Demon’s Bane Book Cover Contest
Two important things:
- Here’s the prospective book cover for my upcoming novel, Demon’s Bane!
- You could win a free copy of the book! To enter, just comment on this blog post by Nov. 30th, 2009.
Thanks to the six friends who are in the cover photo. Bob, Nadia, Jim, Chung, Zippy, and Mr. Excitement: I will keep your names a secret for your own protection.
To view in higher resolution, just click on the photo:
This is a battle scene at night, lit up by a globe of magical light above the combatants.
To enter the drawing, which ends on Nov. 30th 2009, just leave a (non-spam) comment on this post to let me know what you think of the cover. I’m still open to minor modifications. Is it awesome? Does it suck? Is the text okay? If you saw this cover in a bookstore, would you pick up the book and take a look inside? The winner will receive an autographed copy of Demon’s Bane once the book is in print, sent free of charge anywhere in the world that has post.
The photo was taken in Munich with a Nikon D90, a Nikon SB-600, and a Vivitar 383. You can see the Vivitar in the back with a red gel (a.k.a. the fireball). One subject in the photo is from the Taipei Zoo, although the wolf’s charred backside was only digitally damaged. No wolves were harmed in the creation of this cover. In addition, Bob was not shot with an arrow (which he then had to rip out from his own arm), and Chung was not mauled in the leg by a wolf.
I sincerely hope Nadia didn’t actually throw any fireballs at anyone after I taught her that spell.
Update: see the revised cover here! It’s an illustration instead of a photo.
Related posts:
- Demon’s Bane Book Cover Contest: Take Two
- Book cover update & interview
- Demon’s Bane – October Giveaway!
- David Douglas: Author
- Demon’s Bane available on Amazon US
Tags: David Douglas, Demon's Bane, Nikon D90, Taipei Zoo
p.s. If you’re reading this on Oct. 31st, you can still enter the October drawing by signing up for the Demon’s Bane newsletter: http://daviddouglasbooks.com/node/32
You used what looks like one of my favorite fonts.
Typically for a fantasy cover I think more of a drawing or painting than a photograph so the choice of photo is surprising and interesting. Is the light source supposed to be the red ball, though? It looks like the source is behind the camera.
I’m going to be pretty honest with this, as I think everybody should be. In the end we all want your book to look and be the best!
I don’t like the cover. My reasons? Well, the image itself is not appealing and looks very amateurish (to me at least). In a fantasy book I’m not expecting a cover with real persons, I’m expecting some illustration, or even some cool cover with no characters at all, maybe even with only a stand-out name.
My suggestion: start with changing the text, I guess that’s the easy part. I mean, in the end it’s not the text that’s bothering me, maybe in a better cover it will look alright.
The hard part will be the image itself. Think about some illustration, or using real fotos but “illustration-like”, there’s some cool out-of-the-box software you could use to make the transformation from real to illustration. The other option is just the text with a really nice font and some kind of cool, wavy background. Reach me by mail if you want me to show you or explain better about that idea.
Sorry for the critisizing comment, but I really want to see you selling this one!
Greetings,
Nuno
Thanks CN, I thought it was a good book cover font. The light source is above/behind the camera, the red ball is just a secondary source and adds some nice color highlights to nearby people/objects.
Hi Nuno, thanks for the honesty. I can’t draw something so fancy, so the idea was to stylize this photo (in Photoshop) to look more like a painting. This iteration uses the Rough Pastels effect. I was considering to make it even more stylized than this (wider pastels, longer strokes). Could consider a different effect, too!
Maybe in a week I’ll put up a second cover option after compiling several comments
I don’t like it. Does not look professional. There is nothing magical and mystical about it that takes me to another place. It’s very one dimensional and the title words clash with the picture rather then compliment it.
just my 2cents. good luck.
Hi Tara, thanks for the advice. I’m going to do more stylizing to make it more like a painting. Any color suggestions? I had one friend suggest gold instead of red for the title.
Hi David. Being a typical German I’m going to be blunt, I hope thats ok. I have to agree with Tara and Nuno that it doesn’t look professional and I should know, I do this for a living. The photo is to dark and amateurish and the bevel and gradient overlay on the text is just a big no no. If you really want a photo realistic cover for your book, I’d suggest you try and shoot your models indoors in front of a white background and then make the magic happen with photoshop. In my professional opinion, you should go for something simpler, maybe a symbol or just a really nice magical looking landscape. If you want, shoot me an email and maybe I can give you a few tips to come up with something more professional looking =)
Hi Sebastian, thanks… I’ll definitely shoot you an email for tips. I’m not aiming for photorealistic; the goal is a highly stylized photo, and obviously this isn’t enough because it looks too much like a picture
Hi Dave,
I’m going to agre with all of the above, and say that the cover doesn’t do the quality ofyour writing any justice whatsoever. Fantasy novels tradtionally are painted or done with an illustrative quality.
Using real life models for the cover is actually where most self-published authors go wrong (simply because they don’t have the means to produce it themselves).
However, I’ve been reading this manuscript since chapter 3 on OWW, and I would be honored to mock something up for to the best of my illustration capabilities. I would honor your vision of the cover, and I actually specialize in fantasy.
Please let me know if you’d like me to mock something up for you, and how you would like it done.
Best,
Justin
Hmm…. This is a hard one because you obviously love the book cover. However, I do agree (slightly) with Tara. Not that it looks amateurish, but it doesn’t have the appearance of something you would expect on the cover of a fantasy.
I think it’s the ‘real people’ on the cover that (in my humble opinion) is not enchanting/bewitching or magical enough…..
(I really like the picture of the English Garden).
Then again, as the old adage goes….don’t judge a book by its cover
Wendy´s last blog ..Finding the time to blog.
Wendy, I agree the English Garden pic is somehow more mystical… but wrong form factor :-/
Justin, if I send you the original photo, could you mock something up in the same format?
I’d really like to keep this battle scene as the cover theme.
Sure thing, Dave! What I specifically need from you is more challenging and probably grueling:
I need to know who the characters are on the cover page.
I need to know what you envision for their attire (cloaks, vests, jerkins, cotton shirts, do they carry satchels or pouches, how are weapons transported, etc.) Every little bit of detail you can give me will make the illustration easier. I’ll use creative license on areas I’m unsure of.
Also let me know which scene I’m looking at in the manuscript, so this way I can maybe portray it in a specific mood in the way I illustrate it.
Send the photo and all this information to my gmail account (listed on OWW) as jpg. or best readable format. I’ll do my best to work something up tomorrow and through next week.
Justin
OK Justin, will do…
Folks, stay tuned for a new revision… of course the drawing is still on for those who wish to comment+enter to win!
Hi Dave,
Sorry! Gotta agree with the others. Loved the writing, don’t like the cover. I like the idea of using a scene from the book for the cover, but it’s got to look like art and not a photo. I think even a stylized/modified photo is not good enough, no matter how good the mods are. Generally, fantasy books have people with unrealistic body shapes and other-worldly scenery which is beyond photo modification. Sounds silly, but it’s true. I hate to say it, but I think you should start again from scratch rather than trying to modify the existing. Sorry to disappoint you, and also sorry to disappoint your friends who posed for it.
Wishing you every success!
Sheryl
Hi Dave,
I think it was a good effort for someone who is not a professional illustrator but I must agree with everybody else that it doesn’t really seem to be a good cover i.e. one that will get people to buy the book.
Perhaps you should try with fewer subjects on the cover, say just the wolf and one person and then use the hints already given in other posts.
Best of luck with the book.
Neville
Dave – my first impression was no. I don’t like it. With a title like Demon’s Bane and from the limited excerpts that I have read, I expected something a little more meaty. Something like a superposition of the demon spirit inside of the bear – think backlit aura and evil looking. Or maybe a closeup of an aninmal’s eyeball like a big deer eye with the demon form captured in the pupil. Something artistic for sure. The best part of fantasy is that nobody sees the characters the same and it kind of ruins it when you add so much photographic detail – especially at night. I like the idea and the passages I read though. – Keep at it – I am jealous – I have always wanted to write a fantasy book.. Later
Tonya (who has read more fantasy than me by a factor of 2) says her first impression was no. It looked posed and fake. We did just go to the Renaissance Festival in Crownsville MD 3 weeks back, and it looks like a picture we took with the fill in flash. Sorry…
Thanks, all, for the further comments! I’ll update the blog post later this week with a real illustration of this scene, more fantasy-oriented, dark & evil, action-packed, and imagination-grabbing… courtesy of the fantastic artist who volunteered earlier in the thread
Can’t wait to check it out!
Put it here ASAP!!!!!
Hi, do not know anything about covers but I read a lot and I would give this a miss because it is telling me what you have in your mind and that is oh so not selling it to me, it looks like a childish boy’s story, sorry not good at expressing… good luck!
Hi Dave,
I agree with the other guys. When using a photo, use a landscape with no characters, or in alternative, characters very far away (not the case).
As for Jason´s idea, eyeball and stuff, that would be great and highly appealing. Although I realize you are a writer not an image artist. Sorry I cant help you with that. I´m more of a reader.
Hoping for the final version
Thanks, José! I have actually revised the cover and it’s now an illustration… I’ve just put the new post’s link here.
http://blog.daviddouglasbooks.com/index.php/2009/11/demons-bane-book-cover-contest-2/