Believe it or not, I didn’t come into the indie publishing with all the skills I needed.

For example, cover design. I am looking at covers all the time, watching trends and designs.

Every time I go into a bookstore, I look at covers. I get the daily emails for Bookbud as well as Fussy Librarian, as well as a couple of trad pub emails, primarily just to look at the covers.

Since I started back in 2011, I’ve already seen covers evolving. For example, fantasy covers (can) use less realistic forms now, more abstracts.

This week, the free fiction is the first short story that inspired the whole Shadow Wars trilogy: The Third Raven.

I thought I’d show you the evolution of the cover for this story.

Take #1: Really ugly.

I remember having a very difficult time finding the art for this one. I tried a bunch of different things before I finally landed with this one. But I was never really happy with it.

Take #2: Just as ugly

What I was trying to do was to tie the short story in with the novel, The Raven and the Dancing Tiger. That title font was close to what I was using on the novel cover.

Take #3: Better art, good, not great.

So I finally found the art that I wanted. But this still, to my more developed eye, looks less professional than it could.

Take #4: Much better!

Remember last week I posted about how I write lots and lots of different things? I’m trying now to tie together the pieces that a single reader might like through the author name font. So you’ll see this font on all of The Shadow Wars pieces, on The Changeling Troll, as well as The Clockwork Fairy series. (NOTE: I haven’t updated the covers everywhere. Am working on it!)

So read the story that inspired this trilogy. It will be free here for a week, and is $0.99 everywhere else.

Enjoy!

 

Here and gone!