Judging A Book By Its Cover

My students are always tossing books back into the pile because they don't like the covers. While I chide them to read the back, give it a flip through, or scan the first page I have to admit that I'm as guilty as the next of the same thing. Therefore, when Solstice opened the door for us to contract for our own cover artists I ran with it. I loved the cover I got from Solstice for The Shattered Prism. It was so cool and such a neat fantasy cover. I actually requested the same artist when it was time to design the cover for Walking With Shadows. I was told, at the time, that first artist no longer worked for Solstice, so I went with another. The second artist tried. She really did, to match the look of the first cover. It was alright, but never thrilled me as much as that first one.

Fast forward almost an entire school year. I finish Dark Rainbow's End and start shopping around for cover artists. I track down the artist from book one and ask her to do the cover for book three. I'm blown away. Now, I'm in a bit of a quandry. Do I keep book two's cover? Even though it doesn't stylistically match book one and three now? Or do I pony up the cash and get book two's cover redone? I thought about it for a good long while. I flipped through other trilogies on my shelf. The fact that they all had the same stylistic covers decided me. I had the cover redone.

So, now, it's live all over Amazon and now just updated here on my blog. I have to admit, while one person I showed it to said it was busy, it got a lot of traffic by my table at DukCon. Shadows and Rainbow were the two cards that were more often than not picked up.

We'll see if it helps with the sales. I wonder how many other people judge books by their covers? Here it is . . .

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