Fantasy Book Covers

For those of you who enjoy my fantasy books, you'll be interested to learn that I'm finishing a new book in my "Starlight Raven" series (aka Yurt the Next Generation). It's not quite finished yet, but I've got a cover! 

As indie authors as we are called (independent author/publishers) have proliferated, writing and selling both ebooks and paperbacks, a parallel industry has grown up, to edit books or format them or illustrate them. I edit and format my own books, but my graphic artist skills aren't up to painting my own covers. (I've got some covers that are based on my photographs, but I have never, just for example, been able to take a photo of a purple flying beast whose skin becomes an air cart.)

So I've gone to the company "EbookLaunch" for the covers for my "Starlight Raven" series. Dane, who did the previous two covers in the series, is doing "The Sapphire Ring." Getting a picture that shows what you want goes through several stages, starting with a sketch.

Then the picture is colored in, and finally the whole cover emerges.

A book cover is an illustration of the book, but that's not really its purpose in life, and sometimes it won't even illustrate a specific scene. Rather, its purpose is to suggest the genre of the book (for example, you are unlikely to look at this and think space exploration or pirate story or a near-future political thriller), and to intrigue the potential reader. With luck this person will dip into the book, like how it's written, and buy the book. 

So if the cover seems intriguing, look forward to the book! 

 © C. Dale Brittain 2020