Thursday, April 22, 2010

Two More Covers


Thanks, everyone, for all the comments so far. They've been very helpful. Here are a couple of redesigned covers, taking into account some of the things that have been said. I don't want people to automatically think "Western" when they look at the book. I've also made them smaller so they'll look more like they will on Amazon's site. Of course, the good thing about all this is that we can try a cover for a month or so and then swap it for another one if we want to.

14 comments:

Laurie Powers said...

They're both great, but I LOVE the one on the left!

Vince said...

Now I prefer the one on the left.

David Cranmer said...

Yep, one on the left.

Michael Bracken said...

Another vote for the left.

Craig Clarke said...

The left, indeed.

Livia J Washburn said...

I'll be happy when we get this down. I seriously hate snakes. Terrified of them. One time I was working on the pipes in the well house and saw a snake. I ran like a girl to get James to kill it. He couldn't find the snake, and it was a hours before I could get the courage to finish the pipes. I shook the whole time.

Chris said...

I'm on board with the left one as well.

Snakes don't bother me. Big ugly spiders, though, that's another story.

Angeline Hawkes said...

Me too on the left one :)

Mark Terry said...

I like the one on the left as well. I find the print on the top on the blue one to be almost unreadable, particularly at the smaller size.

pattinase (abbott) said...

The color blue seems all wrong and the print is small.

Cap'n Bob said...

Left.

Randy Johnson said...

The left for mr as well.

Juri said...

Congrats on finally getting this out, James! (James knows there have been efforts before...)

The left one is easily the better one (especially when the snake picture on the right cover is out of its proportions; I'm not sure what the exact word is), but I'd like to suggest that you don't use so many fonts. This has four different fonts on the cover. This is one of the reasons many self-published and electronic book covers look amateurish: too many fonts. I think three is the maximum, two is better.

You might want to use the same font in the book title and your name, but reduce the size of your own name. I know that nowadays publishers like to put the name of the writer in big, but I've never really liked that.

And drop the shadowing from the fonts. There are too many layers in the cover, with two pictures on the background.

I hope I don't sound overtly critical.

Suresh Ramasubramanian said...

Agreed on too many fonts. The one on the left is better as the fonts at the top kind of blend into the graphic of the snake.

The bottom is much more amateurish and you dont want to mix capital and small letters like that in the "Author of DUST DEVILS".

I'd stick to the same font you used at the top (and pick a easy, readable sans serif font like Gill Sans and its variants). The author name too shouldnt look like it was written in a joke font (its not comic sans MS, something similar though)