The Ritual of the Broken is an urban fantasy novel set in Chicago. It's also my own book, written under the pen name Seb L. Carter. Self-publishing means I was both the writer and the cover designer, which is useful here. I knew exactly what mood the book needed to sell, and I had no patience for stock-photo gay-romance tropes.
The figure on the cover was painted from scratch and composited in Photoshop. The goal was a single cinematic moment that hinted at the magic and the tension without giving anything away. I also produced a full book trailer in Premiere and After Effects to support the launch.
Created in Adobe Premiere and After Effects.
Target Audience
The book lives in a few overlapping shelves. Urban fantasy. Paranormal romance. M/M. LGBTQ+ fantasy. The cover had to work for all of them at once, and it had to read clearly at thumbnail size on Amazon. Genre cues matter, and so does standing out from a thousand other covers using the same three Photoshop assets.
Touchpoints
The cover went out in digital and print. The trailer ran on social and YouTube. Together they gave the book a consistent visual identity across every place a reader might bump into it.
Success Metrics
The book launched in October 2024 and hit the top 50 in Amazon's Paranormal & Urban and Gay Fantasy categories. It's holding a 4.5-star average across Amazon and Goodreads. The cover and trailer carried a lot of that early visibility, which matters when you don't have a publishing house pushing the book for you.
