Alright, everybody! I’ve gone down to the wire with this… But seeing as how my book is about to get published, and I still am not 100% sure about which version of the cover I’m going to use, I though I’d let you readers see them and get a bit of feedback, hopefully. Once I make my final decision, I will be taking down this post.
Okay, first I will show you the redesign of The Inventor’s Son’s cover. It’s not radically different, but I wanted to make the cover look more like it was a real book cover…
This is the redesigned Inventor’s Son cover.
And now I want to show you the two covers I came up with for The Scientist’s Son. I had a really hard time with this book cover, mostly because, unlike gears, which are so very symbolic of Steampunk and of inventions that it was never a question that would be the theme I’d use. But for a scientist, most symbols are not from that era, but later (like the sign for atoms, etc.), so I had to improvise.
This is one of them, a series of hexagons put together.
…Or this one with a skull, which makes it creepy, scientific, and possibly more Steampunk.
I have my reasons for not using stock photos and images of people in my covers, not the least of which is that I can’t really find many Steampunk themed stock photos that aren’t of grown men and women. I also was leery of having a face on a cover that is supposed to represent the main character. Also, the covers represent books that my main character finds among his father’s writings that help him to follow the clues to locate him. In The Inventor’s Son, he is given a red journal, and in The Scientist’s Son, a green one.
So now that you’ve seen them, let me know what you think, please! PS, I am going to do a new cover for The Beginning also, but it will be very much like Book 1’s cover, only a darker backgroud color.
I like the skull one
Thanks! That’s 1 for skull, 0 for hexes!
I like the skull. It reads clean and clear.
Still, because I am an incurable meddler I was wondering if you might want to try moving that center “master-cog” from the hex cover onto the brain pan of the skull.
That “master-cog” DEFINITELY reads steampunk!
That’s an idea. I did consider putting a gear in the design somewhere so that the Steampunk theme is more evident. I can experiment with it. I was even thinking of adding some gears into the frame around the skull. But that would require my changing the frames on my other two books as well, and that might make too many gears. So your idea sounds like it might work. Thanks! Now that’s 2 for the skull and 0 for the hexes.