The Man Who Built the World - cover art ideas

The next novel I have due for publication is a stand alone spiritual horror/ghost story set in a fictional Devon village called Tamerton.  This novel is barely half the length of my first published novel, The Tube Riders, at 80,000 words, but is a very concise story with very little filler.  The cast of characters is much smaller than Tube Riders, and the action happens over just a couple of days.

Being the eternally broken person that I am, again I am attempting to do my own cover art.  The novel is still being polished so is some weeks away from publication, but I've already started playing around with ideas for cover art.

Here's a few I've made so far.  All were made using a online photo editor at www.lunapic.com, because I am such a skinflint that I don't even own a paint program.

This was my first attempt.  This uses a picture I actually took myself at a ski resort and then used a pencil sketch effect to get the strange style.  I like the colour but I'm not too happy with the fonts.

This is the same one with a red wash effect over the top.  While the novel is pretty violent, I think this looks a little tacky.

Same one again, this time with another effect over the top of the text.  I like this one better, but still not much.

For this next effort, I used a picture from www.pond5.com.  The original picture was of a couple walking away from a gravestone.  I cropped it to this smaller size, then put the same pencil sketch effect over the top.  The font I used for the titles was something strange called 1942.  I think this one looks best in thumbnail, but its pretty bleak.

This is my most recent effort, and is the same as the one above but with a different font.  I made it look embossed by putting the font on, then doing the pencil sketch effect, then putting the font over the top again, using a text effect called water which made it blend in rather well.  I think the titles look pretty good, not sure about my name though.

Edit - just made this one this morning, similar to the themes of the previous one I posted above, but I think the text stands out a little better.  This is probably my favorite so far, and if the book was ready now I would go with this one first out.  I like the way you can just make out the people, but you're not quite sure if you can see it or not.  I also think my name looks better in the middle there.

In a perfect world I would pay someone to make me an awesome cover, but I really don't want to shell out a lot of money if I can't guarantee it'll sell at least enough to cover the costs.  The picture alone for Tube Riders cost 75 UK pounds, and while sales are slowly ticking over it still hasn't recouped that yet, despite me spending nearly every waking hour trying to promote it.  People aren't joking when they say it takes time to get successful, but it makes me mad every time I read a blog by someone claiming that sales slowly pick up ... I read one last night that said something along the lines of "I had just 100 sales in my first month ..." Um, try five, including one to myself ...

Anyway, for anyone reading this who hasn't heard of me (pretty likely), my books are awesome.  Please read them!

CW