Project Aether Chapter 1 Cover (rough preview) and release plans

Here is a rough planning sketch of the cover to Project Aether chapter 1. I went through a few different versions, which is only natural seeing as how the cover is the most important part of the book. Even though they say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, the truth is that by and large people do.

The first cover draft was basically what you see as the banner now, with Lym smiling and Ascalon behind her. I didn't feel that this was a good representation of the story, seeing as how Lym's apathy towards Aether Clash is a significant element of the story, and this rendition of her makes her seem like she's REALLY into it. Ascalon is also featured prominently, but doesn't make an appearance until chapter 2. I also don't really care for covers that are just the principle characters posing, it's just too simple for my taste and only informs the audience of who is featured, not what the story is about.

This cover captures Lym's apathy, not born out of boredom (which is hard to be interested in) but out of distraction. It also hints that her artist's block stems from looking outward towards a hypothetical perfection, and not towards the inspiration from the reality around her. The principal characters all frame the summon creatures in the background compositionally. The moon is also featured as the central element of the cover, which actually serves as a symbol for the theme of the story, as the moon's distinctive face was formed by collisions upon its surface. It is art born not out of perfection, but chaos.

Anyway

I believe I outlined the release plan of Project Aether before but it bears repeating. I have this planned out in phases:

Phase 1: Once the project is complete it will remain exclusive to Patreon for at least a month. I'll send patrons printed copies, and as promised your names will be featured (I'll follow up to ask how you would like to be credited). At this time I will also send chapter 1 to publishers on the off chance that they are interested in publishing the rest of the project.

*Work will begin on chapter 2 at this time, and content will be uploaded to Patreon.

Phase 2: Once I begin to receive a few rejection letters, I'll submit the first chapter to Amazon, hopefully in both print and eBook formats.

Phase 3: After another month I will begin publishing pages on my own website, I'm thinking 1 page a week (I want chapter two to be finished on Patreon before I'm done uploading Chapter 1 pages on my website. At a page a week, the entire first chapter would be posted on the website in a little over 6 months, which should be more than enough time for patrons to read all of chapter 2). Pages will also be released on other platforms like Webtoon, but staggered by at least a week.