• A$150

• 16 Designs

• 5 Designer

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Buchumschlag Design Kurzbeschreibung

BOOK COVER DESIGN BRIEF

BOOK DETAILS Title: Lupus et Aquila Subtitle: (The Wolf & The Eagle) Author: Darren Anderson Genre: Historical Fiction / Military Historical Fiction Setting: Trajan's Dacian Wars (AD 101-106) Comparable authors/titles: Ben Kane, Harry Sidebottom, Simon Scarrow Imprint: Protocollo Centurionis

BUDGET $300 USD

DELIVERABLES NEEDED Distribution strategy: IngramSpark for print (broadest trade/bookstore/ library distribution, also reaches Amazon as one of its retail channels); KDP + IngramSpark + Draft2Digital for ebook/wide distribution.

Print wraparound cover (front + spine + back) — IngramSpark specification specifically:
Trim size: 6 x 9 in
Page count: 242 (cream interior stock)
Spine width: 0.550 in (CONFIRMED — from actual IngramSpark template, ISBN 978-1-7648399-3-8) — use the official template file provided alongside this brief; do not rebuild from scratch
Bleed: 0.125 in on all sides
File format: PDF/X-1a:2001 (IngramSpark's required format — not a generic PDF), CMYK color, fonts embedded
Text safe area: minimum 0.25 in from trim edge; 0.0625 in from spine edges if spine is 0.35in or wider
Barcode: already provided in the official template (pre-generated with correct ISBN) — may be repositioned anywhere within the pink safe area on the back cover, but must be included as-is
Ebook front cover (single file, works across KDP + IngramSpark + Draft2Digital):
1,600 x 2,560 pixels, RGB color mode
JPG format
Front cover artwork only — no spine, no back cover, no bleed

CORE CONCEPT Two real, historically attested military standards facing each other: the Roman aquila (eagle standard) and the Dacian draco (a distinctive wolf-headed dragon standard). No invented imagery — both objects are real and visually striking on their own, and the composition should mirror the book's core structure: two equally-weighted protagonists, one Roman and one Dacian, whose stories run in parallel and never converge.

COMPOSITION Mirrored / facing layout: the aquila on one side, the draco on the other, both angled inward toward each other, with the title filling the space between them. This should read clearly and dramatically even at small thumbnail size (Amazon/retailer listings).

COLOR PALETTE

Background: matte black
Aquila (eagle): gold / polished metal — reads as ceremonial, disciplined, "Rome"
Draco (wolf-head): cold titanium grey / iron — reads as harder, colder, more elemental, "Dacia"
Title ("Lupus et Aquila"): crimson red
Subtitle ("The Wolf & The Eagle"): white
This palette extends (not duplicates) the existing brand palette of the author's previous book, Protocollo Centurionis (gold / crimson / black), giving the two books a connected but visually distinct family.

TYPOGRAPHY Match the title/subtitle typeface shown in the attached Protocollo Centurionis cover reference image — a classical serif face used for brand consistency across both books. (Exact typeface name unconfirmed — match visually from the reference image rather than assuming a specific font name.)

Small series line required on front cover: "Book One of Edge of the Empire" — should appear subtly, likely near the title/subtitle area, not competing for visual dominance with the main title. Small text, understated (e.g., a slim, muted line above or below the main title), signaling this is part of an ongoing series without overpowering the standalone cover design.

TONE / STYLE REFERENCE Clean, poster-style, heraldic rather than busy or overly detailed — closer to a striking emblem than a cluttered illustrated scene. Should read as serious literary historical fiction, not pulpy adventure-genre "lone hero silhouette" covers common in this space (avoid that cliché specifically).

HISTORICAL ACCURACY — IMPORTANT The draco was a real Dacian military standard: a hollow bronze or silver wolf/dragon head with an open jaw containing metal "tongues" that produced a hissing/roaring sound as wind passed through, mounted on a pole with a long fabric wind-sock-style tail. It appears on Trajan's Column. The Niederbieber find is a good real-world reference for proportions and construction. Please do not default to a generic fantasy dragon — the head should be distinctly wolf-like, aggressive, open-mouthed, with the fabric tail suggested rather than overly literal.

The aquila (Roman eagle standard) should be based on genuine Roman military eagle standards — wings raised or spread, mounted on a pole, often with a thunderbolt clutched in the talons.

REFERENCE FILES — ATTACHED SEPARATELY

Everything text-based needed for this brief is contained in this document. Four additional files should be attached alongside it:

Eagle_Standard.jpg — Roman aquila standard reference (a genuine full standard with wings spread wide, mounted on its pole). Use this as the primary visual reference for the aquila's pose, proportions, and level of detail.
Draco_Image.webp — for STYLE REFERENCE ONLY. Shows the desired snarling, open-jawed, fierce character of the wolf head. This is another artist's copyrighted commercial jewelry design and must NOT be copied directly — it is provided purely to communicate the ferocity and character the draco's head should have.
Protocollo_Centurionis_Cover_Wraparound_FINAL.png — the author's previous book cover, for brand palette and typography consistency reference (see TYPOGRAPHY and COLOR PALETTE sections above).
9781764839938-Perfect__1_.pdf — the official IngramSpark cover template for this title (ISBN 978-1-7648399-3-8), with exact trim, bleed, spine width, and barcode already built in. Build the final cover directly on top of this template — do not recreate dimensions from scratch.

BACK COVER TEXT — FULL CONTENT

Genre tag (small text, top of back cover): HISTORICAL FICTION

Main blurb (large/prominent text): "One fights for the family he has left. One fights out of duty and for a brotherhood that is his family now. Across the blood-slick fords of Dacia, a shepherd boy and a legionnaire will find that survival doesn't care about empires."

Full description: AD 105. Trajan's legions are massing at the Danube, and a bridge no one believed possible is about to carry Rome's war machine into the last free kingdom in Europe.

Sinna is eighteen when the smoke reaches him — a shepherd's son who has never killed anything larger than a wolf, watching his village burn from a ridge he's climbed a hundred times before. By nightfall his father is dead, his sister is all he has left, and the only thing standing between them and the men in iron is an enormous, half-wild dog who refuses to leave his side.

Marcus Aquila is twenty-eight, eleven years into a service he no longer questions, until he doesn't. A soldier's soldier, trusted by his centurion, loved by his best friend — and increasingly haunted by a war that keeps asking him to do everything right and still watch good men die anyway.

They will never meet. They will never speak. But across two years of ambushes, fortress sieges, a bridge that reshapes a continent, and a final, devastating battle for the Dacian capital, Sinna and Aquila fight the same war from opposite sides of it — bound by a hidden mystery neither of them fully understands, and by two men, one Roman and one Dacian, whose twenty-year-old shared tragedy neither will ever know the other carries.

Lupus et Aquila is a sweeping, ground-level story of the Dacian Wars — Rome's final, brutal conquest of a kingdom that refused to kneel — told through the eyes of the ordinary people who paid for an empire's ambition. A story about survival that doesn't care whose side you're on, loyalty that asks everything and explains nothing, and the quiet, unbearable cost of coming home to a peace that was never really peace at all.

Pull quote (from independent review): "Lupus et Aquila is exceptional historical fiction. It avoids every cliché of the genre — no grand speeches, no glorious victories, no easy answers... Highly recommended — one of the best historical novels I've read in a very long time." — Reader Review (5 stars)

Comparable titles line (small text, optional): For readers of Ben Kane, Harry Sidebottom, and Simon Scarrow.

Author bio: Darren Anderson lives in Rye, Victoria, with an enduring love of Roman history — not just from Rome's side, which is exactly why this story is told through the eyes of a Dacian shepherd boy as much as a Roman soldier. A committed dog lover, he is also the author of Protocollo Centurionis, a health and lifestyle book that applies the discipline of the Roman legionary's life to modern science. Lupus et Aquila is his debut novel.

Barcode/ISBN area: Reserved space, bottom corner — already provided pre-generated in the attached IngramSpark template file (see item 4 below). No further action needed from the designer beyond keeping it within the pink safe area.

ADDITIONAL NOTES This is a dual-POV literary historical novel with a five-star reader review noting: "It avoids every cliché of the genre — no grand speeches, no glorious victories, no easy answers." The cover should reflect that literary, restrained tone rather than a loud, generic "swords and sandals" adventure treatment.

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