Poll–Purchase Reservations
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Originally, and for a LONG time, I planned on the cover being the first summoning, meaning the room with Lenamare and all the students with Tom in the middle.
However, there were too many people in the room and I decided the portrait landscape just wouldn’t work/scale well, plus trying to arrange it so you could see characters etc, so I went with something simpler.
Also thought about doing the Living Flame on the ship…but then decided that might give too much away…
Cover art. Frankly, 99% of the material out there that incorporates 3-d art is complete shit. So I’m conditioned to automatically NOPE my way away from anything 3-d rendered.
I’d probably be more interested if there was MS-paint pixel art instead of 3-d. I’m not saying you need to pay a ton of money to get a cover. Heck, you can make some pretty eye-catching pictures without much difficulty by abusing abstract designs or lots of shadows/darkness around the picture, but I would really suggest not using the 3-d models.
The art was also meh but I don’t really judge the book because of that. I don’t really mind it that much.
The thing I don’t like most in the cover was the text. It was a bit hard to read, kinda ugly and doesn’t fit with the whole composition. It seems to be an afterthought and tacked in.
I think that’s a common perception among people who see a lot of 3D Art…It’s relatively easy/fast to do except at the really high end.
You mention abstract shapes etc.
One thing I read on a blog about book covers is that preference also varies a lot from country to country, even among English language countries.
As I recall US readers like pictures/images on their covers, but Brits (or English, Sottish, Welsh and Northern Irish depending on next week) and Australians prefer more geometrical and or solid color block designs. Don’t recall Canadians or some of the other groups.
I’ve toyed with using different covers in different countries based on this idea.
Well, difference in perspective, I guess. Still, I kinda wish that the text in the front cover was placed a lot better.
So where should it be placed?
Would you squish the picture down and have it not over the picture.
For example, some books have a solid cover with an inset for the illustration, takes up about 2/3 of the cover, maybe half?
I might have not be too off when I say that the text looks tacked.
I think, you should have incorporated the text in the design from the very beginning. After all, the text is an important part of the cover design.
You could also have at least provide space to where the text should go. As it where important elements of the picture doesn’t realy enable any good place to place the titles. It would just look awkward or cover important elements of the image.
Some of your ideas seems good. You might also do it like this:
Move the image lower to provide more space at the top for the tittle text. An element in the bottom (a box here) would hide the fact that the feet are going off the frame.
[img=http://i.imgbox.com/XOzHddyA.jpg]cover 1[/img]
You might also like to just provide more space at the bottom for the tittle text by moving the image higher. The gradient I used on the bottom could be raised higher though that would hide a large part of the characters. Maybe add a box there instead?
[img=http://i.imgbox.com/wIIrICJO.jpg]cover 2[/img]
What do you think?
Interesting.
Excellent feedback.
I now think we will also have a cover beta discussion here for both the next book and the 2nd edition of this book.
Sometime before the next book’s release, I am planning on doing a 2nd edition of the first book.
[i][b]No, no revision of “history”[/b][/i]
I will simply get it professionally edited and cleaned up, move the appendices to the rear with links, clean up fonts/tables etc for Kindle.
(there was a sale on Paper Whites a few weeks back and I got one–previously I’d read on my iPad, Asus Memo Pad, or various cell phones which are all color etc–actually the real big bonus is the access to the KLL-there were several books out there on my list to read) [u]
[/u] I may at that time change the cover if I can find an artist I like and who’s available.
I’d reached out to a couple but they were all pretty booked solid. All these guys want long term gigs with card art companies for hundreds of images…or so it seems.
So anyway, I promise that there will be no need to get the 2nd edition if you have the first…although if someone read it on KU/KLL getting the 2nd edition on a Countdown might be worthwhile.
I normally know within the first few chapters if I am really going to like a book. I have always said I really wished I could get the first half of any book and then pay if I wanted to read the rest. So many books are frankly not worth it. There is unfortunately no (legal) way to get a good preview of your book.
Anecdotal evidence: I bought a book I was hesitant about like this one off of smashwords after getting about 25 pages in or so.
For your book, I would recommend the first 31 pages (until the end of chapter 5), if you want to really hook me.
So how did I get over my hesitation on this book? I am going to plead the 5th on that one, but I would swear in an Oorstemothian court that I own a legal copy of the book and that I read the book after buying it. Hopefully the Oorstemothians don’t see the equivocation there. 8-[
[b]The cover[/b]
The cover is not very good. I don’t have any problems with the actual scene. In fact, the demon being represented so prominently made me look twice when I was glancing through books. But the art style, which I can only describe as 3d animation without the animation, is not my thing. Also, the fish netted leg seems to be connected too high on the demon and doesn’t look right.
I have no idea who any of the characters are (other than Tom) in the picture and I read the book! Is there a guy wearing a crown tied up in the back?
Well that’s pretty a bad job on the art in that case o:)
The scene is inside the tent in Exador’s camp when Jenn and Gastrope’ were tied up and Rupert summoned Tom.
So the girl is Jenn, the boy is Rupert, the guy that’s tied up is Gastrope’ and he’s wearing a turban. There are better pictures of him and his unusual clothes on the site.
On the preview…you should be able to see something like 50+ pages. I really haven’t checked to be honest, I know KLL/KU people can read the first 100 pages before it’s counted as checked out. On Goodreads I have a manually created preview.
The problem with the Amazon store is that I have no control over what they show/don’t show and the size of the preview. I just upload the file and they do what they want with it.
Maybe a preview edition on this site might be an idea. But again, I’m not sure how many people know this site exists, since Amazon does like to keep traffic internal to itself when people are shopping.
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