Makeover Monday: Lucky Save

This is the first in a series of teaser makeovers. I take teasers that kind authors have offered up as sacrifices and try to improve them. We'll see what lessons we can learn on the way.

Before. That means there's an after too!

Today's teaser is from my fellow hockey romance writer, Jennifer Lazaris. Jen told me that she never liked this teaser because it was "so plain." This teaser looks pretty good to me, the text is very legible and the design is balanced. In fact, I almost skipped this example because I wasn't sure if I could add much. However, most teasers are not terrible, they just need a little tweaking. So let's tweak. Or twerk.

First of all as my father always said, "Make sure you use the right tool for the job." Actually my father never said this, as he was the opposite of handy. Everything in our house was fixed by my mother using tape, or we hired someone for the big stuff. However the right tool in this case is PicMonkey because they have a groovy feature that allows you to erase backgrounds. Not having Jen's original photo or logo, I borrowed one from Deposit Photos (watermark still visible) and left out the logo altogether. I easily erased the background of the tattooed hottie with the eraser button.

Fade, fade, fade away

But today's lesson is about fading. I decided that for Jen's teaser, I should try to establish a theme. Since her Las Vegas Kingsnakes series features tattooed heroes on the on the covers, I chose a tattoo snake image for the background. If I did a whole series of teasers, I would have use the tattoo snake behind all of them. Alternatively, Jen could use her logo as the background. Establishing a distinctive look for your teasers signals to readers your brand even if they don't read the copy.

This is what the snake looked like originally. A little scary. Reminds me of that table  scene in Harry Potter which caused me to jump back and shriek like a baby.

I changed his colour from black to dark brown and then made him very pale. In PicMonkey, this is the Fade button. In Canva it's called transparency. Now, the snake becomes a background element. You hardly notice him, but he adds texture and interest. In addition, the snake unites all the other elements of the teaser: the copy, the photo, the titles.

The other things I faded in this teaser were the word "by" and the team name. While the original teaser had "available now" I inserted the team name. The text was only to balance the composition and not to distract from the words. I use Fade on text that I don't want to distract from the central image or words.

I also adjusted the colour scheme using the photograph as my inspiration. Because who wouldn't be inspired by this photo? He reminds me of Ottawa Senators defenceman, Eric Karlsson, except with muscles. I made the background a cream colour, the snake is brown, the text is dark brown, and then I used orange to highlight the important text.

One more thing Jen could do would be to use the same distinctive font from her covers for the book names on teasers. PicMonkey allows you to do that because you can access your own fonts on the paid plan. This would strongly link the books and the teasers, always a plus.

After!

Ideas to steal:
Fade elements in your teaser to add texture.
Tie teasers into your books wherever possible.

Well, what do you think? Is the teaser improved or did you prefer the simple readability of the original? I'm also looking for more teaser sacrifices, so if you have one to submit, let me know in the comments.