The author says:

Confessions of a House Painter is a fictional autobiographical account of a man that begins with an unexpected, and oddly erotic, experience on a school bus ride during third grade, to present day. Each chapter are specific memories of relationships, sometimes romantic encounters, and humorous escapades that are a mixture of humor, romance and his philosophical approach to life. In seemingly normal situations from everyday life, He draws metaphysical conclusions from unexpected interactions with unforgettable characters resulting in often humorous, and sometimes woeful outcomes. Jonny’s philosophical convictions come from a surprising source, his Labrador retriever. Fresh from a self-aware consciousness awakening, Emmy guides her human into a new way of understanding the human experience with intriguing outcomes.

Nathan says:

The problem here is that the book described in your copy doesn’t match your cover at all. I’m not sure exactly what to make of the book as described — fictionalized memoir? coming-of-age story? literary fiction? — but the cover screams “erotic romance” (it doesn’t scream it especially well, but I’m not going to spend effort correcting it if it’s not the right cover for this book in the first place).

I think before you can get anywhere with your cover, you need to discover your “hook”: What is there in the book (which should be apparent in both your description and your cover) that is going to capture the attention of a potential reader? How is it different, and more interesting, than the books to either side of it on a bookshelf or in an Amazon display?

The author says:

MISCONCEPTION – a psychological surrogacy thriller. Think movies ‘Fatal Attraction’, ‘Basic Instinct’ meets ‘Girl On A Train’. This is not an action thriller but involves relationships, surrogacy, betrayal, a wealthy heiress who cannot conceive, a dangerous surrogate, a seduction, theft of a fortune, a brain-damaged child and an abduction. I am trialling straplines: a) All she wants is a baby. All he wants is her money b) Can you trust the one you love. I am testing three cover approaches.

Nathan says:

I think the cover photo on the third is the strongest — it’s a simple, easy-to-read image and puts the pregnancy at the front-and-center. However, I would use the title font from the second one; the one in use on the third one is significantly harder to read.

From there, I would play with the contrast and hue of the photograph to give more of a “dangerous” vibe; look at other thrillers, even non-action ones, and you can see the high contrast and muted color schemes in use.  Of course, play with the color too much, and suddenly the baby bump won’t be immediately recognized as a baby bump. It’ll take some fine tuning.

Other comments?

The author says:

UMMD is a Chinese cultivation-inspired BL (boys love) web-novel, similar in style to “The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation” by MXTX (translated from Chinese), or “The Grandmaster’s Weird Disciple” (an indie web-novel in English that is top on the charts of the platform I will be publishing on).

This is my first large project, so I am using the new platform ScribbleHub, which caters to young writers within my genre. I may post elsewhere later. Because this is a purely web-release, profits done by tip rather than purchase, the standards and expectations are a bit different. My title will be searchable, and the cover will only appear next to the appropriate genres, tags, & series description. In fact, the cover will only be shown as a small thumbnail, which cannot be expanded. This gives me more independence from a hardcopy release to catch reader interest. However, the trend for web-novels of this ilk display anime-style profiles of the book’s MCs. Obviously, I did not do that. I am not an artist, and I will not commission paid art for something that may in all likelihood provide nothing more than a bit of niche online hype. A friend of mine did custom art for the story herself, and the fox/tree represents my two MCs vividly (although it won’t become self-explanatory until well into the book). I am extremely grateful. The painting is so fluffy, and I am slightly concerned that it looks too children’s book-like, but the tags should take care of that, no?

Anyway, the artwork is set – unless covercritics find something egregious about it -, but my presentation of it is not. Some notes on the design choices I made: – The two lines are a simple border idea I took from a friend. I have no idea if they enhance or detract from the cover, but I thought that something to frame the art would make it feel more ‘book-y’ and modern. The color can be changed. – The circle watermark brushstroke over the tree can be flipped, altered in transparency, and changed in colors (the two colors are a magenta and a deep blue, to match the color distortion of the filter on the paper in the bottom edges). – The font for the title is Alegreya and the font for the author’s name is Alegreya Sans SC Bold. I chose – Alegreya because I was advised in a forum to use a simple serif font to put the focus on the art. I am inclined to agree, although, it still has to be viewable in the thumbnail. Alegreya seemed to fit, since the lettering didn’t thin out in places The triple em dash framing and italics of ‘Unheard Music’ were all done from a suggestion. I added bold, to make it more readable, except for ‘of the’, which I downsized the font of. I chose a related font for ‘LiquidCeil’ b/c I assumed that means some kind of consistency? I also expanded the kerning of the author’s title arbitrarily. Any more stretched out looked wrong to me, but idk. I originally considered more calligraphy-type fonts, specifically “Waterlily”. But I thought this could look more professional. – For the text color, I have received mixed reviews for having a deep blue (similar to the shadow on the fox), a rich red (to bring out the lychee fruit in the fox’s paw), or the current dark teal. White did not show up, and black was too brash. The teal is my personal favorite.

I welcome anything to add or alter to aid in readability, professionality, or appeal. 🙂

Nathan says:

I’m gonna assume that most of the commenters here are going to be as ignorant of the genre and examples you cite as I am, so for reference, here are the covers to the two titles mentioned.  (The first one has several editions, so here’s a representative sampling.)

Given that we’re looking at a thumbnail-only presentation in ScribbleHub, and that getting different artwork is off the table (the artwork you have is quite good, by the way), I think the main thing you need to add to your cover is something that conveys “Asian” at a glance, something which could most easily be done by using a typeface like the one seen on the English covers of Demonic Cultivation.  I would also experiment with a dark red color for the title (again, similar to Demonic Cultivation) to make it stand out more from the tree behind it as well as to emphasize the similarity to that book.

Beyond that, given that the cover is going to be seen (a) only in thumbnail and (b) only beside a text description (as opposed to Amazon, where covers are usually seen practically all by their lonesome), I’m not sure that any other refinements would be worth the effort.  Other comments?

The author says:

Being a boy mom of five is… fun. It’s an adventure, it’s hard, it’s messy, and very stinky. In this light-hearted collection of true stories from a boy mom, we get a glimpse into the hilarious moments as well as the challenging and difficult ones that have life lessons behind, and in spite of the madness. If being a boymom teaches us one thing, it’s that there’s never, ever a dull moment. Like, even a little bit.

Nathan says:

I don’t have any “heavy” criticisms — if I were to see this cover in a bookstore or on Amazon, I’d see nothing wrong with it.

I would try a series of tweaks:

• Does the original photo have enough headspace that it could be the background to the subtitle?
• How about upping the contrast of the subtitle with its background?
• Could the photo be shifted down so that it’s the background to the byline? (Obviously, you’d have to darken the byline.)
• Why is “Tales” capitalized in the subtitle? Should “boy mom” have quotation marks around it, to set it off as a unique coinage?

But as it stands, good job!

Other comments?