JartStar and I were never particularly happy with the cover for
QUANTUM MORTIS The Programmed Mind. Not only was the cover image a little nebulous, but it tended to sell what is an intense military spy thriller of galactic proportions more than a little short. It simply didn't harken back to the classic SF of the Atomic Age in the way that we intended it to. Also, the title didn't fit well within the title layout for the series that the most excellent Kirk DouPonce created for QUANTUM MORTIS; to say that Kirk "really disliked" the cover as a result would have been to put it mildly. But one of the great things about digital publishing is that it's very easy to replace the covers. I think you will agree that the new cover, and new title, are a considerable improvement over their predecessors. Instead of an accidentally over-endowed female agent being subjected to some neurological indignities, the new cover features the Ascendancy destroyer
Draco entering the orbit of the planet Bonoplane to investigate the fate of the stricken
Shiva-class starcruiser
ATSV Rigel. Please note that nothing else has changed except the title and the cover, so if you already bought QM-TPM, you already own
QUANTUM MORTIS A Mind Programmed. I expect you should be able to update the file through your Kindle if you wish.
And QM-AMP isn't the only relaunch of sorts we have to announce today. You may recall that I have made reference to a Castalia House Classics line on several occasions in the past, and today we are more than a little pleased to make an announcement in that regard
on the Castalia House blog. I encourage you to check it out.
Labels: Castalia House
32 Comments:
Jartstar really does wonderful art.
Yeah, he really nailed this one. Especially when one takes its dual-purpose requirements into account.
Seconding. His covers are professional and convey their messages well. Good to see, from a marketing perspective, that you're going with the casewrap on the Throne reprint also.
I'm curious, why the title change? TPM vs. AMP?
jaericho August 28, 2014 9:37 AM
I'm curious, why the title change? TPM vs. AMP?
kerning.
Vox, at Castalia House, "The Programmed Man" shows the same cover as A Mind Programmed. Must be an error.
I took a few liberties with the planet from what is described in the book for a more interesting image, but for the astronomy geeks out there Bonoplane is represented with correct scale and completely modeled and rendered in 3D. It is 7000K in diameter as the book describes with a sky mean altitude of 9 miles and the highest mountain peak is 13 miles. While the mean altitude is higher than Earth, the atmosphere is much lower pressure so the tops of the peaks pierce through the thin atmosphere which has settled in the valleys.
Another great thing about digital publishing is that you don't have to worry about some gung-ho editor rewriting your book.
Vox, at Castalia House, "The Programmed Man" shows the same cover as A Mind Programmed. Must be an error.
Look again.
When you change the title, do you have to get a new ISBN/EAN number?
When you change the title, do you have to get a new ISBN/EAN number?
Probably, but electronic-only books keep the same ASIN.
If you'd like to see a larger version of the FIRST ON THE MOON cover see this link.
The illustration is nice, but the title section needs some rework. The word PROGRAMMED is too wide and I'd move "Vox Day" too the bottom od the image.
Usually, I'm not a big fan of SF but with the Quantum Mortis series, you've piqued my interest. Well done, Vox.
Well done, Vox.
Thanks, glad to hear it.
Castalia House Classics... Fantastic! Keep up the good work.
On titles, the old title certainly feels like the old book title (Man -> Mind, slick!), but the new title feels more like a QM title to me. I can just hear the Twilight Zone's narrator Rod Serling saying "A Man ... Disr-upted", "Gravity ... Kills", and "A Mind ... Pro-grammed". Definitely scans better in my head! I like it.
So by all means, keep soaking up my hard earned salary, but Calista gives good value - inexpensive, not cheap.
I particularly love the cover of First on the Moon, takes me back to my teen years discovering SF books in the library and used bookstores. Books with those covers had grand stories waiting for me.
OT, but I've been looking for one of those books for years, and I wonder if this sparks someone's memory? There was a rocketship of the "Space Patrol" or whatever, a Captain and largish crew, visiting foreign plants and rendering medical help. The story revolves around a newly graduated cadet joining the ship with an alien fuzzy symbiotic "pet" that sits on his shoulder. Of course pets are forbidden on the ship and the captain isn't that pleased about it, but symbiots have a special waiver. They solve several alien medical problems, often with the symbiote playing a part. The planet I remember is aliens asking for help because a disease is turning them from intelligent life into dumb "apes" again; first the med ship finds a strange bacteria and starts killing it off but that makes the disease worst - turns out the bacteria is the intelligent life asking for help and the hominids are just the horses they ride (symbiotic relationship again), and the solution was for the fuzzy symbiote to reproduce and become a better host than the hominids. The book isn't the Murry Lenster Med Ship series, was less "single hero, one riot one ranger" and more "team of Space Patrol". I assume it was early YA fiction, and was surprised when it wasn't one of the Heinlein juveniles (unless I messed up my research!), since those were many of the books I remember from then - Starman Jones, etc.
"...those who have read the QUANTUM MORTIS book will likely find it fascinating to learn which elements were contained in the original and which were added later."
It was a fun comparison, and using the book as a sort of prequel to the QM universe was a clever idea which worked well. It's moot at this point but I would have played up the "literary remix" element a little more at the beginning, I was surprised initially so see just how much content from the original work was brought over without any significant changes, then released as a 'new' work.
But now that you've released the original as well I'd say there's no disrespect to the original authors at all.
That cover is gorgeous. Nice work. And, as someone who is inclined (somewhat) to judge a book by its cover, I'll now have to buy this book.
-----
OT: Anyone heard of ProtonMail? It's an email service developed by a bunch of CERN scientists who claim that it's fully encrypted and hosted outside of US and EU jurisdiction, so they cannot and will not decrypt messages or respond to demands for data. Is this on the level?
I second Stickwick's compliments. The new cover is definitely prettier and more interesting than the old one!
Instant reaction: "Ooooh, shiny! Want!"
Lol, I managed to accidentally post this in the wrong topic and can't delete it, but here's where it was meant to go. :)
I pay almost no attention to covers as all of my reading choices come from recommendations from friends and writers I follow. That said, this is a spectacular cover. I'm incredibly impressed.
But now that you've released the original as well I'd say there's no disrespect to the original authors at all.
None whatsoever. We'll be releasing more of Jeff Sutton's work, possibly including some previously unreleased material.
I liked the old cover, but I do agree that this one is more fitting with the contents of the book.
so ... it turns out things are ... different ... in Canada - CFL ot:
http://www.sbnation.com/2014/8/18/5998715/the-tim-tebow-cfl-chronicles#1-2033--LAKELAND--FLORIDANOVEMBER-7th--2014--TORONTO--ONTARIO
i figured i had to post this for this one sentence, if nothing else:
"The Vikings, for whatever they're worth, are the most valuable franchise in the NFL."
Off topic: You just now are reading "The Virginian", Vox? I'd have thought you would have read it long ago.
I liked the old cover and title, but the new one is damn good as well.
Also, the story itself was fantastic. I avoided any knowledge of the old work, and so as someone who read the story with a blank slate, I have to say you pulled it off brilliantly, Vox. Towards the end I was left confused and with an odd feeling that something was just wrong, and the end was a swift kick in the arse.
Great job. Yes, you took the idea from another work, but good artists borrow, great artists steal. (With attribution!) Love your work and matter-of-fact style of prose.
At the risk of sounding stupid(wouldn't be the first time) I'm not sure I see the point of a cover for a digital book. It's not like you are hoping to sell the book to someone who is dancing down the sf isle in a book store scanning the covers.
Quadko - that sounds like maybe the Jim White(author?) series. IIRC they came out in the '70's.
You just now are reading "The Virginian", Vox? I'd have thought you would have read it long ago.
No. I did. I've read it several times.
Towards the end I was left confused and with an odd feeling that something was just wrong, and the end was a swift kick in the arse.
That was all Sutton. I will say that it's not telegraphed quite as heavily as in the original. But all I really did was modernize the story and tie it to the world of Quantum Mortis while managing to avoid screwing up the plot. Read the original, it might surprise you what is new and what is not.
> No. I did. I've read it several times.
Ah. My faith is restored. :)
I'm not sure I see the point of a cover for a digital book.
You'll want the book to look appealing in:
a) Ads, of the sort we have in the side panels
b) Amazon book recommendations, that you get for having looked at something similar, and
c) In the virtual bookshelf of your e-reader. I hate Project Gutenberg files for this reason, they just have simple, black and white text covers. Hideous among real books.
ah, didn't think about the ad situation, tanks.
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