This is part of a series of posts entitled Behind The Book, where fellow author Carrie Morgan and I share the ups and downs of the writing and publishing process — traditional and self-published.

We all judge books by their cover.

No matter how much we want people to judge our stories by their actual content, it’s a foolish notion.  Cover art matters.  Marketing and packaging matter.  In 2012, I knew this to be true, but as a self-publishing author in between careers, I simply did not have the funds to hire a graphic designer, nor did I have any awareness (if it existed at the time!) of services like SelfPubBookCovers.  I winged it, solicited reviews from bloggers and existing readers from the fandom world, and hoped for the best.

Word of mouth for Change of Season fared well, but I lost the casual browsers.  I knew it…