{"id":1694,"date":"2016-12-12T10:05:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-12T17:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/covercritics.com\/?p=1694"},"modified":"2016-12-12T08:10:12","modified_gmt":"2016-12-12T15:10:12","slug":"a-hostile-takeover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covercritics.com\/?p=1694","title":{"rendered":"A Hostile Takeover"},"content":{"rendered":"

The author says:<\/p>\n

This is a science fiction novel set in a post-cyberpunk world, struggling with the rise of corporate gangs and untamed technology. I wanted it simple as possible and chose the skull motif to represent criminal\/piracy elements to the story involving corporate banksters, slumlords, rogue AI’s. It is set in a near future, post economic super-depression civilisation. I’m aiming to soon publish a new edition and am wondering if I should redesign the existing cover or ditch it altogether.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Nathan says:<\/p>\n

As a practical matter, you should always put a distinctly different cover on a new edition. \u00a0Which gives you lots of room to play with this one!<\/p>\n

First: The sizing of the words in the title make it look like “A” is the most important word\/letter. \u00a0Meanwhile, “Takeover” becomes unreadable in the thumbnail.<\/p>\n

Second: While the digitalized, dot-matrix effect on the skull comes through at full size, that’s completely lost in the thumbnail; it could a cross-stitch, for all we can see. \u00a0Coupled with the fact that “blank white” isn’t a a color that anyone associates with cyberpunk, the cover fails to let potential readers know in their first glance that this is a post-cyberpunk criminal dystopian novel.<\/p>\n

My suggestion? Steal. Add Matrixy, grungy elements. \u00a0Let “cyberpunk” and “dystopia” and “crime” be the first thing people notice, even before they read the title.<\/p>\n

Here’s my five-minute redo:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I know I’ve got your title font somewhere on my computer, but I couldn’t find it quickly, so I substituted. \u00a0I played with the color balance until it looked like The Matrix<\/em>, enlarged your name, and added the first “broken glass” wallpaper I found. \u00a0I’m not happy with it as a final, obviously, but I think it’s a good starting point.<\/p>\n

Other ideas?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The author says: This is a science fiction novel set in a post-cyberpunk world, struggling with the rise of corporate gangs and untamed technology. I wanted it simple as possible and chose the skull motif to represent criminal\/piracy elements to the story involving corporate banksters, slumlords, rogue AI’s. It is set in a near future, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-covers"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4hri4-rk","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/covercritics.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/a-hostile-takeover-front-small.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covercritics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covercritics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covercritics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covercritics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covercritics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/covercritics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covercritics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covercritics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covercritics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covercritics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}