12-31-2019, 07:21 PM | #1 |
cacoethes scribendi
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Kobo's Best Indie Cover Contest
The link to the 10 finalists here.
Shows you what I know. My favourite of the finalists is coming equal last, while the current leader looks (to me) both generic and inappropriate to the genre and blurb. |
01-02-2020, 06:45 AM | #2 |
Wizard
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Sadly, these things tend to be more popularity contests then about the actual covers.
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01-02-2020, 07:27 AM | #3 | |
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In this case, it's not as bad. What I think is the third best cover is in first place. |
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01-02-2020, 08:06 AM | #4 |
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Or that good. I like the Twilight covers - the whole series. They stand out. They have mystery. They merely suggest romance rather than leaping up and clawing your eyes out with Ts & As. They don't particularly say YA, but still, I think they have rather more class than most of that genre.
There are a couple of books in the Kobo poll that I think are conceptually very good, but fail in their execution. Leaves me wondering if they went with too early a draft rather than pushing on to really refine it. |
01-02-2020, 08:58 AM | #5 | |
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01-02-2020, 02:53 PM | #6 | |
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The covers are all similar with black, white and red. But they aren't same-y. They match the themes of the books. They are very well done. |
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01-02-2020, 05:30 PM | #7 | |
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01-02-2020, 06:43 PM | #8 | |
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Thus the main fault I can give the Twilight covers is that they don't clearly say YA, not that that seems to hurt their sales at all. Mind you, the requirement that a cover sells the content does make the competitions like the linked Kobo one problematic, since most voters have probably not read all contestants and so can't judge whether the cover is doing its job properly. |
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01-02-2020, 06:51 PM | #9 | |
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01-02-2020, 08:29 PM | #10 |
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Whatever the original intention of the poll (if it had one beyond being some end of year filler), you may well be right as to the result, especially if a significant proportion of the voters think the same as you do. But that does make it a truly pointless exercise.
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01-03-2020, 09:14 AM | #11 |
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I disagree. When you do a cover vote, you look at how good the cover is. But unfortunately in a lot of cases, it's popularity contest and the covers don't actually matter. Like what happened on Goodreads with their cover poll.
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01-03-2020, 07:30 PM | #12 | |
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It is possible that a book gained popularity as a result of its attractive cover. It is possible that a cover looks attractive to people because it matches other books in a popular genre and so just becomes a refinement of something people already associate with enjoyment. And speaking of associations, think Pavlov's dogs: "every time I picked up that image I had a good time so I find that image attractive", sort of thing. * Any contest that looks only at the cover image without considering whether it is appropriate to the content is not looking for good covers, it is only looking for popular covers. |
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01-04-2020, 12:05 AM | #13 | |
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I'm going to venture that your disdain for the covers is tired to your dislike of the books and their fans. Your judgement of the quality of the covers is irrational. |
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01-04-2020, 12:10 AM | #14 |
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In my opinion, the best book cover is the cover for The Great Gatsby:
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01-04-2020, 07:47 AM | #15 |
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Pretend for a moment I was a Stephen King level author. I then put out a book with an okayish cover but inside was the typical quality and content that my readers like. I then enter a cover contest. I decide I want to win the cover contest so I send an email out to my newsletter "Yo! My stuff is up for a vote, go vote!"
Who do you think would win that contest? The person with the best cover, or the biggest loyal following. I will leave the answer as an exercise for the reader. |
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