Fun with Book Covers Part 2

[kriadydragon]

So with my next novel possibly nearing completion (depending on how much there is to fix), I've been experimenting with some book cover designs and I'd love to get some opinions on them. If you were purusing books, which cover would catch your attention? These are far from done, of course, I just need to know what works and what doesn't.

ETA: And please feel more than free to offer up critiques and advice. I need to make the best cover I can (without spending money I don't have).

1..


2.


3.

4.


[Poll #2020292][Poll #2020292]

Comments

[junnights.livejournal.com]

For me the green ones are a little dull. If this was a follow up and the cheap version (like the Wot series had) I'd not really care.. but... the gold ones are actually far more eye catching (While I'd likely not look twice on the other two). On second thoughts (I voted both) I think the one with the gold text is the best (as the whiteish text dulls the dragon somehow and the one with the gold text has a better feel to it... fits better somehow). Also consider trying a black dragon as that's more typical of 'devil' (depending on the book of course... seems like a fantasy one with the image which makes it kind of interesting). Wish you the best of luck and happy writing:D

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's my issue with the green ones. The dragon in the story is green and I really wanted to do a green fire dragon, but cool colors just don't pop like warm colors do. Luckily there is a theme of fire in the story, since the dragon is going through some things and his inability to breathe fire at the moment is one of them.

Number one is also my favorite. I was a little iffy about the text coloring because I felt it had a lemon/lime vibe going on. But it really does work.

I may end up changing the title since it is a fantasy, but I can see people reading the title and making the assumption it's horror or suspense. The title is a quote from the Tempest, which is what inspired the book.

Anyway, thank you so much for the input :D

[junnights.livejournal.com]

I don't really think you should change the title, in the least you should do it because you find one you like better. Usually libraries, book sites and book shops+ categorizes the books well enough so that its obvious which genre it belongs to (as long as you make it obvious in the summary or somewhere else on the cover). And well.. I think it adds a little conundrum (I think its the right word for it) to the book/story which in the least would make me pick it up and read the summary if I saw it. What if you use orange (or fire)/green instead of gold/green? That way the mix color at least would be warm. Or used warm/bright colors on the rest of the covers?(more than on the last one.. perhaps enlarging the circles until the darkest colors are given far less space (the last one). and removing the darkest red as well might make it work) (except the words which should be greenish to fit the dragon... maybe.. try both and see). And if you try using a different mix (its way too much of the 'darker' green right now) of colors for the green dragon it might work better. (http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/green-shining-magic-vector-light-background-abstract-41341446.jpg - seems almost warm, and http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/lights-shining-stars-green-abstract-background-28699686.jpg is very bright:) its fun that you've used a quote from Shakespear:D (not seen the play.. or read the book though) as it might actually make potential readers curious about it (and on the plus side a search for the quote may yield your book). :D And if the dragon's inability to breath fire has a big part of the story then yes - I really do think the first one would work brilliantly. If its a lesser part... then its a little bit more iffy. But well... depends on if you want the dragon on the cover to BE the dragon in the story; or if its just the fact that its a dragon/fantasy story thats important (a symbolic one for example - where the color represent the fire breathing ability (which not every dragon has) and the dragon itself is just a dragon :) (my thoughts at least). (as for the second pic.. its a little jarring because the dragon is warm; but the title is cold and they don't really fit together color-wise and makes one concentrate on one or the other but looking at both does not really work long term (perhaps a little red mixed in might work?).. while the first one makes the connection between the title and picture obvious).

(should probably rewrite this.. but... given that its 0211 at night I'm just going off to bed... hope my ramblings helps somewhat:) )

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the examples. This actually gives me some new ideas to try.

[junnights.livejournal.com]

:D

[timespirt.livejournal.com]

Number 4 caught my eye right away. The bright really makes the dragon pop and the colors drew me to that cover. The others were too dark.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I like the brightness, too. My only problem is that it's a little too bright for the story, which is actually somewhat dark in tone.

[timespirt.livejournal.com]

The story may be dark in tone but the bright catches the persons eye. You could darken the edges more and leave the middle the way it is?

[ladyrose42.livejournal.com]

#4 stands out #2 is second

[sholio]

I like #1 and #2 about the same - I gave #2 a slight edge because I think the text pops a bit more. If the dragon is green and you want to have it that way on the cover, though, I think #4 could also work (#3, while pretty, is just too dark).

I have a couple of suggestions for the typesetting! One thing you might want to do is take out the "by" before your name, because most books don't use that (obviously there are exceptions, but not too many), so it looks more professional without it.

The title ... there is something about the way the words are broken up that's not working for me. It's awkward to work with a title that long, though! I did some playing around in Photoshop and this is the version I came up with that I liked the best:



"And all the" is smallest, "Devils" is biggest, and the last line is intermediate between the two.

The program you're using might not have enough font control to do this - I'm not sure. And you don't have to break it up in the same way, of course! But you might want to play with mixing up the font sizes a bit, if you can, especially making the less important words like "the" and "are" smaller to make the rest pop.

(The all capital letters are just because I didn't want to spend a lot of time hunting through fonts for one similar to what you used, so I picked one that looked vaguely similar in my font list, and then it turned out to only have capital letters. And I liked it well enough to keep it.)

[sholio]

.... haha.

Okay, so just for fun I decided to see if the cheap stock photo site where I've been getting most of my cover photos has any dragons. And they have a rather YA-looking green one, which actually looks kind of similar to yours, so I thought I would download the comp (low-rez) version off the site and slap it in behind the text just for fun so you could see it!



(If you actually like this for a cover, I could make the high-rez version for you and send it to you in just a few minutes. XD The site I use is called canstockphoto.com, and the photos are around $4 to $6 for the big size. Obviously I am not trying to talk you out of using your art, which is really neat and has a wonderful graphical feel! But I put this together and then went "... wow, that has a really Eregon sort of look to it" and decided to see if you wanted it.)

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

Ah, man. Now this makes me wish this were a YA novel. The book is actually geared toward adults so, yeah, this cover wouldn't work, sadly.

[sholio]

Oops. For some reason I thought it was!

And I hope it doesn't seem like I'm coming in here all "LET ME REDO THIS COVER FOR YOU!" I really like the cover concept you've got going. Incidentally, the font I used for the test text is one called Charlemagne, which you can probably find online if you like it.

I'm doing some covers semi-professionally now, and getting the text to look good is BY FAR the hardest part of the whole process! It's useful, I've found, to go on Amazon and look at some covers you like in your genre and try to figure out what they're doing that makes it look good. Like, how big they make the text, how they vary the size of different parts of it, whether they tend to use fonts that are plain or fancy, etc. Just looking at the text on some covers you like can give you lots of ideas!

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

Thanks! :D Yeah, I put the "by" more out of habit. I kind of forgot people tend not to put that on book covers ^^;

Your title suggestion looks awesome. Font and title are always my stumbling block when it comes to designing book covers.

I'm going to be experimenting with more cover designs. As much as I like the reddish dragon against the green background, I really, really want the dragon image to be green - if possible - since it is a green dragon in the book.