As much as I loved the old cover for Magic’s Stealing, there was a time when I wasn’t sure it conveyed the genre well.
So I decided to test a new design that I made in Daz, one which focused on Toranih instead of Shevanlagiy.
I only changed the ebook edition, but I left it up on Amazon a few weeks to see how it went. The idea was that, depending on the response, I’d either switch back to the old design, or swap the the other ebook covers to match the new design and upload those across all retailers.
Regardless, I planned to keep the print covers matching the older design until the series was complete, that way anyone who had already picked up print copies could still get a complete collection. (Plus I have ideas in mind for those covers).
I’d say this was kind of in my middle-ground stage of working with Daz. Not quite as rough as early attempts, but I still didn’t have quite as good of a grasp on the program. Here’s a look at a 3D rendering I made of Toranih, the precursor to creating the newer edition of the cover:
I did end up making a few changes to her between this picture and the design of the cover, but at the time that was about how I pictured her.
The results?
Well, I left the cover up for a month, and I didn’t see a noticeable difference in sales.
However, I also didn’t have a chance to do as much with Amazon ads as I would have like to have tested, so I might not have had the best comparison to work from.
Eventually I switched it back to the original cover, since I still liked that one better. Someday I may try to update the ebook cover again, once I have a better baseline set up and a more well-thought-out plan for advertising, but for now, I think I’ll stick to the original.
What do you think?
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Read the YA fantasy series where magic gets stolen, and one of the only two people who still have magic is a young woman who can’t see it and doesn’t trust it…
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Happy reading and writing (and book cover designing)! 📚
Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist 