If you saw this cover, what sort of book would you expect to find behind it?

[lavenderbard]

This is some cover art we are considering for one of my stories, which my husband has decided he wants to try publishing. He notes that it does not match the current trends in cover designs. So, will it attract the right kind of audience for the story inside? Will it attract anyone at all? Should we dump this approach and go for something a little more fashionable? Should we keep it, but maybe fix a few things… and if so, what? (If you left click on it and load it in another window, you can get a slightly larger version.)

Here’s the whole wrap around image without the text:

Mirrored on My Website.

Comments

[mneme]

I like it! It's stylized, and I'd expect a story with some old-fashioned swashbuckling, with that art and title (even without visible swords--but then, the Baroness Orczy proved you could do swash and buckle without swordfights (mostly) over a century ago).

[lavenderbard]

Thanks so much for answering!

And, I'll confess, swords do make an appearance. :)
The scene I've tentatively picked out for the cover of Volume Two (assuming we stick with this approach) features one. Also a motorcycle.

Trust me, it makes perfect sense in context.

[yhlee]

I like the concept of the art, and I would expect swashbuckling, but I'm concerned that the color scheme is too drab. Something has to be done with the title/author, too, to make it pop more, especially with that font; I can barely read it. If someone fiddled with levels to make the background elements paler--keep the mysterious mistiness without making me feel like I'm stuck in a poorly-lit room--I could go for this.

[lavenderbard]

Drab. Hmmm. That is a very valid point.
(The artist protests that the image had a great deal more contrast before the publisher asked for "more fog" and then "even more fog".) We will see if anything can be done to improve matters.

And I was afraid that the font might not be as clear to other people as it was to me. (The disadvantage of already knowing what it says!) Both Boyd and I felt that a script font "fit" , but you weren't the only person with this complaint, and he's already started looking to see if he can find a more legible script font... or if not, something with a similar feel.

As for making it pop... Hmm.... What about if it went on a black background with a fancy scrolly gold edging around it -- like a decorative plaque or name plate or whatever?

[yhlee]

A fancy plaque would work for me and would fit the implied mood of the story. :-)

Script fonts are tough! So I am the world's worst icon-maker, but what I discovered is that so many of them are beautiful but hard to read, especially at small sizes (or, in the case of a book, from a distance). (Current icon as a case in point.)

[lizvogel]

At first glance: A kid's book about... um... a Titanic-style shipwreck?

On second glance: ...maybe with something Japanese going on in it. Or French. (It's the sleeves on the standing figure, and the collar on the seated one.)

After reading the other comments: I did have to blink at the script to parse the first word of the title, but on the other hand it was pretty enough to hold my attention long enough to do so.

It's a very pretty piece of art. It could do with a bit less fog, however. (That's probably what made me think Titanic, come to think of it.)

[lavenderbard]

Thanks for your reply!

Alas for me, it isn't actually a children's book. I wanted to convey the sort of feel of the old-fashioned adventures like Verne and Sabitini and Dumas. So I'm sort of succeeding and failing simultaneously, because people are getting the lighter "less gritty and scary and grim than the typical adult fantasy" sense I wanted conveyed, but they associate that feel with children's literature. In fact, the books I wanted to invoke are frequently found in the children's section.

So it's a good thing and yet... this book has... er... well, at one point my teen-aged daughter jotted down a margin note that read: "Do you mind? There's a virgin in the room trying to read!" The 19-year-old first-person heroine starts out largely innocent but gets married two-fifths of the way through the first volume. She's by no means shy, and although you don't get a complete blow-by-blow description of her wedding night, she doesn't just skip past it either. All fine and good for many teens, but not likely to be popular with the younger crowd.


The Titanic reaction is very, very, very appropriate though, as long as you skip the part where it sinks. They end up on two different ocean liners very like it... (with the whole being lost at sea in a tiny boat and nearly getting killed by mercenary sea-raiders sandwiched in the middle) :)

And you can't imagine my delight when I discovered that one of the very few adult males survivors of the Titanic was apparently Japanese. He was one of a bare handful of people successfully pulled out of the water. My character isn't actually Japanese because there is no Japan. (This story has actually got a imaginary-earthlike-world-without-magic setting). But the place he's from is inspired by east Asia, just as the place she is from is inspired by Europe. So reading about "the Japanese passenger" getting pulled out of the water after the Titanic sunk had an extra frisson of awesome on top of the inherent awesomeness of the facts themselves. :)

(My family was really startled when I started apparently researching ocean liner disasters -- it wasn't so, I was just researching the liners themselves. But almost all the best material that can be found in the library was focussing on ships that had sunk.)

I wish I could keep the that script font, it's so elegant, and pretty and in period.
But alas, people really do need to be able to read the title easily. And not everyone is going to stop and geek over the font. :(

As for the overabundance of fog I refuse to take responsibility for it. That was my husband's fault, and now that someone--plenty of someone's-- besides me are having problems with it, something will be done about it.

Thanks again for replying!

[lizvogel]

(Sorry for the vastly belated reply. I plead NaNo. And, well, laziness.)

I think what made me think "kid's book" is that the seated figure reminds me of some classic French kid's book that was pushed at me when I was a child (the name of which now escapes me). And there's... something about the front of the lifeboat; it's not cartoonish, not by any means, but something in the style is twigging Children's Section for me.

Mind you, modern-day book marketing hardly ever has the effect on me that it supposedly does on most people, so I may be anomalous data.

I will say, the problem with doing something "more fashionable" is that everybody else is doing it too, kind of by definition. If you like this and it suits the book, maybe better to go with it and stand out from the herd than to do what the current wisdom dictates and end up looking just like every other book out there.

Nifty Titanic facts! My housemate dragged me to a Titanic exhibit recently; I've never been one for ocean liner disasters either, but the social and economic history surrounding it is just fascinating.

And not everyone is going to stop and geek over the font. :(

Their loss. ;-)