Discuss @Skinny87 's latest review here
The use of springs for power is interesting; one comes across their use in books written at the turn of the 20th century as a 'they can do anything' plot device, usually to explain why Indiana Jones-style elaborate traps in old houses can work after a long time.
You don't read much of my Sergeant Frosty stuff, do you.
(As for the book itself, looks good-and the cover also looks great. I love the Red Army-esque "minimalist but effective" cover style)
Like the good man said, "without horrifying or dystopian elements". Heaven only knows a poor sod who's half-underground in a foreign land can be both to the faint of heart, especially if someone did the rest of the country a misservice and brought him back.
I honestly can't see the resemblance to anything vaugely Russian in that cover unless we went back to the Tear, honestly. It's too busy to be early Communist, too organized to be late Communist, and the whole affair just screams of the time when royalty still meant something. Still, I wish we had covers that well done- it would certainly help move sales I'd think. As it is, Art Deco has been rather dead for the last seventy years.
Honestly I'm not sure there's anything SLP could do to improve sales that it isn't already doing. I think the biggest reason for a small amount of sales is that it's an indie publisher in a niche genre.
We could always take the old standard of quid pro quo advertising, but that means we need to find more friends to do that with. Professional connections should always be a thing to look for and cultivate.
I need to finally get things together and do my analysis of AH cover art and what makes a good and bad piece of cover art. Probably it an article as I wouldn't want to make it seem like an attack on any author or publishers, but an internal forum thread would be a good thing to help dispel myths about cover art.