Cover Design - Steven R. Southard (Poseidon's Scribe)

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An Extraordinary Cover Reveal

You’re expecting another episode in my blogpost series following the path of Phileas Fogg in Around the World in Eighty Days. Sorry, but he and his companions are still on their way from Kolkata to Hong Kong aboard the Rangoon.

Today, I’m revealing the cover for the upcoming anthology Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne. This is the first fiction anthology produced by the North American Jules Verne Society. I’m proud to have been, along with Father Matthew Hardesty, a co-editor for this project.

In the cover image, artist Amanda Bergloff captured the far-reaching imagination of Verne in her depiction of a squid, balloon airship, deep-sea diver, compass, and moon.

Within the anthology, you’ll find short stories by today’s authors, each exploring some aspect of the vast Verne oeuvre, each echoing the excitement and adventure of that French Father of Science Fiction. It includes tales by Mike Adamson, Joel Allegretti, Gustavo Bondoni, Demetri Capetanopoulos, Brenda Carre, Eric Choi, Christopher M. Geeson, Kelly A. Harmon, David A. Natale, Alison L. Randall, Janice Rider, Michael Schulkins, and Joseph S. Walker.

The Society is working with the publisher to finalize the anthology itself. It’s expected to launch sometime in the next few months. To find out when and where you can buy this extraordinary anthology, stay tuned to the Society’s website, or to this website by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 30, 2022Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Judging Covers

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but some of your potential readers will, and you don’t want them wincing at the sight of your book. Today we’ll be judging covers, or at least reviewing what makes a good one.

After you read this post, please check out Derek Murphy’s take on cover design here. He goes into more depth. Although I’ll only be discussing fiction covers, his post also addresses non-fiction.

Resources

Where do you get cover art? Here are some sources:

If you sold your book to a publisher, the publisher may do your cover. They will likely work with you and do their best to accommodate your preferences.
If you’re also an artist or graphic designer, you can make your own cover art. If you’re manipulating images found on-line, be careful not to violate public domain restrictions. Sites like Dollar Photo Club and Dreamstime offer thousands of images at reasonable prices.
You can pay someone to do your cover art for you. Perhaps you have an artist friend, or you can get in touch with a talented artist at a local high school or college through the art department. There are websites such as 99Designs where you can have artists compete to make your cover.

Techniques

Derek Murphy’s post spells out the secrets to good book cover art in detail, but his overall message is that people will only glance at a cover for a moment, so it has to grab them. Your cover has to convey its message in a couple of seconds. All eight of Murphy’s cover design secrets flow from this principle. I’ll discuss each technique with respect to the covers of my books, or anthologies in which my stories appear.

1. Make it “Pop.” Use contrast between light and dark, or opposing colors. The cover of 2012 AD uses that technique to show off the explosion.

2. Lots of space. Avoid clutter. The cover of “Leonardo’s Lion” is simple; the reader’s eye doesn’t have to wander all over to get the point.

3. Make it emotional. Your cover should be beautiful; it should appeal to the heart and make readers feel something. Remember, readers of different genres react emotionally to different things. The cover of “A Steampunk Carol” has the brass gears that steampunk lovers enjoy, and adds the red and green flowers of Christmas.

4. Use a subtitle, teaser or tagline (and a review!). It’s an effective technique, but none of my covers so far have used this.

5. Pick the right font (and effects). The font should be readable and should help deliver the book’s message. In Quest for Atlantis, the main title font has an ancient (or at least olden) look. For “The Sea-Wagon of Yantai,” the title font has an Asian feel.

6. Make it personal (but not cheesy). It’s good to have people on your covers, though Murphy argues against silhouettes. “Ripper’s Ring” gives you a glaring Jack the Ripper. We did use silhouettes for “Within Victorian Mists” but I think we did it effectively, to convey dancing on clouds.

7. If it’s too hard, go simple. Murphy argues against trying to cram in all the ideas you’d like to convey. I think “A Tale More True” illustrates a reasonable amount of simplicity. The reader has to wonder how a tricorn hat ended up there.

8. A little more on text placement. Murphy makes some additional points about text contrast with background, as well as fitting in short words (a, by, in, or the) in among the larger words. I like how the tower in Hides the Dark Tower seems to punch through the word ‘tower.’

As writers, we’re not expected to be great cover designers. If you are, or would like to be, then more power to you. For the rest of us, we must depend on (and pay for) the skill of others such as Derek Murphy. Leave the judging of book covers to the experts; that’s the advice of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 25, 2015Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Cover Teaser

Here’s the amazing cover designed by artist Charlotte Holley for the next book to come out in the What Man Hath Wrought series. The book contains two stories: “To Be First” and “Wheels of Heaven” and will be published by Gypsy Shadow Publishing.

The image captures the essence of both stories and is aesthetically engaging. As for the stories themselves, I’ll post more info about them as we get closer to the book’s launch date, currently planned for July 1st.

Sorry to leave you in suspense about the stories, but I’m actually thinking of your welfare. Too much excitement and anticipation too early could be harmful to your psyche, so I’ll release information in stages to avoid such damage. No need to thank me; it’s all part of the services provided by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 28, 2014Poseidon's ScribePermalink

FAQs About My Latest Book

Ever since I’ve been dropping hint after hint about my upcoming book (Rallying Cry and Last Vessel of Atlantis), questions have been pouring in. Flooding in. Give me a break, I’m drowning here! More questions came in than I could answer individually.

So I paid for some time on a supercomputer that compiled all the questions, sorted them, combined similar ones, performed complex statistical analyses, and spit out a list of the most frequently asked questions.

Below are those FAQs, complete with answers.

1. What is the book about? In “Rallying Cry,” an aimless youth meets two old geezers who spin bizarre war stories. They tell of a secret World War I regiment in France with ship-sized helicopters and mechanized walking tanks. Just as an inspiring shout can move soldiers to action, perhaps all Kane really needs to turn his life around is a rallying cry. In “Last Vessel of Atlantis,” a ship captain and his crew of explorers return to find Atlantis gone. While facing violent savages, braving fierce storms, and solving internal disputes, they must somehow ensure their advanced Atlantean civilization is not lost forever.

2. Why two stories in one book? I was in a generous mood.

3. Why are these two particular stories combined? They seem so different. Actually, they’re both perfect fits for the What Man Hath Wrought series, which contains stories of alternate history involving people grappling with new technology. The tales are quite different, though, but that means any reader would be bound to like one of them, at least. That makes the book a pretty good purchase, I’d say.

4. What inspired you to write these stories? I’ve written about that before…here and here.

5. That’s a great cover. Who designed it? It is a wonderful cover. Charlotte Holley of Gypsy Shadow Publishing designed it. The bearded soldier gazes at something while a huge steampunk airship glides overhead and a big explosion goes off in the background.

6. Where can I buy the book? Right now you can get it at Smashwords and Amazon. Soon it will be available elsewhere, too.

7. You wrote an Atlantis story before, didn’t you? What a memory you have! My Atlantis-based story, “The Vessel” was published several years ago in an Atlantis anthology. “Last Vessel of Atlantis” is that same story, with a title change and a few other alterations. Definitely worth enjoying again.

8. When will you have a print version rather than an e-book? When the What Man Hath Wrought series is complete, I’m thinking about having a print version of the series. It won’t be for a little while yet, since I have more stories I’d like to add to WMHW.

9. What’s the next story in your What Hath Man Wrought series? But that would spoil the surprise!

Thanks for submitting your questions. I’d invite more, but the deluge nearly crashed the supercomputer last time and almost tripped a wide sector of our national electrical power grid. Let’s avoid tempting that fate, shall we? I suggest you read the book, post a review, and before long there will be another book by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 8, 2014Poseidon's ScribePermalink

The Publishing Times, They Are A’Changin’

To distort a line from a Bob Dylan song, times are indeed a’changin’ in the publishing industry. In the long march from storytellers to clay tablets to papyrus scrolls to bound books to electronic books, each technology has brought a revolution and we’re now in the middle of one.

After Gutenberg’s printing press and right up until the Internet, the book publishing industry had optimized into a fairly lean and stable operation, full of specialized tasks. Each task was fairly well understood.

The writer wrote, and sought an agent. The agent sought a publishing house and handled all the contractual details for the writer. At the publishing house, of which there were only a few big ones, the editor polished the prose. Upon agreement about the text, the publisher took care of cover design, printing, distribution, and marketing to booksellers. The bookseller catered to the reading public, offering books for sale from their stores.

Despite all the middlemen, that process had been pretty well honed such that readers could still obtain books inexpensively.

With the advent of the Internet, much has changed, and it’s got all of the middlemen wondering what their future role will be, if any.

For the writer, there are software word processors and Internet research options, but not much else has changed. A writer still must create the prose.

At the other end, the reader has more options, including e-readers and audiobooks, but for the most part reading is unchanged.

But agents, editors, cover designers, marketers, distributors, and booksellers are all left wondering what’s going to happen to them. These days, writers can connect directly with readers, bypassing all the former steps. An author can work with a single website such as Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, and others, to get e-books directly to the reading public.

These websites offer many services, but the writer must do most of the tasks formerly accomplished by middlemen. This includes reviewing the contract, editing, cover design, and marketing.

So where is all this going? At what sort of equilibrium state will all this turmoil settle out?

It may be too early to tell, but I think there will be places for all the publishing middlemen in the future, assuming they adapt to an Internet-based world. Some writers still need agents, editors, cover designers, and distributors. Some readers still want bound books. Much like the continued (but low) demand for horseshoes and oil lamps, there will be niche markets for all these functions.

As for me, I have yet to take the full plunge into self-publishing. So far, with my short stories, I’ve been dealing with an independent ebook publisher, and with publishers of anthologies.

If Bob Dylan’s right, and the times they are a’changin’, where do you think the book publishing industry is headed? What change would you like to see? Leave me a comment and perhaps we can change things together, just you and—

Poseidon’s Scribe

December 29, 2013Poseidon's ScribePermalink