Today's professional self-publishers, those authors that treat their books like a business and put every bit of care into them as traditional publishers, have really come a long, long way. The following cover recently caught my eye:
This certainly meets my standard as "indistinguishable from a traditionally published book. And the most amazing thing about it? The author had it created for $225! Amazing!
A publisher with marketing experience might, however, do better at promoting the book by noting a few things that don't work well on this cover.
ReplyDelete1. No one knows what a "Necrosed" is and many won't even know how to pronounce it. If it's a zombie, something more dramatic and recognizable could be used instead. Nothing about the title directly makes you want to care about William Wilde or whatever a Necrosed is. William Wild and the Dealers of Death, maybe. William Wilde vs the Star Zombie, even.
2.The titular hero, assuming that's him on the cover with the sword, isn't facing the audience or doing anything interesting. Again, another lost connection for the intended audience.
TL;DR: It looks great, it could be even better.
Well, two things here.
ReplyDelete1. The first point is about the "title" not the cover. Regardless of what the words are, the execution of the typography is fabulous. I don't know much about Ashura's work, but I think William Welde is an existing franchise. whether there have never been Necrossed before in his world or not, I'm not sure. This may be a very meaningful word to previous readers of the series.
2. I HATE when we see the faces of the titular characters. I want my readers to come up with their own "mind's eye" version of them. The books I have published through Hachette Book Group - featured the titular characters and they look NOTHING like how I envision them and don't match the personality of the books at all. The books I have published through Penguin Random House agreed with me that the characters should provide mystery to be filled in by the reader, so all those covers have the character's backs to them.
TL:DR - opinions vary greatly on what is and isn't good for a cover.
Yeah I think it's amazing what we can do now in both music and writing on our own. Honestly it's great to have a team around you that doesn't just want to make money off of you but actually cares about the art of the work. Self publishing isn't about doing it by yourself it's about freedom and I think great works of art are done with some help. Having key people that challenge, support, encourage and love around you creates an environment for real growth and beauty.
ReplyDeleteAs far as characters on the cover, I don't generally like that, although I do like Brandon Sandersons covers as the characters are exactly as he describes them, it just sucks when they don't look anything like how the author writes about them.
True indeed. It's a great time to be a writer with the indie community is thriving as it is, which offers a viable alternative for people who want to take complete control of the production of their books.
Delete@Zeus: Yeah, pretty sure nobody knew what a Philosopher's Stone or a Prisoner of Azkaban was, either. Rowling should've gone with something more dramatic and recognizable.
ReplyDelete@Laura - Excellent point! I made the title of my second book Avempartha, with full knowledge that it was (a) unknown and (b) going to be hard for some people to spell. But it worked all right for me as well. That series has sold more than 1,000,000 English language copies.
DeleteThis is a big improvement from his Castes and Outcastes (nice series) books which looked amateurish.
ReplyDeleteThis cover is something like Rick Riordan would have.
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