Smart Budgets for Busy People: Name Game

This poor series had a rough time being born. Not the writing. That was easy. It was the title and subsequent cover.

Smart Budgets for Busy People talks about budgets and how to make one, but it also gives tons of tips for saving on every day things, and resources on where to buy, sell, and trade. I wasted no space on flowery language or long descriptions. This wasn't fiction. It was hard-nosed facts on how to save money and how to keep most of it. I didn't want to clutter up the facts with empty verbiage.

When I came up with the idea for this series, I immediately knew what I was going to call it and how the art would look. The first title series was called The Frugal Spy and it used all these graphics with spy silhouettes and magnifying glasses. Then I Googled the name and found someone else using it.

Okay, scratch that. 

Next I came up with Frugal U with cute little university banners and diploma icons. Only if you abbreviate Frugal U to its first letters it came up with a less than appropriate acronym. Oy.

There were at least a dozen more titles and covers. I was especially fond of one called The Frugal Dog which showed a hunting dog sniffing for $$$ tracks, but my sounding-board friend and designer thought it might be misconstrued as a children's book. I disagreed, but acquiesced. It was important that it not look too childish, girly, manly, or anything other than a straight up answer book. The cover had to look extremely graphic and genderless.

I finally settled on the theme of 'direction', which is where The Frugal Way came from. Between my friend and myself we came up with the arrow-road, the logo, and the sun ray background. Each subsequent book will use these elements but in different colors. Also the main graphic will change to reflect the topic of that book. The book on budgets used a blackboard. It's a given, the book on grocery shopping will probably use groceries in some form.

I still liked The Frugal Dog idea best, but I bowed to my friend because while we both worked as designers for multimillion dollar corporations, her company trumped mine. She worked for Disney. :grin:

If you haven't bought Smart Budgets for Busy People, would you try it out? I promise you there is nothing but straight facts and resource links that either save, make, or lets you keep your money.

You can buy it at Amazon or Smashwords. Oh, and if you have read it, I'd love it if you would post a review. Thanks!

***

Murray Report: Still sick, but his appetite is a little better--at least in the morning. I really dread having Greg and the dogs coming back this Friday. I think it's too soon. I don't think Murray is well enough for any commotion and while the older dogs should be okay, I hate having to risk Tank since he's older and more likely to get sick if the virus is still active. It'll be a month since they've been here.

I am very tired.