Happy first everyone! It’s time to kick off a new bracket. If you’re curios or new, check out the Book Covers for December, January, February, March, and April.
May’s bracket has 31 new covers and last month’s runner up, Fate of the Big Bad Wolf by Neo Edmund, has another chance to take the title home.
We’re doing things differently this month. In previous months, we had a round-by-round competition, which I loved. But it’s demanding on readers and fans. They have to keep coming back to vote each week, and I want this to be fun, with as much participation as possible. So this round is a one shot bracket. What this means is each person will only have to vote once for his or her own bracket. Instead of waiting a few days between rounds, you can vote all the way through the tournament. If this works better for people, and increases participation, we’ll keep this format going forward. It’ll still last for two weeks, and I’ll still do updates every so often, but no one will be out of the fight until the last day of the tournament.
As always, I’d appreciate it if you tag the authors and artists if you know them. I try to tag or friend every author I can, but sometimes it’s hard to track someone down. Max participation is a huge deal to me. The more people who vote, the more recognition these authors and artists receive, and I want this to be as legitimate as possible.

If you are the author, let’s remember to be good sports! 1) Please feel free to message or contact me at any time. 2) Please feel free to like, share, text, ask for support, and call everyone you know. I absolutely want max participation. However, if you’re going to offer giveaways or prizes, please offer them for voting, not just voting for you.
Also, while your summoning your army of voting soldiers, please make sure you ask them to vote in every match. Part of the idea of this is to get exposure to as many artists and authors as possible. By all means, if you can get 1,000 people to vote for your book, do it. Just please also send some eyeballs to the other matches.
A final note to authors and artists: I currently have links to the books’ Amazon pages. If you’d prefer I switch that link to sign up for your newsletter or like your social media page or whatever, just send me the link and let me know. I want this to help you. I want this to be as helpful as possible, so whatever you need me to do to facilitate that, just let me know.
I hope you keep having fun. Please, vote, share, and discuss as much as possible.
All you have to do now is head over here to vote!
Thanks for reading,
Matt
Thank you for including Tangled Echoes (Reconstructionist 2)!!
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It was a well-designed cover. I wish you the best of luck.
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Can’t wait to see the results! I’m interested to see how you break this down in your updates, too. It became clear to me through the round of 16 which covers were my personal favorites, so naturally, my voting tilted that way. I’m just not used to all of my favorites making it through to the end 😛
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I had the same issue!! Most of the time my final round votes weren’t from my favorites so it was easy. Now BOTH my favorites were in the final two and it was UGH! 🙂
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Such difficult decisions so early in the morning!
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I’m seeing some interesting things I’ll mention when I do my first update blog. I’m very hopeful anyone who follows this comments on their thoughts on this format vs the more traditional round-by-round format.
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Unfounded prediction: I think this format will result in higher vote totals per round, since everyone will be encouraged to vote their favorites all the way through. I’m also betting the later matches will be more competitive. There may be 5 or 6 leaders going into the round of 8, simply because you don’t have 300 people voting on the same match-ups. If that makes sense…
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What I saw was a competitive first week…then the top four just pulled away. I kept getting votes, but the distance between those top four never really changed. Next month will only be one week. Without rounds to update, there simply wasn’t nearly the same amount of votes in the second week of this bracket as there was the first.
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I very much agree!!!
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Well, it’s not a popular vote. So all of your favorites will move on I. Your bracket, but what matters is who moves on in how many brackets. The winner will be the 1 lbook that is votes on as the winner by the most people. Hopefully it’ll be clearer once I do my first update.
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Oh interesting. I look forward to seeing how things shake out!
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The covers for ECHO EFFECT and FORGOTTEN SOLDIER were amazing, they’re my final two and I had to flip a coin to pick! Ultimately my genre preference played out and Echo won.
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I thought you’d like Echo. We’ll see how it does.
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Can’t wait!
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Reblogged this on J.R. Handley Blog and commented:
Another CLASH OF THE COVERS!!! Vote early, vote often but damn it VOTE!!!
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Just wanted to say thank you for the re-blog! Always appreciate it when someone takes the time to spread the word.
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Happy to get people voting and engaged!
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