My Writing Day - Difficult Choices
You might remember a recent post in which I spoke about the advice I've been reading and watching on Kindle book cover design.
And the angst and torment that caused me.
When I first published the Destiny's Daughter paranormal mysteries book I commissioned a freelancer to design a cover as I envisaged it, and I thought he did a great job
See what you think
Image © Anthony Sunderland 2009
It has the blazing UFO in the background
The firefighters struggling to control the flames
And the eponymous character in the foreground; holding the child she's heroically rescued from the crashed craft
Every thing I wanted
The publishing gurus I asked for an opinion were unanimous
Saying it looked like a cover for a children's book
That hurt
Especially as most sci fi covers I'd seen looked (and still do) like they've been plucked off a shelf somewhere
Even the best sellers had covers that were nondescript, and meaningless
Covers that bear no relationship to the contents of the books
That's the way it should be though; is the conensus of the advice I've read
Book covers should only tell readers what genre they're in
And that, if you didn't know, is why they all look so much alike
If You Can't Fight 'em. join 'em.
Make my covers look pretty much all the same
Maybe so much that not even I would be able to tell which one belongs to which book
But, my creative side still wants to add a certain 'Je ne sais quoi' to them
I wonder if you can see what that is in the following images
Image sources: All the following images are from Pixabay.com - but I didn't keep a record of the exact links as I don't need to do so in order to use them for my books
I hope that doesn't preclude me from using them here for examples of the choice I've got to make for my replacement cover
Any feedback or comments on which you think I should chose are welcome
The one above seems tailor made for what I want, if you think about my original cover - but I still need to chose one of these four
And I need the covers for each book in the series to illustrate that it's part of it
I need them to all look the same - but different
The more I learn about cover design, the more confused I get
I certainly hope one of you can help me with this dilemma
You know......I don't like any of the alternatives. However, what if you added glowing eyes to the alien face in the first cover and add glowing eyes to the child? Or more define alien eyes? I see why folks thought this was a children's book; it doesn't look harsh enough in the foreground. Anyway, keep at it.