This is the last giveaway of 2015: it’s an assortment of books I’ve picked up at book fairs and conferences this year. There’s a mix of self-published and traditionally published books (but they’re all good!) Most of these are paranormal romance or young adult.
There are 26 books, so:
1st Place = choose 10
*Also gets an awesome dictionary of vampires, werewolves and zombies, plus a set of vampire fangs.
PLUS The Raven mini-edition
2nd Place = Choose 9
*Also gets an awesome dictionary of vampires, werewolves and zombies
3rd Place = Choose 7
You get whatever is left, but don’t worry, you’ll enjoy them.
I’m using a different kind of giveaway software this time, there are a bunch of ways to earn more entries. 26 YA & PN Romance Books Giveaway
Like this image I made of covers with girls in dress? Please pin it!
I was just browsing through the bestsellers in teen/fantasy on Kindle and noticed a trend in book cover design: girls in fancy dress. This is nothing new, but other people have talked about cliches in YA fiction book cover design, the implication being that cliches are bad somehow.
But look, these aren’t just decent YA fantasy covers, these are some of the bestselling books in the whole genre. It should tell you something that about 50% of books in the genre have very similar covers:
A woman in a dress, usually from the back (or side, sometimes forward)
Often an ocean, lake or forest in the background
YA is a popular genre, and there are probably about a million other books that aren’t bestsellers. Good book design does whatever is most attractive to readers; YA fantasy books use covers like this because it’s an easy win.
Why the girl-in-a-dress cover works
They’re beautiful. The nature can symbolize fear, being overwhelmed or lost, and freedom. The ocean is a psychological representation of sex and sexuality (though most people don’t know it: if you think of a body of water, then write down 3 adjectives about it, those are usually your feelings towards sex).
The pretty dresses are because most girls want to feel beautiful and enjoy dressing up (but also being wild and free and taking that nice dress and running through the mud with it).
Those are some of the same feelings that YA fantasy addresses.
What the dress and the water are telling the reader
In my view, a girl in a dress on a fantasy cover says three things before the reader opens the book. She is the main character. She is in a world with rules and beauty and probably danger. And she is about to run, fight or fall in love, often all three. The dress does the work of making her relatable and the landscape does the work of making the story epic.
That is why the trend survives. It is not laziness, it is a shortcut that readers have learned to read.
When the trend stops working
The look only fails when it is the whole idea. A girl in a dress against a forest tells the reader nothing new if every other cover on the shelf says the same. The covers that stand out keep one signal and change the rest: a different pose, a bolder color, a detail that hints at the plot. If you are making your own, pick the one signal you want and make it yours.
FAQ About Girl-in-a-Dress Covers
Q: Why do so many YA fantasy covers have a girl in a dress?
A: In my view, because it works. The dress signals a female lead and a world of beauty and danger, and the landscape signals scale and emotion. Readers have learned to read it in a second.
Q: Is the girl-in-a-dress cover a cliche?
A: It is a convention, and conventions sell. The covers that get remembered use the convention and then break one part of it.
For the past couple of years I’ve been talking about buying a castle to run as a writer’s retreat.
That dream may be a few years off, but from 2016 I plan to spend at least several months living and writing out of castles full-time. So I decided to host a giveaway and invite authors to come and join. During Nanowrimo 2016, I’ll either rent a whole castle for a month, or stay in a nice castle hotel.
And I’m giving away one of the rooms. This contest is for:
authors or want to be authors
people who participate in nanowrimo (but it’s OK if you haven’t)
primarily fiction authors (but it’s OK if you want to write non-fiction
people who can take a month off and get to Europe next year (travel isn’t included in the prize).
This contest is just to test the waters, and I’ll see how things go based on demand. If we rent a whole castle, I’ll probably run another giveaway later for another free room.
To enter, click here.
PS) It may not be the castle pictured, but that’s kind of what I’m going for. It will be remote, comfortable, spacious and possibly cold (November in Europe, after all). No distractions, no responsibilities, just writing every day and working on a publishable book.
