I’ve been writing scifi romance novels for over a decade. Cover designs for this genre have gone through quite a lot of changes in that time. I just in 2025 finished my latest revamp of the covers for my four-book Collective Saga series, plus the box set. All four books – Aquarian Awakenings, Betelgeuse Beguiling, Centauri Chaos, and Draconis Discord – are now fully updated in ebook and print on all platforms. While I was at it, I did an editing pass of all four books to make some minor tweaks.
As an author, it is critically important that you regularly review what the current best-selling covers look like and make sure your books hold their own against that style. You can look at nearly any long-lasting well-selling series to see that they regularly update their covers.
Here’s the progression taken by my Aquarian Awakenings book – this is book 1 in The Collective Saga.
Try #1 – aquarian symbol – people thought it was a self-help book for people of the sign Aquarius.
Try #2 – nebula – again people thought it was for Aquarians.
Try #3 – cartoon people – this looked too much like a children’s book and was hard to see the image.
Try #4 – cartoon people – clearer to see, but just gave a sense of a romance on a distant planet.
Try #5 – human models – much better at drawing in my target audience. People knew this was a space romance. However they complained that my book wasn’t sex-filled enough. The cover drew in readers of racy romance.
Try #6 – human models with space uniforms – now my target audience didn’t assume it would be full of sex. Much better. However, in modern times many readers of romance prefer not to be seen carrying around ‘bodice ripper’ covers. They want much more subtle covers. Also, modern buyers on cellphones need to be able to clearly see giant-letters in a title.
Current cover – giant letters. Clearly about space. Not screaming ‘romance’ which apparently buyers want. They know it’s romance because they were browsing in the romance category to find it. I admit this is an adjustment for me personally because I grew up in the era of romance covers screaming romance on them. I still think of sexy cover models as ‘natural’. I need to adjust my mindset to reach a modern reader.
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