A Few Thoughts About Book Covers
Sheri Queen
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to join your blog today. Cover art is not all created equally. Some covers may start out on-point and later become outdated.
That’s where I found myself this past year.
Bounty Huntress is the first in my Sleepy Hollow Hunter series. Things changed since it first came out. I had to update my cover to go along with the new reader expectations and what was appealing to them. The cover should convey the general genre, as well.
I also made some minor changes to the content of Bounty Huntress. Then I worked on the cover designs to bring the entire series together.
Prior to this, books one and two lacked cohesion. The cover of book one was created to a set of guidelines for the shared-world series, Hotel Paranormal, that this book was launched under.
The second in my series, Brimstone, was not part of the Hotel Paranormal program and as such, its cover didn’t generate the concept of Bounty Huntress and Brimstone as being tightly bound in the same series—my Sleepy Hollow Hunter series.
I also made updates to the content of Brimstone in preparation for releasing book 3—Pirate Lover’s Curse.
Let’s take a look at the original covers and the new covers.
.png)
This was the original, which is very striking, didn’t work when I sought to bring all the books into a more cohesive set of series covers.
Now look at book two, Brimstone. You can see that while the elements of the cover aren’t bad, they lack continuity with the first book. The title font doesn’t align with the one from book one, either. The elements around the title of Bounty Huntress were not applicable to Brimstone, which also made it difficult to create a series vibe.
.png)
Under the terms of the shared-world contract for Bounty Huntress (Sleepy Hollow Hunter Book One), I couldn’t make any changes to the cover until it was released back to me.
This posed a problem I hadn’t thought about before writing the series. It actually slowed me down in my enthusiasm for writing the trilogy. As a new author, I didn’t know how to get around this issue.
While I waited to get the rights back to update the cover of book one, I wrote a number of other stories in several fun anthologies.
Then the time had come when I could address the covers in my Sleepy Hollow Hunter series.
I wrote book three and released it at the end of December 2022. Pirate Lover’s Curse completes the trilogy.
But genre expectations had shifted since Bounty Huntress first came out. I went back to the drawing board and came up with a pretty good group of covers for the series that I’m quite happy with putting out into the world.
These are the new covers. This is how a series should look. Each book represents its story but also fits the series brand. They convey the urban fantasy/paranormal expectation.
.png)
.png)
.png)
SNEAK PEEK:
.png)
Here’s the cover for Alex, Janda’s fated mate in the Sleepy Hollow Hunter series.
His story has yet to be told but is in the works. It’s linked to the Sleepy Hollow Hunter books but will be from Alex’s point of view. This is the first time I’ve shared the cover.
It depicts Alex as I envisioned him while writing Bounty Huntress and the other stories in the series.
Covers are important for the readers and for the authors, just in different ways. Ultimately, a good cover helps us get a glimpse of what the story will be about.
Happy Reading!
Sheri Queen
https://books2read.com/pirateloverscurse
Excerpt:“Why does anything pertaining to you have to come with extra baggage?” Uncle Damon said. His dominant pack power surged, affecting the others nearby and making them restless.The air crackled with his energy. I held my ground. His words stung, but he’d never hear me say it. I’d had lots of practice over the years keeping my hurt from showing, but at this moment, I lashed out with a barb of my own.“I’m just lucky that way. Kind of like you.” I tapped the desk with my fingertips, knowing he hated it and narrowed my eyes at him.He sure as hell had his own baggage when it came to relationships and pack bonds, especially when it came to anything with my mother.“If the two of you are done poking at one another, I’d like to move on to the pertinent issue of the cursed map,” Sebastian said. He stood a good foot away from his desk and peered down at the map as if it might explode.Everyone had a hands-off approach to the map after I’d blurted out that it was cursed.“It won’t curse you just by touching it,” I said. “At least, not from what Gwenn or I could tell. It has a hidden layer that will attack you if you try to force it out in the open.”“That’s just great,” Mutther said. “I suppose you found out firsthand?”“Not me. Gwenn did. I was the innocent bystander.”“Right. How innocent?” Nick said. He moved to Mutther’s side and viewed the map from farther away. Neither of them was taking any chances.Not that I blamed them. They had suffered from being too near me in the past. Mutther was still rebuilding his bar.
No comments:
Post a Comment