Citadel cover art

  • Status: Closed
  • Prize: $86
  • Entries Received: 23
  • Winner: TemptingDezine

Contest Brief

Cover design brief for INTO THE CITADEL (generated 06/07/23)


Requirements:

Print (6” X 9” paperback, 492 cream pages)* and e-book cover design (Amazon KDP standards), for INTO THE CITADEL, first book of a dystopian trilogy. Designer of Book I cover may expect to be invited to follow up immediately with Books II and III, for additional fees.

Front Cover Text:

Title: Into the Citadel (two lines considered)
Subtitle: Book I of the dystopian trilogy (one line)
Author: James Harrison Campbell (two lines considered for author name)
Font: Your discretion, but suggest serif similar to Baskerville of book’s interior

Spine Text:

Into the Citadel (one line)
James Harrison Campbell (two lines considered)

Back Cover Text:

(attached below, to be arranged above/beside bar-code block at your discretion)

Color: Your discretion, but lantern held by figure likely bright focus

Target Audience: Adult readers of speculative fiction, espionage, thriller, politics

Mood of Story:

Dangerous, thrilling, desperate, titillating, heartbreaking, at times sweet and humorous

Story as it relates to the Book I cover:

A century after the near-extinction collapse of civilization, the tyrannical priesthood of an invented new god rules a repopulating but low-tech world from the walled Citadel. Higher learning is forbidden to the common people. Village-born 17-year-old protagonist Ronnie is part of a secretly educated heretic cabal that seeks to overthrow the Priesthood but he must get into the Citadel to do his part, which is to work lustful priestess bureaucrats for the gold and secrets needed by the rebellion. Nineteen-year-old subpriestesses Cinya (pale with longish red hair) and Iris (shorter dark hair), wearing loose grey robes of their station revealing trendy clothing beneath, are the first to sneak him past the guards and into the Citadel.

Illustration:

I’m open to abstraction, but if you choose to submit a figurative illustration, please consider the attached three versions of my idea for it.

In the story, the massive wall of the Citadel is constructed of the overgrown detritus of the former world—school buses, traffic lights, collapsed buildings, etc., but for the cover I understand it’s probably not practical to portray that. Rather I envision a great stone wall in the middle ground against a clouded-moon night sky (and in the background of Idea 2 a surviving 21st Century skyscraper). Passages into the Citadel are closed for the night, except for a narrow side one. Nineteen-year-olds Cinya and Iris have appeared there, Cinya holding a lantern high to illuminate hooded 17-year-old protagonist Ronnie, viewed from behind. Other than in the circle of light thus created, the Citadel structure can remain as shadowed as necessary to facilitate overlayment by back, spine, and front text (back-cover text also attached below).


*Amazon KDP says spine width is “page count X 0.0025” or 1.23” (31.242 mm)

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