In March 2019, I self-published Anti-Sell.
Despite great reviews – as I post this it’s 4.6 on Amazon, 4.2 on Goodreads, 4.9(!) on Audible – the cover has always been a talking point. And sadly, not always positively.
There were reasons why I went for the cover I did, which I talked about in more detail here. Long story short, it was never intended to be in paperback format, so the cover was made in mind for only digital formats (Kindle, audiobook, PDF). And while (I think) it works well in digital, some folks think it doesn’t look good in paperback format, which is fair enough. The Being Freelance Book Club dedicated a whole section of their collective review talking about it, plus I’ve heard it from other people – from friends and strangers alike – that the cover either put them off from buying it (or nearly did), or they feel that a different cover would serve it better.
A year ago I posted saying I was thinking of getting it redone (although I actually deleted that post for a while, as I originally backtracked on the idea, haha!) – but then I thought I’d give it a go in line with the 5th anniversary.
So, 5 years after Anti-Sell first came out, here it is – with its new cover!
This was made by Bhavini Lakhani of B81 Designs, who I’ve known for years through Twitter/X and also via the Being Freelance community. She’s absolutely ace and I think she did a fantastic job of the redesign. What I really like as well is that she honoured the original colour (that particular shade of green) and reworked it into the new design, which is a nice way to pay homage to the old cover (and also means I don’t have to redo all the banners on the posts of this website, all of which primarily use that colour…). 😂😅
One thing I want to be clear on though: this is just a cover redesign. If you go to (re)buy it,* you’ll see that the innards of the book are exactly the same as the old version with the old cover. This isn’t a second edition, for example – so there’s no new content inside or anything like that. Maybe that can be a job for another time. A proper second edition (maybe with a foreward in it, and new/additional chapters) is something I’d love to consider one day, but with my family commitments, my freelance SEO work, my fantasy writing, and – more recently – my D&D side-project endeavours, including making resources and starting a YouTube channel, I’m juggling enough as it is… 😂😩 Let’s never say never though, yeah?
* For the paperback version only. I believe that for the Kindle and audiobook formats, it should simply auto-update if you already own it, either automatically or after updating/redownloading it.
So… What do you think?! Let me know in the Disqus comments below, or feel free to tweet me. Cheers!
