NOW we're talking hottitude!
I recently updated some of the text in "The Hottitude of Servitude," as I had gotten some emails and comments from folks who found errors in the book. Although it was difficult to understand how a mighty writer such as I could make an error, but there it was. So I did a thorough proofreading of the book, fixed all the errors I could find, and re-published it. And while re-publishing it, I redid the front cover.
Whether or not it could really be called an error, I did not like it, it struck me as the typical editor's too-literal approach to graphic design. That is, I had taken a variety of images from various vidcaps and put them together for the cover, so you could say, "There's Slave Leia, there are the Slavegirls From Beyond Infinity, there is a hottie from Electric Blue #44, there's a slavegirl in a baggy tunic, etc."
The result was a jumbled mishmash of a cover, I've since decided, that does not really convey the beauty of slavegirls properly. Thinking about it, it reminds me all too much of the phenomenon of "art by committee" you get when a group of non-artists take control of the design of an artwork and build it by non-artistic standards.
Jumbled, I tells ya!
I could have avoided the jumbling problem by having just one or two images of a sexy slavegirl on the cover, but to my mind, that would have created a new problem, maybe giving readers the book is primarily about whomever is on the cover. So I decided to go with a simpler cover that expressed the theme of "hottie slave girls" using what I hope will be perceived as generic Second Life slavegirls.
In addition to giving the cover a more uncluttered look, the new cover also allows me to control the content in ways that I could not with vidcaps. Since having entirely naked slavegirls would limit the books salability on mainstream sites, I made sure that the slavegirls on the new cover had all their naughty bits covered up, but I was able to use Photoshop to make sure that their naughty bits were the ONLY thing covered up. It's better marketing, plus I hate censorship (what would really be wrong with drawings of nipples and vaginas?) so getting as close to violating the hell out of the spirit of censorship rules while sticking to the letter of such rules feels great to me. Call it a hobby!
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