So, four different people have told me the original font I chose was too difficult to read. I've tweaked the font to something a little less busy. I also changed the dragon a lot for Dragonseed. The yellow dragon with the red patch on his nose and the green eyes was supposed to represent Hex after he's gotten his golden nano shell. But, it looked busy, so I made it a monochrome yellow, changed the eyes to black, then added a layer filter in photoshop to give it a metallic sheen. It's not quite in keeping with my original bold, flat color vision, but I think it better captures "gold." My final tweaks were to the Dragonforge cover, where I enlarged the figure a bit then added the same metallic sheen, less pronounced. This cover had the most black space in it, and I think the slight touch of depth helps the dragon stand out from the darkness.
Should these covers not boost sales, I suppose six months from now I'll try again. This is one of the great advantages of epublishing; it costs nothing to try different covers, marketing blurbs, etc.
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5 comments:
The new Dragonseed cover is really awesome. I'm not quite as crazy about the other two, although I can't exactly put a finger on why.
Thanks, Loren. I did one final tweak on the Dragonforge cover, thickening the neck, since I worried there was too much negative space. The Bitterwood cover is actually my favorite of the three, though if I were going to tweak it further it would probably be to even out the spiky fringe along the neck.
I'm loading them to Amazon this afternoon. I'm hoping it won't take long to find out if the new images improve sales.
Hi James,
I like these covers very much -- much better than the others, at least in terms of e-books. Very professional.
Thanks, Jeff! Alas, I think these designs will not be long for the world. I've had them up for a month now and have seen no boost in sales, which is leaving me wondering if I can't find something better. I'll be going to two science fiction cons over the next two weekends. Hopefully, I can find an artist who can produce something even better.
nice and simple.
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