Can you judge a book by its cover? (Cover reveal for ALIEN VOWS)

Well, of course you can! There's no guarantee that your judgement will be accurate, but we judge  books by their covers all the time. The overall look of the cover can tell you a lot about the book. Where (and when) is it set,? What it is about? Does it fall into a specific genre?

In some romance sub-genres (historical, paranormal, and science fiction) there's a real trend to put a man's naked torso on the cover. The man's head might not even be visible but his abs certainty are. This is a signal to the reader, It says "This book contains hot sex scenes." It works well as a signal, but of course, it doesn't distinguish one such book from another.

Recently, a post on Lit Hub had fun with the concept by taking classic novels and creating pulp-style covers for them.  Some of them aren't all that different (although I doubt there was a shirtless guy on the original Great Gatsby cover), but some are amusingly pulpy. I loved the Madam Bovary one.  Moll Flanders, on the other hand, looked like a cover the author might have selected.

So, with that in mind, how does the cover for my upcoming book Alien Vows (sequel to Alien Bonds) strike you?  This is an animated version, obviously, but except or the stars turning, it's what the ebook will look like. You will notice the guy is hot but he has his his clothes on. I don't want anyone to be disappointed and I don't write steamy; it's all happening in the book, but it's not in detail on the page.

Finally, a draft at least!

The cover for Saronna's Gift has been plagued by problems. This is my first cover that used an actual model, and the photographer had technical difficulties that required a reshoot.

Anyway, it's only a draft, because the colors aren't right and the typography is missing, but here is (more of less) what the cover of Saronna's Gift will look like.

Book cover test

Below is the cover* of one of my two upcoming novels. One of the nice things about self-publishing is, the writer gets to pick the cover artist, and also to approve the cover. Of course, the writer also gets to pay the cover artist, but at least I was really happy with the way this cover came out.

If anyone out there feels like leaving a comment, tell me what you think this book is about, based on this cover. Feel free to be as vague or as specific as you like!  I'd be really curious to see if this cover conveys the concept of the story as well as I think it does.  In fact, if there's more than one guess, I'll give the person who is closest a free copy of the ebook when it's ready.

* cover artist is Monica Jorgensen

Cover art

A recent Facebook post by Pyr Books editor and art director Lou Anders reminds authors that when they post their cover art, they should credit the artist. He's exactly right, so I made a point to change the images on my main page to include the artist's name beneath the covers.