First off, I love the cover of my book, The End Of All Worlds. It’s one of my own illustrations for one, and it follows the woodcut-ish theme that I have been going for with the other illustrations. It also looks really nice in the paperback edition that I have. Unintended, but when I first opened up the box and took out the books I was reminded of the edition of Jane Eyre that I have – off-genre I know – with its simple black and white sketch. I fell in love with my illustration again.
But I have this nagging feeling that its not ‘grabby’ enough to attract people in from the Amazon listings. So I’ve montaged one of my own photographs with one that I’ve purchased (the licensing is good for the first half-million copies by which point I think I would be able to afford the extended licensing) and got something which I think works. I put these out on Facebook as an unscientific straw poll and have so far been surprised by the amount of love for th original.
So what do you think? Tell me in the poll and/or in comments, and just to clarify, if I do decide to change the cover, I think I would keep the original illustration in some form (maybe as fronticepiece inside of the book?). I’m just wondering if I need something more attention grabby to entice people who are not my friends into it…?
