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Originally Posted by Gregg Bell
Wow. Thanks Dazrin. You are really making me think. (Thank you for checking my covers. I'm attaching a screenshot of them.)
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You are welcome, I don't normally get into these items but this has been interesting for me and I hope helpful to you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gregg Bell
Here's the deal. I am not a genre writer. If someone put a gun to my head and said, 'What genre do you come closest to?' I would say, Suspense.
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That does change my perceptions of the three other books. I didn't read the blurbs, just went from the covers.
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Originally Posted by Gregg Bell
However, (and this was my fault of course) I went along with the romance nature of the covers the new cover designer did, figuring the bottom portions of the covers suggested the non-romance elements (and that the blurbs would help too).
Several people have since told me that the covers for THE FIND and JAMIE'S GAMBLE do not fit the story. They say that the books are suspense and the covers should reflect that.
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Brandon Sanderson has a quote in one of his writing workshops/classes about fulfilling promises, paraphrased poorly:
a successful book needs to make promises to readers and then fulfill them in interesting and unexpected ways. He was talking more about content than covers but I think it applies to covers to. For those three books I think the promise is "this is a romance" so I can understand confusion if they are more suspense than romance.
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Originally Posted by Gregg Bell
(I'll attach a screenshot of Lehane's latest books.)
Yes, he has a slightly different font for THE DROP but everything else is the same font (including title and name) ...
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His fonts are fairly close to each other but he has at least three different fonts for his titles. The first two books (Mystic River and The Drop) use different title and author fonts from the last three. He has also changed the kerning of the fonts between World Gone By and The Given Day, even if they are the same font, so that makes a difference too.
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Originally Posted by Gregg Bell
So your post has really made me think about what to use for the fonts (whether the same or different) in the titles. At this point I'm still leaning toward using the same font (Bebas Neue) for the titles.
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Looking at the samples from Lehane, it certainly can be done and done well. I look forward to seeing how yours come out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gregg Bell
Like now, I'm looking at SAVING BABY and AMERICAN BALLERINA. Both books have identical fonts, but I wouldn't think they were part of a series. SAVING BABY says suspense. I (LOL) don't know what AMERICAN BALLERINA says, but I don't know, I don't think either are pigeon holed into a specific genre label, and actually I think that is a good thing. (The cover designer who did the later covers did a cover for SAVING BABY and it was of an empty crib and it just seemed so cliche to me.)
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Yup, I like them both. Changing the color, size, and location (left side vs centered) make them distinct even with the font the same.