, of course, this isn't always so black and white - many people carve their own path and win, but there are no guarantees by that method. You must be prepared to lose (or better said, be indifferent to outcome), and sometimes you get lucky and people "get it".
If your goal is to make money, the trend is your friend. If you goal is to be revolutionary, or express yourself authentically, then the trend is a cage. Some people take the former tack, then switch to the latter once they have a following, dragging everyone along into new territory. This, of course, can backfire, as people want to see you do your old trick, and love tearing down heroes. You have options along the spectrum of safety and innovation.
There's always ways to worm your innovation or larger message into canned products, as well. Allegory, metaphor, these can relieve that pent up inner voice without breaking the mold. The Matrix had leather jackets and mind-blowing action (for it's time) to ground its deeper message. People saw it because it was cool and were able to handle a little philosophy along the way.
They could dip their toe in and have their little "Whoa man" moment, then go back to their inane lives, or they could dig in to the bottom of the pot and get the whole thing. The choice wasn't forced on them; the story met them where they were and didn't inspire the adversarial rebuke which comes with presenting new ideas in an aggressive way.
I read the first two Chapters of TMC and very much enjoyed it (though it would be cool if it was more user-friendly like a web comic, but I get that the site is really intended to showcase the artwork). Chang'e being a unique case is quite compelling. It's rather sad, but destiny can have a way of altering our course quite suddenly.
I'm reminded of the exchange between Gandalf and Frodo (at least relative to the lamentation being expressed):
Thanks for checking out the comic. Yeah, I don't feel the comic reader is very user friendly. Partially because the art is so big and I made it complex. I have a lot of things I'd like to try, if I were to do another comic, but I am not mentally prepared for that at this moment and that means the site will probably languish...
The Matrix is a good example of taking something that is easily accessible and then takes you down the rabbit hole. One of my favorite anime TV shows of yesteryear, Neon Genesis Evangelion, does this too. It's a big robot anime and for 1994 it looked snazzy. The big robots and amazing animation brings you in, but the show delves into the psyche of the children who pilot the mecha and weaves in a complex story with philosophical and pseudo-religious (and Christian) elements. For years after it's debut, it was incredibly popular probably because it touched on other elements that Japan's youth was going through at the time as reflected in the main character.
I’ve only made it a few episodes into Neon Genesis - perhaps it warrants a revisit.