Saturday, October 04, 2014

Book Covers

One of the people I asked for help in picking a cover for my book was J. Kingston Pierce who runs a marvelous blog called Killer Covers. He confirmed that the one we eventually chose had the greatest impact visually and in terms of giving you some idea what the story was about. I liked them all.



I don't look at book jackets all that carefully. But there is one series I like. I think it is a great idea to link books in a series as much as possible and yet still keep each one distinct. Here is my favorite: Rennie Airth's. Same set-up but different color fonts and different pictures. Jeff discusses this more fully on Killer Covers.

What is your favorite book jacket and what series has done such a good job in linking its jackets?





9 comments:

Scott D. Parker said...

I'm in the same boat--picking covers--as you are. And I love the covers you featured. My plan for my few series is to do exactly that: common look/feel per series and alter various elements.

Frankly, a favorite series of covers for me is the Richard Castle series. Same concept: common name and title with color hue changes and background images.

Right now, I have three series I'm working on getting out. One is a World War II thing, and the other two are present day. I'm working on making the WWII-era stuff kinda like this Airth's series: graphic images w/o photos. The modern ones, well, I have ideas on those, too.

pattinase (abbott) said...

You are ambitious, Scott. I can hardly keep one book in my head at a time.
Gorgeous, Margot.

George said...

Margot is right about Tom Adams. That's a great series of covers. I'm a big fan of Robert McGinnis' covers. The covers he painted for the Mike Shayne series and Carter Brown series are classics.

Scott D. Parker said...

I love painted covers and McGinnis was one of the greats. In the future, as my books turn a few years old, I want to convert the covers to painted covers. I'm just not there yet. Heck, I haven't even published a one yet, but that'll change in the next few months.

The Passing Tramp said...

I just got the last Airth and, yes, I like to art too!

Unknown said...

Hard Case Crime has done great work for their authors, Penguin with the James Bond novels, and Vintage with Eric Ambler and Ross MacDonald.

Prashant C. Trikannad said...

Patti, I liked all the illustrated covers of the pocket-sized Erle Stanley Gardner novels.

Rick Robinson said...

There are a series of Christie covers that I like much better, but I can't find out who the artist is/was. To me, they're reminiscent of 1920s era art. Here is a link to some of them.

http://www.abebooks.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/agatha-christie-books.jpg

Rick Robinson said...

and another
https://ia801500.us.archive.org/zipview.php?zip=/1/items/olcovers0/olcovers0-L.zip&file=1565-L.jpg