One early fantasy series that I read was The Belgariad by David Eddings. Here are the covers as they looked on the series when I had it.
As you can see, the titles are all on theme by being about chess (“pawn,” “queen,” “gambit,” etc.). The covers are all similar, but each cover has a slightly different color scheme to vary your reading experience: mustard, green, rust, blue (harder to see in this image), grey. After all, you’re going to be looking at that cover for a while, as long as you are reading the book and carrying it around. It will form part of the visual landscape of your life. Also, and this isn’t obvious unless you’ve read the series, the color and general look of each cover matches the country to which the adventurers travel in that volume.
Last week, I unveiled my draft for the cover of my book The Long Guest. With the help of blog commenters, the font that we settled on for the title (at least for now) was Goblin Hand:
Now here is the draft for the second book in the series. I’ve kept the font and general title layout, but the color scheme is colder because, after all, we are going to Alaska.
Feedback please.
Out of Babel 
Ahh, David Eddings. One of my summers during middle school I pretty much lived on the front porch drinking ice tea and reading the Belgariad and the Mallorean.
On the titles, I think you may want to scale back the size of the initial letters, it starts to become a little more difficult to read. The first impression starts to become “LG The Ong Uest.”
The cover for The Strange Land doesn’t grab me as much as the The Long Guest. I’m not sure if it’s the color scheme, or the arraignment of the text, or the shape of the mountains. I think part of it might be that The Long Guest has more suggestive imagery with the Tower and the detail in the figures. I also like the asymmetrical composition there.
Another element might be the foreground. The Long Guest has a foreground that comes into sharper detail really nicely, whereas on the Strange Land the foreground seems to get blurrier and less defined as your eye moves down from the mountains.
Just my 2 cents. You know I’m never short on opinions.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for your two cents. I am collecting feedback, working on an alternate cover, Lord willing I’ll have it by next week.
You are right that on this cover, the focus is on the distant mountains, not on the foreground. That’s intentional. Also, yes, it is less unique than TLG cover. In fact, it looks just like every single survival book I read as a kid: Hatchet, The Sign of the Beaver, Island of the Blue Dolphins, etc. … not that that’s a bad thing. I kind of love having it around and even if this image doesn’t end up becoming the cover, it will continue to hang in my study.
My own experience with the Belgariad and Mallorean was bingeinng on them after school through the long winter evenings in Grand Rapids.
LikeLike
Jen, You’re on a roll! I like them both. Clear, dramatic. Not sure about having the same sub-title on both. Perhaps something to suggest the progression of the series. (No, I have no clue what that might be. But I am not a good namer.)
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
“A Tale out of Babel II”? XD
LikeLike
Don’t know what the XD is. Do you need to title it now? I prefer to wait until its written, or mostly written.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The XD is an emoji. If you turn it on its side, it looks like a person laughing while squeezing their eyes shut.
The Strange Land is completed. It will go to the editor after The Long Guest comes back.
I’m in a weird position re: series name. The first three books, TLG, TSL, and The Great Snake (now being drafted) are technically a trilogy, though each can be read as a stand-alone. So, for them, it makes sense that readers know what order they come in. But I have two other book ideas that are also about the ancient early settlers and could legitimately be called “tales out of Babel,” but they do not use the same characters, hence are not part of the trilogy. Also I guess they could turn into trilogies of their own. That part hasn’t become clear yet …
LikeLike
I like this cover!
LikeLiked by 1 person