Do we need to have a class on book covers in WCP? There are a couple ways to do it and I'm sure I'm not doing it the best way yet, but I'm glad to share what i know in a Q&A format. I just need to know a good day/time for the most folks to participate and we'll record it for the rest. I'm getting pretty good results from the ones I show you all with very little effort. I'm working on a way to give more/easier control over type by using layers, and image under the type. These are really low effort below. They all could use some touchups.

Enoch Fortune has been banned even though he did follow most of the rules. I warned him about trying to DM folks and he did not listen. I had high hopes as he did follow the other rules and played like a good citizen. Oh well Happy Monday!!

Call out below I might have a surprise for you

Your Cover Is Signaling the Wrong Genre (Three Checks) One fix. One Friday. This week: the cover that's working against you. 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗖𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘀 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗖𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗤𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 A professionally designed cover that signals the wrong genre will underperform a simpler cover that signals the right one. This is not about production value. It's about communication. The cover's job is not to be beautiful. Its job is to tell the right reader, in a thumbnail viewed for less than two seconds, "this book is for you." A cozy mystery with a dark, foreboding cover attracts readers who want a darker reading experience than cozy delivers. They'll click. They'll buy. They'll leave a three-star review saying the book felt slow and low-stakes. Because it is, relative to what the cover promised. The wrong readers finding your book is not better than no readers finding it. Wrong readers produce misleading reviews and algorithm signals that make it harder for the right readers to find it. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗲𝗰𝗸𝘀 Check 1: The Thumbnail Test Shrink your cover to the size it appears on an Amazon search results page, roughly 100 by 150 pixels. At that size, can you tell the genre? The mood? Whether it's a series or standalone? If the genre isn't immediately clear from the thumbnail, your cover is failing the first job. Typography choices, color palette, and the nature of the central image all need to communicate genre at thumbnail scale. Details that read beautifully on the full-size cover often disappear entirely at thumbnail. Check 2: The Shelf Test Find the top twenty bestsellers in your genre's Amazon category. Line up their covers. Does yours look like it belongs on that shelf? Not identical, but genre-coherent: similar color temperature, similar typography register, similar use of human figures vs. scenery vs. objects. Genre cover conventions exist because readers use them to navigate. A cozy mystery that looks like a thriller is not refreshingly different. It's a wrong-shelf book.

Made some major huge Genre decisions today for WordCrafter.Pro and BookWeaver.pro and am removing the 33 which got expanded to 54 original monolithic genres and completely replacing them with the Compositional Genres If you were using the originals they should still work and be attached to your existing work, but going forward only the compositional genres remain. They are so much deeper and add more complexity to the stories and allows any and *all* subgenre possibilities. I've spoken of this before and will do a video add on this tonight for a full step by step walk through. The Genre Picker dropdowns now should all only show the Base genres and when selected will give you the list of subgenres under it. If you need one that is missing let me know and send me some source material. I am slowly moving may way down through the list I have collected in earlier chats. Compositional Genres are created through genre research and analyzing existing works, other folks ideas and online research. Image 1 Shows the base database that they are pulled from. This is constantly under update. Each new piece of material analyzed gets rated against the existing material and either augments, adds new pieces, or gets dropped as unnecessary. The image shows what happens after I run a new analyze. Each change gets added to the right category as a draft that i can manually review before promoting for use. Every iteration and change is saved as a snapshot the same way drafts in the binder are backed up. The second image is how I create new recipes for new subgenres based on other books, manuscripts or movies. The third image is the 16 Base Genres that everything is derived from. These are the MASTER genres, they are robust enough to use on their own the same way the original monoliths were, but you can now drill down into the subgenre you really need based on the 5 types of audience you are writing for, 5 different romantic pairings, 25 different settings, 28 register tones, 12 Modifier tones, and 110 mechanics. Each base has its own tropes, each component adds more detail and depth and some have tropes of their own as well.