Friday 11 October 2013

Judging by the Cover

When you are an indie author doing it all on your own you have to get shi-stuff done.  Sometimes that means doing it yourself and other times you call in some favours and get friends to help you out.  For covers I am doing just that.

Red Island was designed by a professional because my son was in the hospital, unfortunately he's healthy this time around.  I'm kidding.  I kid.  For Red Serge, due out hopefully before Christmas, I have two potential covers so far.  One I made and one a friend has played around with.

This was the one I made.  I'll admit it's not that great.  Not to mention I do not have permission to use the RCMP image.

The one on the right is the one my friend made.  I like the overlapping of the hand print and the words on the back and how the sand is red like the sand in Prince Edward Island, but some have said that it is too much like Red Island's cover.

 I don't see it at all.
 
So I decided to play around with yet another cover.  True, maybe I should finish the novel first, but I needed a different creative outlet.  This is for The Cistern, duh, which is the first in The Alcrest Mystery Series.  The back of the book is the name of my aunt's hous in England.  The houses in her area have names instead of numbers and it is also the last name of my main characters and the name of their Gastropub.  So there will, of course, be words over the back of the book.  I just don't have them yet.
 




4 comments:

  1. I think the reworked cover of Serge is great. Yes, it looks a lot like Island, but I think it also ties the two together nicely. You have a common theme! Cistern is great. The back is a little confusing for me, but it may also not matter so much with the overlay of words. Very cool! Thanks for sharing. :)

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  2. It's a series. They should resemble each other to further the brand. They don't resemble each other enough to confuse, although the shoreline pics in the background do seem similar. The text treatments differentiate them. It should easily read well in both eBook and print, although the wrapping hand print might become confusing in the eBook version where you won't see the back. That's the only part I might reconsider. Really nice cover.

    Cistern I'm sure will go through more incarnations before you're done. The spine text might be hard to read and will really depend on your final page count. The back cover will definitely need some work. I'd consider going with a cutout of the house name and using a background that worked more naturally with the black, since the bleed could cause the edging of black on your spine to wrap a bit to the back.

    Good job on both though!

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  3. Oh, and one last thing about Red Serge - I'd avoid using red text on the back because it can be very hard to read. The other option is to use some kind of outer glow or stroke effect to make it stand out.http://lorneoliver.blogspot.com/logout?d=http://www.blogger.com/logout-redirect.g?blogID%3D5424127459403763134%26postID%3D3381586114677931834

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  4. Man...can you tell I didn't have my coffee this morning? It was Red Island that had the red type. Sorry....my bad. But again, reexamine the red handprint, because that could mess up the readability of your back copy. You could possibly make it less opaque.

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