The Importance of the Book Cover
Chaos Ascending: A Feast of Betrayal book cover
You all know the old saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” While certainly a cliché for a reason, the funny thing is that we all do it. We make snap judgements with limited information about so many things. We try not to, but the wiring in our brains doesn’t always cooperate. Whether we like to admit it, we especially do it when sizing up books.
As an author I find this particular quirk of human nature rather frustrating. Nobody is ever going to read the story a writer put so much hard work into, if the book’s cover doesn’t grab the reader’s attention… immediately. The irony is that after spending months or even years crafting a novel, it’s the work of another who will have the greatest impact on attracting readers.
There are various sources that claim to have nailed down the time a reader will spend glancing at a cover while sifting through thumbnails on Amazon or any other on-line source. Estimates range from as little as half a second, all the way up to three seconds. Wow, three seconds is all you get… at best. That’s all the time a book gets to capture a prospective reader’s interest. About six in ten will choose a book solely based on the cover art while a whopping eight out of ten will reject a book for the same reason… its cover.
There are exceptions to this rule. One is when an author has an established fan base. As an example, if George RR Martin ever finishes the next book in A Song of Ice and Fire, I’m going to buy it regardless of what’s on the outside. Likewise, anything by Joe Abercrombie is going on my shelf even if the cover is hideous… not that his book covers are. In fact, I am a huge fan of the United States book cover versions used for The Age of Madness series. Likewise, Best Served Cold, and The Heroes, have outstanding cover art.
But I have to confess to being pulled in by a book’s cover that I had no intention of reading. Going back a few years, it was the cover image on Mark Lawrence’s novel, The Prince of Thorns, that drew me in. I’ve read every book he’s written since. Such is the power of a book cover.
The Utopia Falling Saga begins with the award-winning novel, Utopia Falling: A Darkness Rises, and continues in the second book, Chaos Ascending: A Feast of Betrayal. Chaos Ascending is to be released on March 19, 2024. A team from MiblArt designed all the covers in the Utopia Falling Saga trilogy. Intentionally, MiblArt maintained a similar look to all three book covers in the series. While the third book in this dark fantasy adventure is still being written, the design team has already provided a nearly finished draft of the cover. It can’t be completed just yet because the title for book three hasn’t been nailed down.
The cover, to the soon-to-be released second book Chaos Ascending: A feast of Betrayal, provides imagery that reinforces the themes of betrayal and chaos. A blade piercing a stone heart takes up the center and is intended to represent betrayal. Given the multi-POV structure of the series, there are many relationships between characters that are rife with the potential for duplicity, disloyalty, treachery, and even infidelity. But why is the heart made of stone? For the readers of the first book, the stone heart adds a touch of uncertainty. I expect familiar readers to wonder if it refers to Reyne’s love for Mithany, or is the imagery reflective of Mithany and Arek’s questionable past? There is also a new relationship introduced in Chaos Ascending; that of Reyne to his assassin trainer, Gina. Well, you get the point; while betrayal is front and center, there is the question of who is going to betray whom… or maybe they all betray each other.
The cover also depicts a riotous mob cheering on a beheading in progress. The general sense of chaos, and the loss of governmental control over its population, is the point. The greenery, the vines, and the flames come together to represent a society devoted to a way of life rooted in the Covenant’s requisite respect for Nature, being burned to the ground.
Once a reader becomes interested in the cover, the blurb on the back of the jacket is usually the next place to explore; assuming the book title hits its mark. There is an art to condensing a one-hundred-fifty-thousand-word novel into a few sentences with sufficient meaning to capture the essence of the book in a way that entices a reader to take a chance on it. Here is the blurb to Chaos Ascending: A Feast of Betrayal:
Utopia is slipping away. Teth is burning. Rebellion is exploding across the realm. Tartica is in chaos… all but for the Kingdom of Adelle under the tight grip of Chancellor Tomelai’s secret police—Druin Derr’s KCG. Governmental and religious leaders struggle to retain their hold on power while the Devil’s Blacksmith inches closer to Tartica’s ruination and Evidar’s salvation.
As civilization crumbles all around him, Reyne’s soul mirrors Tartica’s downfall; forced to abandon his bride-to-be; his brother ripped from his life; sent on a quest he neither believes in nor wants any part of; and alone, joined only by a mysterious man he doesn’t trust.
As Reyne prepares for an impossible transition through the Void to enter the dark realm of Evidar, he plots his own deception. But Evidar assassins are on his trail. They know he’s alive and they’re not only getting close, they’ve found him!
With betrayal lurking in the shadows, Tartica’s future, Evidar’s salvation, and Reyne’s life, all hang in the balance.
Reyne’s journey in the adult themed, dark, epic fantasy trilogy, The Utopia Falling Saga, continues in the second book, Chaos Ascending: A Feast of Betrayal.
