The hardcover and trade paperback proofs for Eyrie have arrived… and they look good! As you can see here, the hardcover is only slightly smaller than a ground parrot—when the ground parrot is cheating by standing on two books. Seems a little unfair!
There are still a few hiccups to be worked out. The version that readers get when they order through Amazon is much darker, so the cover artist is figuring that out with me. And the proofs use the “Darkbeak” variant of Zeph, an idea we played around with for making Zeph’s beak stand out a little better in the thumbnail sizes that ebooks show up as in search results, so we need to switch them back to the “Lightbeak” version for the paper editions.
A question that’s been going around the beta reader circles is whether the hardcover should be a dust jacket or a case laminate. I’ll be ordering a case laminate proof soon to see how it looks, but if you’re reading this and have a strong opinion either way, let me know in the comments or on the contact form. If there are strong opinions both ways, I could make both available on different ISBNs.
Next up: sending Starling out for developmental feedback and getting Ashen Weald finalized
