Designing a book cover is no easy task. Apart from the artistic challenge, there is all that stuff about subliminal messages. A potential reader responds automatically at an emotional level with a cover. It sends signals, telling you something about the story, it can give the book life and it can kill it dead. As more people buy online and convert to eReaders, some might think the cover is not so important. That is not true. I worry about it obsessively.

I have a number of ideas and as I work through them, I would appreciate any thoughts you might have. I include three potentials here. They are extremely rough but I hope you will see past that to the concept. While it is important for me to know which cover you like best, it is also important that it fits the book. Since you, dear reader, know more than anyone else about Dreamwords apart from me, I just need to fill you in on a couple of details.

Although Book One was almost claustrophobic and had a small set of characters, the story opens up to a sweeping adventure set in a future that has much in common with the past. With themes of love and family, power and superstition, we travel through a world where technology is everywhere and yet invisible to those who fear the empty houses and towns that dot the land around them. Swords and castles, brutality and love are reminiscent of a Braveheart setting and yet what they see and hear in their heads has more to do with those who have gone before than the taboos the inhabitants invent to explain them.

With that in mind, would you please tell me what you think of when you see these covers? Comments to FBook appreciated

 

Thank you for your help.

 

Paul