Check out the new tab at the top of my blog. It is a page for Dawnmaid, the third book in the series. I’d like feedback on the cover image, if you are so inclined. I originally planned to call this book “Birth of the Dawnmaid” but when I put all that on the cover it looked cluttered and busy. (Also several people said it reminded them of “Voyage of the Dawntreader.”) “Dawnmaid” by itself gives more visual punch, I think.
Picking a title for a book is a serious business. You need something original and catchy that encapsulates the meaning of your work in only a few words. A tall order! I was pretty surprised to find that Dawnmaid hadn’t been used by anyone else.
Using made up words (like Dawnmaid) can be problematic too. I used to work for a national bookstore chain, at the information counter. Sometimes, people would ask for a book they had heard about on the radio or TV, but wouldn’t know how to spell the title. Sometimes I would be able to find what they were looking for. If I couldn’t, then the author lost a sale. I try to keep that in mind when naming my books.
I have to finish up the editing, and get it to the publisher soon. I didn’t do any writing while I was in the USA, and now I am having a hard time getting started again. Fortunately there are always other things to do–like creating the cover art and then blogging about it!
But now I have to get to work…
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May 6, 2008 at 12:02 pm
I’m sensing a “Dawn” theme here.
May 6, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Yeah…
You aren’t going to sue me for intellectual property infringement are you?!
May 6, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Is her name Dawn? Does she save the world??
BTW how can you name a book before you’ve even written it?
May 6, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Her name is Myriadne, but I won’t tell you the ending…
The book is written, I am in the editing phase now.
May 6, 2008 at 1:42 pm
OK…I guess it’s pretty different…I’ll let it pass…this time!
BTW Dawn doesn’t actually save the world…you’ll have to read it to find out!
May 7, 2008 at 7:40 am
As to the cover image… I’m not actually terribly fond of it. For one, the main gradient is uninteresting, the ’sun’ must be lighter than the sky to get the right effect, and the picture of the girl uses a completely different color pallet.The overall element layout is alright, but I also have a problem with how the the title is aligned to the vertical center.
If I were designing the cover, I’d put the title where the ‘Song of’ text is now, change around the graphics to have a more vivid, orange-yellow-red-pink sky with a dark, sharp ground beneath it (to highlight the red of the title letters) and make the girl out of too-accurate purple-blue clouds.
May 7, 2008 at 9:39 am
Thank you for your excellent, very constructive criticism. Now a question in return–did you find it off-putting as a potential consumer of the book or are you trained in graphic design? Either way your feedback is valuable, but I do like to know the source.
I am stuck, if that is the right word, with the Author and Series headings where they are, because I want a consistent look between all the books in the series. I can certainly improve the gradient and the sun color. The centering of the title is something I can play with too.
Not sure what you mean about making the girl out of too-accurate purple clouds. I am not an artist, so I think I might have a hard time doing anything like that.
May 7, 2008 at 10:25 am
I have a bachelor’s degree in multimedia (computer science), which borders on technology and graphic design. I also dabble in digital paint (though since I’m a writer I mostly use that to do character portraits and the like), and since my mother is a professional artist I’ve been trained to critique art since I was very little.
The cloud technique is an art thing, yes– portraiture mimicking clouds, usually using digital airbrushing. The biggest problem I had with the gradient is how procedural it looked– going straight up and down, with no variation of color from side to side.