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The answer to the above question may depend on what type of illustrations you have, and the subject matter of your novel.
For me, this was simple because of the fantasy genre of my novel; Legend of the Mystic Knights. In this novel, there are numerous mythical creatures and monsters. On my website,www.warusho.com, one of my pages is labeled Mythical Creatures. I posted the illustrations of my monsters with a brief description of them.
Take a simple scene from your novel, this does not even need to be a major point in the novel; it could be just scenery. Example: Create an illustration of a beach, have captioned next to it, a line from the book such as, “The wind blew from the ocean and caressed her hair as gently as his fingers had.” I am not a romance writer, but you get the idea. By posting the words to an illustration, you have given the reader a visual concept of what your novel is about.
Presenting illustrations are not limited to your website; you can share them across other social media platforms. I have attached illustrations to twitter posts along with a simple definition and a link to my book.
Facebook is a wonderful place to share off your illustrations and to promote your book or product at the same time. Imagine using the example above of the beach, along with the quote and a link to where the customer can purchase your book. By having more illustrations, and posting a different one each time, you can remove the irritation that some Facebook user’s get seeing the same advertisement over and over again.
Of course, we should not forget our blog posts. My newest illustration, featured above, is of the waldmannlein, also known as a wood wife. This is a wood spirit that appears as a beautiful woman, but is attached to a tree. Using its beauty, it lures men into the deep forest. In legend, this spirit can be benevolent or malicious. In my novel the wood wife captures a knight by controlling vines and limbs. She then changes appearance, her once beautiful face now resembles pure evil, and her hair becomes twisted like twigs. I just described this illustration and listed it on my blog.
Do not forget your illustrations are not just for the web. You can place them on business cards or letterheads for stationary. I would add one thing about using illustrations; make sure you know what your “brand” is. If you are noted for writing horror novels, do not put an illustration of you wearing a funny hat on your business card.
There are many more uses for illustrations. Use the same creativity you had in bringing them to life into displaying them.
Another use of your illustrations is making a movie, and we will discuss this as one of our future topics.
As always, thank you for visiting, and I hope you will leave a comment.
Very cool images of the wood wife. Seems very similar to the portrayal of witches in many works of fiction. I like the idea of using images to create the environment in which your story takes place.
ReplyDeleteLove this idea for a blog post, and I know all the stats point to tweets being RTd much more when they have some kind of graphic content. I think many people are visually inclined and it really is an inspirational form of communication.
ReplyDeleteI like the image of the beautiful woman, the wood wife, turning into the ugly witch. When I first started readying this post I thought it was going to be about how you did that but what you actually wrote was much more interesting. Good point about using the correct illustration on business cards.
ReplyDeleteExcellent tips William. I often share quotes from my books with relevant images on social media - especially Pinterest.
ReplyDeleteGreat ideas and suggetions, William. Interesting how the beautiful woman turned into an ugly witch. Thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteReally good tips William. I think that people really ARE more visual. Love how that woman morphed into a creature...some guys I know may have described their ex- wives like that!!! Kidding................
ReplyDeleteDesribe their ex? Where did you think I got that picture from.
DeleteAnother good way to show off your illustrations on the Web is via a slide show, which will save space on the page.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to your animation post.
Very nice illustration of the wood wife. I always like to see some illustrations or pictures when I am reading a fantasy novels.
ReplyDeleteI love the illustrations above. They are creepy and cool. Also, some great ideas for using illustrations on social media. I love your idea for promoting a romance novel!
ReplyDeleteVery good tips. Even a beginner like myself can use them to create some illustrations.
ReplyDeleteI love this article! Love the white images on dark background. Although my book isn't illustrated, I have photos and could also use your suggestion of using an image which suggests a scene in my book. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteLove the idea of the illustrators and expanding them with brief descriptions. As a novelist, I don't include illustrations, but I appreciate them in the right places in books I read.
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