The Reason for Simplicity

There's the old saying that goes: you can't judge a book by its cover.

And yet, that's not entirely true. Often, our initial impression comes from that book cover. It's the eye-catch that piques our curiosity and draws us to it. That is what it's supposed to do, after all.

There are exceptions to this, of course. An author that we're familiar with doesn't need a flashy cover with neon strobe lights pointing to it. The name is enough for us to pick up the book. But if the author is someone you've never heard of, well... that flashy cover is pretty much required.

So when I finished overhauling my Exiled trilogy, I had to make a decision. Go with flashy covers to draw attention to the books, or keep them in a simpler form. Now, I'm no Stephen King by any means, so for me, right now I should fall under the 'flashy covers required' category.

I chose not to.

Oh, I could have. The opportunity was there. I should have leapt at the chance and had those neon strobe lights all over them, right? So why didn't I?

Because I wanted the covers to reflect the deeper meaning within the overall story. A flashy cover, in this particular case, would have been the wrong choice.

I mentioned it before in my blog about the 'rebirth' of the trilogy, but I'll say it here again. There is much more to the trilogy than just a story. I'm not saying that just to pique a curiosity, I'm saying it because there truly is a deeper meaning within the story that one will discover. There are several points with the books, in fact, but the covers reflect one of those, something which could not have been emphasized in a flashy cover. It would have taken away from it, completely negated one of the key deeper meanings.

Granted, the overall story has to be interesting, and I believe it accomplishes that in the way I wanted it to. Sure, there's strong language, there's some violence and horror elements, there's even a few steamy scenes in each of the three books. Steamy. Not over-the-top explicit graphic scenes. But unlike a lot of today's movies where they toss in a shower scene for no other reason than to show some skin, those steamy scenes aren't thrown in there just for the hell of it.

The covers for all three books don't fall into the 'flashy' range, and for good reason. They reflect one of the deeper meanings within the story: often times, what we see on the outside is far different than what lies underneath.

So the question is, does one judge based only on what they see, or does one look closer and see what lies underneath?

www.amazon.com/dp/B00L9NO5U8