Ideas for marketing a Kindle novel?

[Lady Moreta]

The novel's called Sorrel in Scarlet - it's a fantasy novel set in a world where a form of magic works, dragons rule the land, and monsters exist, and where technology has advanced to the stage of steam cars and biplanes.

How does that not fit into a genre? sounds like fantasy to me! or at best, Steampunk fantasy, which I'm pretty sure is still a fantasy genre!

I think I'm some weeks from being ready to launch it on Amazon. I've got as far as creating a cover, but I'm not sure how good it is and whether it's good enough to grab the casual viewer. Thoughts and brickbats gratefully received!

This? This I love. This would definitely grab my attention. Shoot, you've already got me wanting to read the darn thing and that's just from the cover

The only things I'd personally suggest is making the autumn trees a little less - bright. Right now they're very pinky-red in the foreground then abruptly orange in the background with no real gradation and it makes it look very computer generated. Not that there's anything wrong with computer generating a cover like this (I have a friend who sold his novels on Amazon and he made his covers in Paint of all things). The problem is that the trees (specifically the tree the plane is crashed in) is so bright that it's the first thing that grabs your eye. I don't think it should be. I think what should catch the eye first is either the title, the woman's face or the downed tree... I would say the title should be the main attraction here. Tone down the trees so the 'Scarlet' is the first thing the eye is drawn to.

Can I also suggest making the woman look more feminine? At this point in time, I'm 99% sure it's a girl, but there's still that 1% of me that's just not sure and it's bugging me. If she's female, I want to know that without a doubt. And again, I'd suggest making her a little fuzzier - put more cloud cover in front of her so she's not quite so clearcut. Honestly? I'm actually leaning more towards suggesting taking her out altogether, she's distracting me... but I don't know who she is or her importance to the story, so use your own judgement. It's just that the dragon is quite dark (and has a scorpion tail which is awesome and she's quite light and the two don't quite gel properly. It's the same problem as the bright trees... she's too distracting. My eye keeps being drawn to her instead of the title. I want her to blend into the background more.

That said, I love the font you've got and your little dolman publishing logo.

On the whole, I think it's a great cover and it would definitely have me taking a second look.

You really need to know who your audience is, and where they're likely to be. Focus your efforts there. This can be a bit trickier if your work is cross-genre. (I've found this out the hard way; if there's a ready-made audience for ancient Egyptian-ish fantasy, I haven't been able to locate it).

*raises hand* I'd read Egyptian-ish fantasy... but I don't have a Kindle.

And this is one suggestion I can make. Consider making your novel available to people who have e-readers that aren't Kindle. I have a Sony e-reader and this thread has gotten me quite curious about your novel, but it's not a Kindle so there's no point in me even considering it further because I can't read it.

Also, consider something like this. The website is called Lulu and they do book publishing. And stealing this from a comment made by a friend elsewhere...

I found a website where you can self-publish books with no up-front cost - they sell the books on a print-on-demand basis, and take a (reasonable) cut of the cover price rather than requiring you to order a minimum print run. Not only do they sell them in their own marketplace, they add them to the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain Amazon stores. If you choose to publish the ebook version too, they sell those in their own marketplace and in the Nook store and Apple's iBook store.

You don't have to pay anything until and unless people actually buy your work and it'll give you a much wider range than just Amazon and also let people get an actual copy of your book, which will give you a wider base again, all those people who don't like ebooks