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

[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!