Updated Empire Reforged Covers

This is a post many people probably aren't interested in, but it is a Patreon reward.

As a bonus, I'll explain a little bit about how I decided on this style of cover. I'm usually quite averse to talking about the sausage-making process for books, particularly covers.

These covers will replace the existing ones for Empire Forged and Awakened shortly. I probably won't touch the paperbacks for a while, as those are a lot of work and I sell extremely few. I might even keep them in the old cover format, even though I don't really like the original Emperor Defiant cover.

In order, the covers show (I bet you don't even remember who these characters are):

• Miyasa, for Emperor Forged
• Yae, for Emperor Awakened
• Hish, for Emperor Defiant (the unpublished third book)
• Yae again, for the final unlabeled cover that I will find a use for

The typography might change. It evokes the feel I want, which is vaguely comicy while being understated and maybe a little stodgy. These covers are intended to serve a purpose, which I'll explain below.

Empire Reforged is the first series I published, and it still isn't finished. It didn't do very well - by the standards of basically every author in the genre, it was a flop. For reference, Demon's Throne 3 made more on its opening day (including the pre-order) than Emperor Forged did in its first 3 months. Empire is the series that people look at when they've burned through Spellblade and Demon's Throne and really want to read more of my stuff.

I will finish the series, however, and as part of that I am relaunching the covers. The originals look fine, but they don't match genre expectations - I suspect a lot of people don't even realize they're harem. If I'm going to launch a new book for the series, it needs covers that match the genre and expectations for the book. Right now, my time is worth far more than the money I spend on covers - it's kind of dumb to spend time writing a book that I don't give a fair chance at getting readers.

But there's a catch: these series aren't like my current ones. They also sell a lot less. If I slap my usual high quality covers on them, I'll likely lose money (I pay a fair chunk for my Spellblade and Demon's Throne covers) and people will be upset that they're not getting another series like Spellblade. So I had a few goals in mind when I artist hunted.

Also, artist hunting sucks. The freelance art market is a trashfire for extremely complicated reasons. I'll happily pay extra for art if I can get a reliable artist who will actually accept my commissions.

To be clear: I'm happy with these covers, as they're what I wanted and the artist produced great work. They depict characters from the books and are a fair bit spicier than my usual stuff (then again, none of you have seen the Spellblade 7 cover and the Demon's Throne 6 cover has a character wearing visible underwear beneath her armor).

For anyone interested, the artist responsible is Kitsuneka-San. They can be found on the usual platforms.

Finally, there are nude versions that I'll post separately for Messenger patrons. I don't usually prioritize these for my covers, as many artists don't want to draw naked women.