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Series Covers

I love all of these.

Presumably by book three your readers will already know what the series is about. That would be the only downside of having this kind of abstract cover; but blurb and descriptions on Amazon can help to fill that gap.
 

Foah

Troubadour
I like them overall, but the font bugs me slightly--or rather, the consistency. ISTO looks forcefully stretched, while SOVEREIGN looks uncomfortably squished. And while I guess that the directional light on ISTO comes from the cover art fire rather than the normal top-right as the other ones, the lighting across all titles look very different because of how the different book titles have been modified. ISTO has a deeper and less washed out gold than the other titles, and SOVEREIGN (and to a lesser extent, NINIER) is way glowier than the others due to the thinner lettering from squishing the title in there.

When viewed one by one you may not nit pick like this. However, if you're going for a themed series cover, I would suggest fiddling a bit more with the fonts to make them more in tune with each other. Perhaps you could try changing the font size on SOVEREIGN to match the size of THANMIR from the first book. And maybe see if you can unsqueeze ISTO and look at it again after a week or two and see if you don't like it without the stretching. I'm assuming you have some inner glow effect in photoshop/gimp that provides the washed out glow on the letters--try to see if you can adjust the parameters so that you get a more consistent effect across the books.

Again, nit picks, but worth reviewing since 3 of the books aren't written yet :)
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
I agree with Foah. One other consistency item you might want to consider: three of the titles have fantasy words. Then there's "Sovereign." My suggestion is to be consisting in naming conventions as well.

And still another consistency item. Three of the books say "Book N of Niniers" but the first one doesn't. I suspect it's because that tree is so big. Perhaps go with a different icon, or shrink it, to make room for "Book One of Niniers"
 

risu

Troubadour
I like them overall, but the font bugs me slightly--or rather, the consistency. ISTO looks forcefully stretched, while SOVEREIGN looks uncomfortably squished. And while I guess that the directional light on ISTO comes from the cover art fire rather than the normal top-right as the other ones, the lighting across all titles look very different because of how the different book titles have been modified. ISTO has a deeper and less washed out gold than the other titles, and SOVEREIGN (and to a lesser extent, NINIER) is way glowier than the others due to the thinner lettering from squishing the title in there.

When viewed one by one you may not nit pick like this. However, if you're going for a themed series cover, I would suggest fiddling a bit more with the fonts to make them more in tune with each other. Perhaps you could try changing the font size on SOVEREIGN to match the size of THANMIR from the first book. And maybe see if you can unsqueeze ISTO and look at it again after a week or two and see if you don't like it without the stretching. I'm assuming you have some inner glow effect in photoshop/gimp that provides the washed out glow on the letters--try to see if you can adjust the parameters so that you get a more consistent effect across the books.

Again, nit picks, but worth reviewing since 3 of the books aren't written yet :)

Great observations. The titles of Books 2-4 are all the same height (for consistency) with the subtitles all in the same place for each image, thus why Sovereign got squashed. Isto and Ninier are actually unmodified for their font size, it's just that Ninier has more skinny lines for the letters versus the s and o of Isto. And looking at Sovereign, I probably should've done the lighting from the lower right, since that's where I've got the light on the symbol. I redid the symbol after I did the title, which put the lighting from a different direction. And gosh darn it, it looks like the lighting on the cracks is the wrong direction too! (adds that to task list for correction)

I'll try shrinking the font size of Sovereign, though I don't really like the idea of not having it the same height as the other two when I have a subtitle that consistent across those three books.

I'll make a few different versions of the titles, one that reflect the image, and one that is static lighting across all four books. Sovereign has a red tint to it, like Isto has the orange glow, and Ninier is brighter. Then I'll submit them to the husband test to see which he likes best. :)
 

risu

Troubadour
I agree with Foah. One other consistency item you might want to consider: three of the titles have fantasy words. Then there's "Sovereign." My suggestion is to be consisting in naming conventions as well.

And still another consistency item. Three of the books say "Book N of Niniers" but the first one doesn't. I suspect it's because that tree is so big. Perhaps go with a different icon, or shrink it, to make room for "Book One of Niniers"

There's not another name that really fits with consistency of theme. In book one, the conflict is a war between Thanmir, in book 2, it's that istos are killing everyone and one character is turning into an isto and is fighting her nature, in book 3, a character from book 1 (he is referred to by all characters as The Sovereign, including published works) has taken control and the protagonists must overthrow him, and in book 4, the main character who has been a host for the niniers the entire series, becomes one of them, and his power starts unraveling reality.

Teymir would be the closest made-up term, but that would reference the main character's title, not the conflict. Of course, I am the only one who really understands the reasoning behind the chosen titles, so it's not like going with Teymir would seem off to any of the readers. They'll just be like, "oh, it's in reference to the main character." I'll make a version of the cover with Teymir on it since it's shorter, so less likely needing to be squashed like Sovereign is.

I could probably add the subtitle to Thanmir War. It was left off because the title is on two lines, unlike the rest of the series. I'll do a version with it on there.

Thanks for all the feedback!
 
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