more covers...

One thing about it, my first drafts of cover concepts sure inspired others. Here is one sent to me (below). I like the seeming simplicity of the background, it doesn't rival the people. Keep in mind that these artists have not read the book, so they are working off of my concepts.

In the book, the people are the story. There is little discription of the estate. I'm sure I'm not the only American with a somewhat lacking understanding of British estates or council estates as I'm learning to call them. That might even be where we borrowed the idea of HOAs - Home Owner's Associations that govern the basic conduct of the area (housing development).

So back to art... this is balanced. If I could, I'd remove the larger tree on the left because I'm thinking less about art and more about getting the copy on the back cover to pop out to the shopper. On this one, I'd probably transluse the spine and back cover background. Lots of nice space on the front for the title, but not sure about where the author name goes.

There is a bit of unwritten rule about author names. If you look at the big name writers, their name is almost always larger or as large as the tile. With lesser known writers, the pitch is to have a catchy title and use it to sell the book more than the author's branding.

I like the people placement on this one because the story is the doctor (the guy in the middle). Gotta have doc's feet in the scene though. That drives me nuts to have him standing on his lower legs.


This one takes Glyn's background photo and fixes many of the elements that drove everyone crazy with my concept drafts. The focus in the title and the photo needs to be on the doctor. He is very much the main character. Nice artistic touch to reverse the light/dark on the spine from the light/dark in the background. I don't think I would have thought of doing that. That makes the spine text tricky and it certainly needs to have the author name on the spine and a copule other fixes. Ignore the fence post, we aren't going to leave that, but drafts are concept pieces, the details get worked out later.

This one takes the background and moves it to a residential setting. Either works for the storyline. I rather not have a pink tint, but that is easily fixed. Mostly the same issues exist in this one as the others, but as I said, this is a concept stage of development.

No way is this book that fat, but nice pitch for the concept.

The main point of posting this exercise is to make writers aware that while it is easy to upload to one of many online DIY sites, just plopping a cover on a template isn't all that great of an idea.

Anyone who wants to play with concepts for this cover, be my guest. Send them to me in an email, preferably as a pdf file.