Covers for a series

658 Views 9 Replies 9 Participants Last post by Nope, Mar 13, 2015

Hasbeen

Discussion Starter · Mar 13, 2015

My next book in my series Blood War is about to come out.

It is time to make a decision about how the cover should look. I have found one that looks similar to the first cover with the same colors and general theme. (see below)

Should I go with similar covers in a series or should I change the cover for each of the books?

i know a number of you have series and I would appreciate your input on this one. I keep going back and forth.

Any real world lessons learned would be appreciated.

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1 - 10 of 10 Posts

writer-artist-mom

· #2 · Mar 13, 2015

I may not be an expert, but I do have a degree in multimedia/design. I think it's very important for author branding to keep things similar. In an episodic story/serial some authors even have the exact same image on their covers and just change the title. For a full-length book series, I am doing this for my second book:

Keep same font, size and placement for title and author name
Change main image, but with same model/character (or recognizable object/building) in a different pose with different background
Change color scheme - color of text matching color palette of images or white/black to stand out
If you have quotes/endorsements/subtitles to put on the cover then make sure they have the same font, size and placement as well

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nonbreaking space

· #3 · Mar 13, 2015

+1 to what eliza said.

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ML-Larson

· #4 · Mar 13, 2015

Yeah, series should definitely have the same look to the covers. I'm not personally a fan of the ones who reuse the same image and just slightly change the colours, but there should definitely be an overall theme to all of your covers within a series. It tells readers that it's a series without even making them read anything.

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Lydniz

· #5 · Mar 13, 2015

ML-Larson said:
Yeah, series should definitely have the same look to the covers. I'm not personally a fan of the ones who reuse the same image and just slightly change the colours, but there should definitely be an overall theme to all of your covers within a series. It tells readers that it's a series without even making them read anything.

I do love your covers by the way, ML. I'm a sucker for a strongly branded series.

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ML-Larson

· #6 · Mar 13, 2015

Lydniz said:
I do love your covers by the way, ML. I'm a sucker for a strongly branded series.

Thanks. They're covers that would get me to click on them, so the person who did the original design for them definitely did something right.

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Lisa Blackwood

· #7 · Mar 13, 2015

I 100% agree that branding is important to a series. As a reader, I find it just makes it so much easier to pick out which ones might be in the same series (and then all I have to do is sort out the reading order. lol)

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PaintedLady

· #8 · Mar 13, 2015

I agree with what everyone else has said - consistency across the covers for a series is important. Being able to easily recognize a book as part of a series is something I appreciate as a reader, and something I strive to achieve in my own works.