Quick brown fox

I don't do fonts. Don't know them at all, don't know how to properly use them.

So. I went through a butt-load of other people's covers in Kindle, seeing what I could of trends. I have some new ideas of what happens there.

The default for adventure/thriller is big, square, serious fonts, sans serif or with small serious serifs. ALL CAPS. Mixed case is almost always comedy (or romance, or fantasy). The main "serious" users of display fonts are largely three; Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Historical (okay, okay, Romance is serious business too).

In fact, anything with bold letters with weird angles or cut-offs tends to read SF, usually SF-action. Anything with fancy serifs and long swirly tails...especially ones that drop well off the line...reads as fantasy (and romance. Okay?)

The biggest exception to simple block fonts in serious contemporary action is for a few limited setting-related things. I mean, outside of nautical, and the use of stencils for certain military things (and I said contemporary, so ignore the Western fonts and the "Pirate" fonts), it really is "Greek," "Roman," "Central American," and "Desert." Well, the latter is mostly Arabian/Egyptian; basically, scimitar shapes suggesting Islamic calligraphy. 

The "Central American" look shows up in books about tough modern-day mercenaries fighting their way towards a lost Aztec hoard, and is typically huge, blocky letters with a crumbling stone look about them. Really, I saw a whole bunch of that stuff!

There also might be a strange subset of stories set in London with what looks like the Baskerville font; narrow letters with refined, bank-serious serifs.

The real trend in a lot of action books that have some strong element that might show up in font is to use a blocky, bold, undecorated font and fill it with patterns. 

***

The coding is very strong on this one. From my last cover survey, if it doesn't have a serious font...if it has any kinds of swashes to it then it is fantasy. Any change in case or clever letters beyond decorating the "O" to look like a trefoil or something, it is cozy/YA/humor/snarky first-person protagonist.

An overall slanting line is acceptable but curved or staggered or otherwise any re-arrangement of the line of text other than brick-like stacking in both horizontal and vertical -- that also codes non-serious.

And that's a problem because I do have a snarky first-person protagonist. And I'm going for these slightly cutesy titles which also code as Cozy Adventure (I just made that up; the usual term is Cozy Mystery, but there are more and more books that have a very Cozy sort of style, protagonist, situation, even if they get into thriller/adventure/horror situations within.)

I'm spending all this time with stock images and repaints because I'm going for a Bama cover scheme:

Having the same outfit on every cover helps the books establish identity as a series. Having the protagonist on the cover clues in the reader that they will be spending their time mostly in this one person's company. And the outfit is absolutely intended to put across the idea of "Indiana Jones type adventures."

The thing about a cover is it should have one strong idea. It should grab the eye with something interesting but more than that, attractive. That's why so many covers have faces on them; we have this urge to engage with a person. So a cover shouldn't have elements that are pulling in different directions, or be so cluttered it is hard to see the single strong idea.

Thing is, you can easily go too far. With the Cozy directions, or with the Pulp Adventure directions. Because both of them end up reading as comedy, and the latter, these days, as ironic pastiche. 

At the same time, a really plain block font doesn't support what the rest of the cover is saying. What I've been searching for is what seems to be the appropriate compromise; a generally squared-off, serious font with just a suggestion of fantasy/history/playfulness.

Here's the latest pulls:

That last actually came from the cover of a book I have...it caught my eye and I found it on a font lookup site:

And, yes, I am going to do some repairs on the figure art for the third book. I rushed it out the door this weekend to get it to my cover artist. So I guess I'm doing repainting this week. (The figure for the second book...well, it isn't as bad as I was fearing, but I am still not looking forward to painting trousers from scratch.)