And yes, there are still MORE new covers to show you!

The Rogues of Ravensmuir series originally had “candy box” covers. This means they had no people on them: candy box covers have flowers or ribbons instead of people. The covers for this series were done by Alan Ayers and intended to evoke the style of the original Bride Quest covers, which he also designed. The difference was that the Bride Quest titles had step-back covers (well, the first five of them did) with the candy box on the outside and an image of the couple on the next page. This is kind of the best of both worlds—each reader gets the kind of cover image he/she prefers—but makes for an expensive book in production. It has two covers, and the second one (the step-back) has to be tipped into the finished book by hand. Step-back covers are also more inclined to be damaged in distribution, so they have a higher waste rate even when returned to the publisher for credit.

Here are Warner’s original covers for the mass market editions of The Rogue, The Scoundrel, and The Warrior:

When the rights to publish the books reverted to me, I wanted to have the heroes on the covers. I “met” Eithne O’Hanlon, a very talented illustrator, on Facebook and she offered to work on cover illustrations for me. This is when I learned that illustrators who create cover images for publishing houses don’t create the type. These are the covers that Eithne created for the books:

I LOVED these images, but wasn’t as happy with the type. Hmm. I had a talk with Kim Killion, who has a wonderful talent for type, and she expressed concern about the amount of space left for the type. After attending a conference and hearing about the selling power of man-chest, I decided to redo these covers. This is the next generation of covers for this series, created by Kim Killion:

By this point in time, Kim had created some lovely branding for Claire’s name, which is used consistently across the list. I loved the type on these and was happy with these covers. The magic selling power of man-chest didn’t happen for these books, though, and I think it’s because they’re not that sexy. Readers wanting a sexy read might not like the suspenseful Gothic medieval romance they get and readers wanting a suspenseful Gothic medieval romance wouldn’t expect it from these covers. So, we tweaked to make the covers better convey the books. Here are the new covers:

This also means that there are MORE print books in the sale bin in my online store.

What do you think?