I was recently inspired by another Indie author I follow to create a series of quote edits to publicise my book. I want them to be eye-catching and draw readers in. I already had the professional artwork designed for my book and that made the quote selection obvious. Seems a simple enough idea, the problem was I am not very technically savvy at all! So making these edits was anything but simple. I am thrilled with the final product so I will take a moment to share them with you now before I continue.
As I said I am thrilled with the final results but I had quite the journey getting there. When I started out my first edit looked like the image below. This is something I mocked up to see what I could manage but I wasn't happy with it. I thought it looked to amature and would make people more disinterested. Uncertain about where to go I did the only thing I could think of, which was to ask for help.
I turned to some of my fellow indie authors for feedback. The response I got was amazing and very encouraging. My friends agreed that the above image would not be helpful to my marketing but in addition to providing advice on my current edit, they also gave me the next steps. One friend was kind enough to recommend a website Canva where I could use predesigned templates to easily build my edits.
I found Canva very user-friendly, quick to learn and exactly what I needed. I browsed through the templates and was able to quickly turn my simple edit into the image below. I still was not happy with it as I had lost the fantasy theme but I could still see it was a huge improvement. It was neater and more professional which was part of what I didn't like it felt too business-like but it would definitely get a better response once posted on social media. As I was not happy though I kept working on it on Canva. The next step came from a different friend I had reached out to.
This particular was kind enough to make this image for me below to illustrate some of the feedback she was providing on my edit. My friend thought the text need to be clearer and that I could use elements of my cover art to create a better design. I completely agreed and thought the below edit was much closer to what I wanted. I still wanted to use the artwork created for my book as it also linked with my quotes. However, It gave me another nudge in what felt like the right direction. I searched on Canva for fantasy backgrounds with turquoise, blue or gold hints. I took a lot of hunting as there were not many but I did find a background for each edit. My friend also gave me permission to use the below background for one of my edits. I chose to use different backgrounds for each edit to help catch eyes. I felt that if I used the same background the different posts would be too similar and would blur together. I chose to use this specific background below for my ball edit.
On the whole, I chose the backgrounds based on what I could find fitting my search parameters above. There are a few of my edits however where I chose a specific background to fit with my artwork and quotes. There is a funeral artwork and quote where I chose a black background to fit the atmosphere. I chose a brownish marble theme to fit with my map artwork and finally a blossom and blue sky background to match the final edit I have posted below since the quote specifically surrounds a white blossom tree which is predominately mentioned in my book.
As I think I have said I love how these edits and how they turned out. They were completely worth the time I put into and I believe they will help me to market my book. In fact, I love them so much that I chose to make two final edits. One surrounding my book blurb and another about myself and my passion for writing to help advertise my website. I will close by saying I have already got some positive responses from posting the completed edits and I would definitely recommend Canva, I suspect I will use it again when I further marketing ideas.
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