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[quote=The Author Guy;1725]General question on Cover Art:
Do you prefer Scenes, Montages, Single figure (or multiple figure with not much background), Symbol/Abstract?
Some of this has been answered by some but particularly on the scene/montage/character(s) thing I am curious.
[/quote]In my opinion it’s not about preference. Here’s my two cents on the topic (I’ve been giving it a bit of thought for a while now)
First, as was said earlier in the topic people judge a book by the cover. The cover itself can say a lot about the book. For example a professional looking cover gives the impression of a well-written book. There are tons of books on amazon which have some abstract twirly symbol for a cover image generally saying to the customers “this is an indie book, don’t expect much from it”. There are also tons of books with stock photos for a cover. When used unmodified the stock photo can easily confuse the customer into thinking they already viewed the book. Now, if the cover is done by a pro artist, it shows. The real question is “what does it show?” Here’s an example: I’ve seen a few covers with a female on the front. You’d think a book like that would have a female protagonist, you click on it to take a closer look, and you find out the book either has some female antagonist or a female side character.
People don’t just judge a book by its cover, people read the themes in the book by the cover. You know the book is comedic in nature if the art is cartooney, you know it’s about magic if there’s some mysterious-looking light on the cover, you know the book contains romantic themes when you see a male hugging a female on the cover. And if you like what you see, you take a closer look at the book. In case of Demons of Astlan series, you might want to go for a somewhat cartoonish art or showing characters performing things incongruent with what is usually expected from them (a ganja-smoking stoned demon is one such example), as this is a portal fantasy some magic fantasy land in the background would demonstrate that the action is happening in a different world. And, of course placing the main character in the foreground would show who the main character is (or you could place some secondary characters in the background to demonstrate who else the book is about). Since the main character is a human-turned-demon this could be shown with a partial transformation – e.g. a demon hand, a demon’s eye or a face half of which is demonic, while the other half is human (think Batman’s Two-Face or the way they did the posters for Face-Off).
And so there you are: a picture that’s worth a thousand words 🙂
>So the question is this if tom closes his eyes and flicks his tongue out can he tell you that you are standing right over there from your B.O.
Well, considering a demon’s physical body is just a manifestation, and a representation of astlanians’ fears and beliefs about how demons are supposed to look, the demon’s tongue would either be just for decoration (as would be every other part of their body) or it would depend on what astlanians believe the the demons’ forked tongue is for…
>Sprite is 11 to 24 posts
Will Coca-Cola not sue you guys for infringement for that?
[edit: oh, crap! They might sue me too…]
[quote=Tizzy;170]Definitely will do. It’s war you know.
Going to finally get back at the DemiUrge for kicking…oops…sorry…that’s very late Book II, mainly Book III and IV info…
[/quote]
Stop Tizzing you bastard! I’m weeping bloody tears here because I can’t get my hands on the second book right now 😀
Err… I’m just gonna correct myself here… The workaround doesn’t work, and the frame might not be the problem. For some reasons neither the cookies are saved for longer than a session (could be board settings though) nor does firefox offer to remember the password…
I’m looking at your world map and I’m trying to figure out why the known land ends so abruptly. Most maps are of continents and the water designates the end of known land. Sometimes known land is separated from unknown lands by mountains and sometimes the unknown land is shaped roughly resembling the ideas of the cartographer (I remember looking at one of the maps drawn by ancient greeks designating the part of Europe that belongs to France and Germany and beyond as Hyperborea. However that doesn’t seem to be applicable in the case of a fantasy setting where magicians can travel on flying carpets. Even mountains might not be able to stop explorers armed with magic. So it’s either gotta be some Great Desert or some Great Ocean that’s added to the map.
I’ve noticed you have M4D cartography skillz, so I was thinking maybe I should try to make some better maps for the setting you’ve created. The quality of the jpegs on the site, however, is pretty awful. If you have the original images it would be awesome if I can get my grubby hands on them. So. Can I pweeaze have the originals so I could try to create some nice fan art to support the nice book?
P.S. I have no idea how to categorize this post, so I hope I’m posting in the right place.
Oh, hey, let me say another thing that you probably never thought of. Every time I look at the scales on the hooves I’m thinking: “Why the hell is this demon wearing pantyhose like a transvestite hooker?”
[quote=jerry;150]
I’d love to say something like the head looks that due to symbolism: “Tom was an innocent, condemned to hell as a sacrificial lamb for the betterment of all demonkind”
[/quote]You don’t have to. I already thought of that 😀
Hmm… While the cover could be better, the demon on it was what actually attracted my attention. Had it been some abstract sigils/glyphs on the cover as many fantasy books have I might’ve missed the book while browsing amazon. Hell’s an interesting theme to me.
P.S. But the hoof and the lamb head have to go…
[quote=Tizzy;131]I’m trying to get a distributorship for Earth…I’m just not sure who’s going to be able to drink it…or at least drink it more than once. I’m thinking I won’t get a lot of repeat customers….[/quote]
Why not? Starbucks seems to be doing ok in that area…:-kEh… I’m sort of 50/50… On the one hand I’ll gladly pay for a well edited ebook that doesn’t have inconsistencies, typos or mistakes in it, but on the other hand how can I be sure that it doesn’t for certain? Oh well… Sign me up for the beta test if you need any testing. I’ll do it for the credits anywhere in the book 🙂
[quote=jerry;143]Hi,
I will take your word that I have M4D skills…but I don’t think I do. I assume you mean Mad 4 Destruction??? I need to look more into what you are talking about to speak coherently.
Actually the maps are done in Campaign Cartographer which is a vector based cartography program designed for traditional RPGs etc. It does the maps as vectors and then you basically export it to an image at a particular resolution.
The maps were started a long time ago with their base fantasy set at the time. Newer versions have cooler icons, but I didn’t have time to figure out how to translate all of them to newer stuff/redo.
So anyway, the true original images are vector diagrams. I can generate a giant jpg at any resolution if you can do something with them…or you if you had a way of dealing with the vector images or something it exports to, I have no problem giving that out.
Jerry[/quote]
Vectors are fine with me. In fact they’re the best in my opinion.
P.S. M4D = Meant 4 Diddling 😀
I admit, the nails aren’t that big of a problem for me. Other stuff bugs me a lot more 🙂
As to the editing the book. In general a book shouldn’t be edited after release, of course. However, sometimes you only have the choice between having a story that contradicts itself and fixing the released book so the story doesn’t contradict itself. Considering fixing the story a little will lead to better reviews and as such better sales, I think fixing the book as soon as the readers brought up the contradictions is paramount to good sales. But ultimately it’s up to you what to fix and when, of course.
P.S. Though you could make the nails shorter and thus have somewhat more or less believable picture both when Tom uses fists and when he uses fingertips.
P.P.S. Also, karate chop should probably be named “knife hand”, though there you have to choose between using a well known phrase that is associated with an unrelated martial art and a proper name that is less well known. Tough decision too.
