Evolution of a book cover

Writing "Blood Picnic and other stories" was no problem. Arranging it was a pain. Formatting it was a huge pain.

But the cover... ah, the cover...

I went through various iterations of it. Clean keys, bloody keys, etc. I finally settled on a version I liked:


It looks pretty good. Bold visual elements, title and author byline in a clearly legible font with good contrast, font size large enough to read in a thumbnail. Great, I'm good to go!

A screen-capture from Amazon
Crap. When the book is on the Amazon webpage, the little Kindle icon cuts off the last part of my name. There is a Tony Nolan, but he's an evangelical preacher.

So, back to the GIMP for a redesign. After some discussions on Twitter, I moved my name to the top, added some visual breaks and let the title be more central to the page.


What do you think?

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1 comment:

  1. David RobinsonMay 26, 2011, 1:16:00 PM

    Interesting that you use Gimp, Tony. I had it on my old computer but I had a lot of problems with it crashing.

    I have Photoshop 4 now, but it came with the computer.

    Must watch that Kindle Icon, too. I've never checked my covers to see if it blocks anything.

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