So here’s my first stab at a cover for my debut fantasy novel, Love After Death. Click on the image to see a larger version. I rendered the 3D portion of the cover in DAZ3D Studio using the Genesis model. Postwork and titling were done in Serif PhotoPlus X5. The title font is Showcard Gothic. The font for the rest of the text on the cover is Century Gothic.
It’s not easy picking fonts for cover art. You want them to stand out even when the cover is displayed at a small size. I think the fonts I chose will work well for that. Here’s a smaller version of the cover art, at the size you’d expect to see used in an Amazon ad or brief listing for a published book. I have to lean close to the screen to read the text at the very top of the image, but I can definitely make it out. I can read the title okay, but then I already know what it says.
What do you think of this cover art? Does it pique your interest in the novel? What kind of story does this cover make you think the novel will be? Any suggestions for changes?
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Mike, the woman is striking, but the gray brick wall behind her doesn’t do anything for me. Can you put in a background that is more evocative of your secondary image/thought; namely Death. Not to be trite, but what about a mound of skulls, a cemetery gate; the Death Major Arcana from a tarot deck? Looking forward to reading your novel.
Thanks for the feedback, Ken. I’m rethinking the whole cover concept, and, yeah, that gray wall needs to go. But there won’t be a mound of skulls, a cemetery gate or a card from a tarot deck since none of those are in the story. I might have to change the book title too. And… based on the feedback from beta readers, I’m planning significant changes to the story line. It will be next year sometime before it’s ready for another set of readers to give me their feedback. It might be several months into the year before it’s ready, depending on how much longer it takes me to find a job, which is higher priority right now.
Looks like a love ghost story. The lady caught my attention. The font is okay.
Hey, anen kram. Thanks for the comment. I’ll be changing the cover art, font and maybe even the title based on the feedback I’ve been getting. I’m still making changes to the story, in fact, expanding it with additional chapters that explore the viewpoints of other characters. Feedback from my beta readers proved to me that the original protagonist likely won’t keep readers reading, so I’m going to let readers into the minds of other characters. This particular revision is taking a while. It won’t quite double the size of the book.