“But perhaps the biggest interruption coming from your inside is caused by your worrying about making a mistake.”
― John Cleese, Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide
I don’t know about you, but I believe in signs.
And when the universe—God, the powers that be, nature, what have you—sends me a bunch of different messages all pointing to the same idea, I tend to pay attention.
We’ve been on the road over the last week, which has given me extra time to wrestle with some questions that have been pinging through my brain like steel balls. Maybe that’s one reason that I’ve connected a few important dots.
Melanie Harlow, an author whom I both admire professionally and enjoy as a reader, posted recently in her fan group to express her shock and disbelief over emails sent to author friends by their readers regarding book covers and the changing of book covers. Apparently, some readers are messaging authors, comparing the changing of book covers to someone coming into their home and robbing them.
I’m aware that readers on TikTok have expressed strong opinions about book covers; it seems that most would rather have so-called discreet covers instead of those with people pictured.
This was in the back of my mind when one of my favorite cover artists sent me two options for an upcoming box set. One featured a couple, and the other did not. My initial strong feeling was that I loved the one with people on it . . . and then I remembered TikTok and Melanie’s post and all of the conversations I’ve heard or read about how important it is to select a cover that appeals to readers, and I began to second-guess myself.
The next day, my husband and I were driving south on our way home from New Jersey, and we listened to Conan O’Brien’s show. On this episode, he was chatting with John Cleese about creativity, and they agreed that the critical brain—the part of us that worries about being right, about making mistakes, about upsetting people—gets in the way of true, playful creativity. When I heard this, it struck a chord: how often in the past ten plus years have I made a decision regarding my publishing career worrying more about how it might be perceived by readers or the publishing community at large than whether or not I felt it was the right move for me—for my books?
For nearly thirteen years, I’ve heard all of the advice. I’ve taken the courses, attended the webinars, been part of the conferences where I’ve listened to the brightest minds in publishing teach authors how to do all the things better. I’ve heard that I need to stay in my lane—write the same genre of book consistently. Put people on your covers—no! Don’t put anyone on your cover! Use photos—no, use cartoon-like drawings. Make your blurb short and pithy. Nope! Now make it longer and from multiple points of view. Release on Tuesdays—Mondays—Fridays—but never in December. You must do—or do not—these things, or readers won’t like your books.
Yeah, I don’t think so. Not me. Not anymore.*
Seriously. I mean it. I love my readers. I really do. I wish I could spend more of my time just chatting with them, talking about books, characters, and what makes us go SQUEEE!! Some of my long-time readers have been with me through some fairly major ups and downs. They’ve stuck with me. They’ve seen my family grow and move. I love to share sneek peeks with them, I love to joke with them about the Oxford comma and other fun stuff that makes us giggle.
But I don’t owe my readers a certain kind of cover or blurb or even the same type of book. All I owe my readers is the very best story that I can craft every single time I release a book. I owe them fallible characters who live and breathe. I owe them good guys and bad guys, strong women and the kind of men who melt our hearts. I owe them love stories and funny lines and sometimes, people they hate and situations that make them cry.
I will always do my best to deliver those characters and stories to my readers and to those who may become my readers. But no more will I allow anyone to dictate what kind of covers I choose, how I craft my book descriptions, what or when I release, or the genre of books I write.
If you’re one of my readers and this offends you, I won’t apologize. I hope that despite covers you might not love or blurbs that break the rules, you’ll still enjoy my books. If you don’t, if you hit UNSUBSCRIBE and walk away in a huff, that’s okay, too. I don’t work for you, and you are free to choose which books you buy. I applaud that choice.
But today, now, in this moment, I’m no longer taking my cues from a mindset that tries to tell me how to temper my creativity or attempts to predict what readers might prefer. I’m making my own decisions.
It might not be July 4th yet, but I am declaring my indepedence.
(And when you see the cover for the brand-new Crystal Cove box set that will ONLY be available via my July Kickstarter campaign? Know that it’s the one I wanted, the one I love, not that one I felt that I had to choose.)
*In the interest of full disclosure, in my original draft of this post, I used the phrase Fuck. That. Noise. in place of the tamer words there now. I thought better of it not because I’m opposed to swearing, but because I’m not entirely sure that it isn’t a dated phrase in June of 2024, and I hate to make my kids wince. Well, sometimes I do it on purpose, but not this time.
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