The author says:

Magical Realism

Emma’s perfect marriage has fallen apart and she’s not sure why. She’s an avid canoist and camper, so paddles off to a quiet shore to try and figure things out. A beautiful blue heron keeps pace with her, her only companion. There, she meets Little Bear, a mystical spirit who helps her look deep into herself to find the answers she seeks, and to let go of her warring emotions. When he disappears, all that’s left is a blue heron feather that she voted she’ll keep forever.

Nathan says:

I think you missed on this.  “Magic realism” connotes a dreamlike quality to me, of things that don’t necessarily make logical sense or follow cause-and-effect.  The imagery implied by your description — a lone canoeist, a secluded (possibly misty) lake, all would make perfect cover images. Instead you have a tightly drawn feather and a circular motif that would look more at home on a Psycho copycat.

Start over. Go with misty and nebulous. Let us see the space, literal and symbolic, between the protagonist and the “real” world. Go with a font that is whimsical and doesn’t follow straight lines.

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The designer says:

This is a book of contemporary Chinese poetry, translated into English. Zhou Li is a doctor as well as a poet, and the poems are reminiscent of Ren Hang: short and simple, about the city, nature, sometimes very explicit and sexual, sometimes everyday – about life, love, and death. The writer isn’t well known, and has never published a full book in China. The target audience is in the US, for those who like modern or translated poetry, but it isn’t intended to be a mainstream book.

The design featured here originally had rain in the background. I liked the concept but I couldn’t make it work, as it was too busy. The translator wanted a simple design, but it needs to stand out enough, and look professional enough, to attract buyers.

Nathan says:

Well, attracting buyers for a book of poetry might be too tall any order for any cover… 🙂

The problem is that this book tells me nothing. Nothing. I don’t even know that it’s poetry rather than a novel or a memoir, and I certainly don’t know the mood or theme — nothing about “the city, nature, sometimes very explicit and sexual, sometimes everyday – about life, love, and death.”

The best I can suggest is to look at the covers of other poetry volumes that you’d expect to find on the same poetry lover’s bookshelf.  Look at how those covers signaled to the reader that this book was for them.  Then incorporate some of those visual cues.

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The author says:

Genre: Urban-Fantasy/Soft-Cyberpunk

We follow a seventeen-year-old girl named Winter den Haag. She lives in Frankfurt on the continent of Germania Magna. A Planet Earth nearly identical, yet vastly different. Once more bullied before the summer holidays, and her father hospitalized, Winter eventually finds herself in tears on her bed. Deep in the night, Winter receives a message on her phone from an app that she doesn’t remember installing, asking her if she wants to change her life. From there on, we follow her as she forges her legend, and eventually becomes a pillar of the Free People of Germania.

Nathan says:

The artwork is very competent, but not at all dynamic. She’s literally just standing there with her hands in her pockets; it’s practically a placid scene. And while it looks urban and gritty, there’s nothing there that tells the reader it’s an alien world, or even that it’s science fiction — that’s a pretty contemporary car right there.

The type is a disaster.  Sorry, but between the collection of fonts and the size, it’s an unreadable mess.  I’m still not sure I know what the main word in the title is — I think it’s “Aeternum,” but that’s only after rejecting “Afternun” and “Aftermum.”

If I were going to try to fix this cover (instead of scrapping it and starting over), I would:

• Rotate it by 10 or 15 degrees counterclockwise, placing the central figure on an angle.
• Play with the color so it doesn’t look like she’s standing under warm studio lighting.
• Add a spaceship to the sky behind the lightpole.
• Redo the type, focusing on readability first, and make the byline bigger.

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The author says:

GENRE: Sci-Fi action story, present day, moving into the past.

STORY: Neo-Nazi German terrorists attack the lab of time-travel scientist Peter Waylan. To save his life, he sends himself through his untested portal. It sends him on a reverse trajectory, streaming backwards through time. The Germans create their Fourth Reich and conquer not only the future but the past. Waylan is the only one who can correct this nightmarish timeline, but first he must somehow change his trajectory while on the run from Nazi assassins from the future.

APPEAL: fans of time-travel sci-fi and steampunk

Nathan says:

If you’ve got a novel about time-traveling Nazis and you only reference time travel on the cover (or just time, really), you’re doing yourself a disservice.  Especially as both clocks and swastikas are radial designs, you should be able to work a visual Nazi reference in there with moderate effort.

And I’m sad to say that the “clever” backwards type doesn’t work for me at all. Confusing the audience isn’t the same thing as intriguing them, and I think the flipped letters work against you, especially because it’s inconsistent: only some of the letters are flipped, and in one case they’re out of order too.  I think this probably works better in your head than on paper.

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