Covers?  Coloring?

Putting them together for book promotion?

A super idea hatched by my author friend and former PR guru KaLyn Cooper.  We Liquid Silver Books’ authors wanted a joint promotion for this year’s Lori Foster’s Reader Author Get Together which would surpass the Charming Author Hunt we did in 2015.

KaLyn suggested a coloring book featuring one cover from each of the attending LSB authors.  Colorful Liquid Silver Authors! What a great idea! All of us jumped on board immediately.  For those who are lucky enough to be attending Lori’s RAGT this year, I’ve seen a draft of the finished product and you are in for a treat (and some other fun with the coloring books besides coloring).

Then … I was thinking … as I often do. 🙂 Why not do a small coloring book of my own with just a few of my covers? Use it as a free promo at book signings and as a give-away during FaceBook promotions. See the fabulous front and back cover April created for my special coloring book above and to the left and at the end of this blog post.

Since the majority of my covers have been designed by the talented April Martinez (http://Graphicfantastic.com), I approached her about the concept and she was excited and immediately went about deciding how to get the best picture to color from the covers I suggested.  I am totally fascinated with how she did it and with the end result. She is the best.

Since there are legal/copyright implications in using cover art and differing approaches on how to create a coloring image from an existing artwork image, I asked April to join me on a series of blog posts about those very issues. She enthusiastically agreed (didn’t I say she was the best?). We hope you will enjoy seeing how we approached this project and benefit from our experiences.

Schedule of Up-Coming Covers to Color blog posts:

April 6th:  Copyright and Legal Issues in Converting Covers to Coloring Pages — Monette Michaels

April 13th:  Creating Illustrations — April Martinez

April 20th:  Laying Out Illustrations — April Martinez

April 27th:  Printing and Assembly:  Costs — Monette Michaels

 

Please join me next Wednesday for the legal issues in creating coloring pages from cover images.  Just a hint — there are copyright issues and most authors only have the right to use their book cover “as is” and for restricted uses.