Judge a Book by its Cover?

We've all heard the saying, "Never judge a book by its cover."  But how many of us decided whether or not to buy a book because of its cover?  I know it's how I choose which books to thumb through and which not to.  Those with intriguing, catching covers and titles draw me further in.

I hope that's true.  My first book, The Pact, however, had a very basic cover...just the picture of my four main characters.  Its title wasn't very catchy either.  But there was a method to my madness.

 Let's face it, this is not the most thrilling of cover choices, but it does have purpose and meaning.  In fact, the cover design artist had quite a bit of input on the cover.  He actually read the book!  The three suggestions I made each limited the title's meaning to one specific idea.  Each one held a different meaning, keying in on a specific use of a pact.  But, if we backed away, put a picture of the four boys on the cover, the reader could decide which meaning of "the pact" I meant.  Quite ingenious.  So I went with his idea, and the cover you see above became the print cover.

Now it's time for book two, The Dragon's Pawn.  In this case, we wanted to grab the attention of the potential readers...specifically appealing to young  (middle to young high school) boys.  And we came up with this:  

As to the title...well, you'll just have to read the book to get that.  I don't want to spoil the fun by telling you now.  If you do read it, you'll understand what I mean.  It releases April 3, 2014 and is already available for pre-release through my publisher's site:  "www.blackrosewriting.com" and I hope you'll check it out.  After all, the title and the cover do matter.  Come on...admit it.

Mitchell