This week we’ve been getting the cover ready for the anthology set in the same universe as Starstrikers. I’d just like to reiterate what others around the web have been saying about making sure you books are recognizable as part of your author platform. If you have more than one related book, in a series or just set in the same universe, you should try and make them similar to each other so the reader understands at a glance that they are related.
JA Konrath, Zoe Winters and even Carina Press have made mention of this before. There has to be some artistic common ground between your books. Joe Konrath’s self-published novels have the same banner across the top that links them to the author. Zoe Winter’s novels all have the same format with her name at the top of the page and her title in a band of highlighted fringe at the bottom.
With the books that I release under the Galaxy Collision universe, I try to maintain the font and name placement. So my author name is always at the bottom of the front cover and it is always in the same font – Bombardier. The book’s title can and will be in different fonts and colors, but the author name will always look the same. The screen shot below shows the author’s name of both Starstrikers and Tales From Ocherva.
The font and size are subtle, but over time, readers will come to recognize that when they see that name, it will mean that the book is a part of that universe. (Yes Bob, I use Ubuntu.)
For my single Mystery novel, the name is at the bottom of the page, but it’s in a different font and is less pronounced. You can do that when you step out of your genre, because the readers are generally different people.
Anytime!
Thanks for the shout out!