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marycatelliI forgot about titles when discussing it last.
The first point about titles is you aren't illustrating them, but the story. I wrestled with it -- and won quite a few times.
Notice that "The Dragon's Cottage" cover has neither a dragon nor a cottage.
And "The Maze, the Manor, and the Unicorn" has neither a maze, nor a manor, nor a unicorn. (Of course, its working title was "Lady In Waiting" before I decided that the pun might work in an anthology or magazine, but not as a stand-alone title.)
And "Eyes of the Sorceress" depicts neither eyes nor a sorceress.
However, that being said -- if you don't have your title, you don't have your cover. You can not -- absolutely can not -- cast your cover in concrete and say that's it -- I will just slap whatever title I decide on on that. Because the title is also a graphic element. You need it large enough to be read, which means you need a stretch of neutral space large enough to hold it in a font large enough to be readable -- hopefully even in a thumb-nail, certainly in the medium sized image that you get when you see a book cover online. "The Maze, the Manor, and the Unicorn" would have been an interesting fit on either of the other two images.
The first point about titles is you aren't illustrating them, but the story. I wrestled with it -- and won quite a few times.
Notice that "The Dragon's Cottage" cover has neither a dragon nor a cottage.
And "The Maze, the Manor, and the Unicorn" has neither a maze, nor a manor, nor a unicorn. (Of course, its working title was "Lady In Waiting" before I decided that the pun might work in an anthology or magazine, but not as a stand-alone title.)
And "Eyes of the Sorceress" depicts neither eyes nor a sorceress.
However, that being said -- if you don't have your title, you don't have your cover. You can not -- absolutely can not -- cast your cover in concrete and say that's it -- I will just slap whatever title I decide on on that. Because the title is also a graphic element. You need it large enough to be read, which means you need a stretch of neutral space large enough to hold it in a font large enough to be readable -- hopefully even in a thumb-nail, certainly in the medium sized image that you get when you see a book cover online. "The Maze, the Manor, and the Unicorn" would have been an interesting fit on either of the other two images.