The author says:

Hell let her go…but not all the way. And each time Jo falls asleep, it drags her back to be consumed by creatures of the dark. [Sequel to Flames of Lethe & 2nd of planned trilogy]

Setting: earth & hell

Time: present day

Genre: dark fantasy-romance

Target audience: fantasy & paranormal romance readers

As before, I created this cover using Canva & stock images. Please rip it apart and tell me everything wrong with it! Thank you all!!

[original submission and comments here]

Nathan says:

Like the first submission, I think this is very good.  However, it is no better than the original submission — just different. And it doesn’t look like any of the changes made were to address issues brought up by commenters the first time.

• There might be just a smidge more indication of the romance that you originally mentioned in the story description in the medallion, but I think you have to be looking for it; I would guess that most people, when seeing someone “embraced by death,” think of it as a common metaphor, rather than an indication of romance.
• The handwriting font at the bottom is still the same font — the words have changed, but the problem remains that the font both (a) clashes with the style of the rest of the cover and (b) is hard to read against a busy backdrop.
• The same grunge elements on either side of “Lethe” still make it hard to read, especially at thumbnail size.

By and large, I’d have to call this a lateral move rather than an improvement.

Other comments?

The author says:

Jack Sinclair can lift a car, but what good does that do him? He doesn’t have any _real_ powers like the League of Order downtown, so he figures it’s best he keeps his head down and pretends he’s not a superhuman. But then a supervillain called Bloody Bones attacks his high school and he has to step up and protect his friends.

Vanguard and the Bloody Bones is the story of a young, modern-day Bronx kid who lives in a world where superhumans are real, and heroes and villains battle over the fate of the world. Jack only survives his fight with Bloody Bones because another group of high school students teleport in and defeat the threat for him. These kids are from The School, the premier training facility for young superheroes. They recruit Jack to join them at The School, setting him on the path to becoming a hero called Vanguard.

Vanguard and the Bloody Bones is the first novel in an eight-book series called Becoming Vanguard. The series is Young Adult, dealing with Jack’s years in high school, and is meant to appeal to kids of about the same age.

Nathan says:

Hmm. The first thing that jumped out at me was the shadowless face under the helmet, compared to the heavy shadow defining the body.

The second thing that jumped out at me — and boy, was the jump strong! — was the odd shape of his upper legs.

Beyond those, I think that there’s this unexamined instinct to put the entire human figure on the cover, when a cropped-down version might work better. If the image were reduced to this…

…you could put the title across the (problematic) legs, not lose any important details, and have a cover that conveyed more information in thumbnail.

Other comments?

The author says:

The army seals off a village in the night, and disappears the inhabitants. A factory fire begins to spread a radioactive cloud. As the first UK ISIS cell spreads destruction, DCI Strange must stop them before London is contaminated—and at the same time, rescue his girl from the clutches of Sheikh Maulan.

Nathan says:

Is it a graphic novel? Because the assumption of 99% of the people who see this cover will be that it’s a graphic novel.

The author says:

In a hell world where memories have disappeared, a young woman must rely on two very different men for her survival, little knowing one man already destroyed her.

Setting: hell / purgatory (the characters aren’t sure)

Time: present day

Genre: fantasy-romance

Target audience: fantasy & paranormal romance readers

I created this cover using Canva’s stock images, & please rip it apart and tell me everything wrong with it.

Nathan says:

Quite good. I have a couple of technical quibbles — you should clear some of the grunge and ornamentation crowding “Lethe” to make it easier to read, and that handwriting font at the bottom has GOT to go.

My biggest concern, though, is that the cover doesn’t give any indication of romance.  Even just adding a gray male-and-female silhouette embracing behind the sigil in the top center might be enough.  (You may have to pull back further on the grunge and ornamentation to make it work.)

Other comments?

The author says:

Again is a dark-academia-adjacent mystery novel. Heartsick over a broken engagement, Professor Thea Vance finds refuge while on sabbatical in a tiny college town full of both charm and history. When a former lover, Roman, reappears in her life with a job offer to partner with him in building an immersive video game, she’s tempted in more ways than one. But just as she starts to suspect that something more than meets the eye is going on with Roman, she’s thrust into the center of a disturbing, mysterious death—a death that seems to have Roman at its center. Terrified and confused, Thea works against time to solve the puzzle when Roman disappears.

The mystery only deepens as she tries to unravel the tangled threads that lead to a powerful corporation, a mysterious white-elephant mansion brooding over hidden artifacts, a decades-old friendship and love affair gone bad, a scandal that rocked the gaming industry, and ultimately, a buried secret so shocking, it could change all of history…forever. Will she be able to fit the pieces of the past together in time to heal her heart and absolve her returned love or will she lose everything…again?

Nathan says:

The cover might be good for a dramatic memoir or a lit-fic novel, but there’s absolutely nothing about it that says “dark-academia-adjacent mystery” — so you wouldn’t be attracting your target audience, and the audience who WOULD be interested in your cover would feel put off when they read the description.

I think you need to do what we frequently recommend around here:  Imagine your target reader going on a book-buying binge.  What other books would you expect in that reader’s shopping cart along with yours?  Look at the covers to those books and see how your target audience is used to being marketed to, and let what you learn influence you as you come up with a cover concept.

Other comments?