The author says:

Book Description: A young light-gray cat named Narmel gains a platinum tail and learns to use it, while trying to find out secrets about a magical disaster called “silver storms”. The setting is in the land of Starnovia, where different animals are inhabited. This is a fully illustrated cover design, and not a quick concept demo. The rest of my book will have illustrations as well.

Genre: fantasy-adventure

Target audience: Young Middle-Grade (ages 9-10)

Nathan says:

Nice artwork, but shouldn’t the tail be waving in the air, as if it’s important?  I think you’ve also got waaay to much dead space; let the cat take up more of the real estate. And the lightning bolts… don’t look like lightning bolts.

The font for both title and byline is a little thin to be read easily, and too ornate to be read easily by your target audience.

And the back cover’s DEFINITELY more of a wall of text than middle-grade readers want to see.

Other comments?

The author says:

The book is a literary fiction piece set in the Second World War. The protaganist, Henry Martens, is living in Germany when the war begins, tries to avoid service, but in 1944 is forced into the German Army by an increasingly desperate fascist regime. As noted in the original submission “Martens juggles his desire to return home (with conscience intact) with the necessity of toeing the line with his German superiors in order to survive. But the more dedicated a German soldier he becomes, the more he does to survive the war, the more unlikely it will be that he can ever return to family and friends in Canada.”

I appreciated the commentary on the first submission and hope this will get me a little closer to the mark.

[original submission and comments here]

Nathan says:

I appreciate that it looks less like an educational piece this time out. However, something about it says “memoir” to me, more than fiction (probably the reliance on period photos).  There are also some design missteps in here — the gray-on-gray of the lower photo mutes it to murkiness, and the fact that that murky photo is also behind type also obscures it almost to the point of uselessness.

I think that full-color art is definitely the way to go, rather than monochrome period photos.

Other comments?

The author says:

All sitcom writer Jacob Grey wanted was story credit. Instead his partner betrays him above and below the covers: He steals Jake’s pilot, sells it to ABC, and sleeps with their bimbo agent. That’s when Jake leaves and ends up at a quirky Green Bay bed and breakfast. Nothing at the bed and breakfast is normal. Jake’s confounded by mysterious bangs and clangs inside the walls, and how despite writer’s block, his new sitcom writes itself while he sleeps. He’s not even sure if the owners are human. But he is sure there’s something about one of the owners. Hector Lodge, the man Jake calls Mr. Mumbles, is one big secret-a secret Jake wants to know better. When Jake sneaks into a hidden passageway between the walls to learn more about Mr. Mumbles, he finds more than a bedroom. A music box plays just for him with a journal tucked inside that he’s drawn to read. A story unfolds that binds two strangers’ pasts with his present. After Mr. Mumbles confronts Jake about his snooping, he confides in Jake. Yes, the house is haunted, and yes, the journals could answer why. But when Jake hires two private investigators to uncover information about the journal’s author, Jake also has them secretly look into Hector’s past. What they discover unravels the family’s hidden history and links them to the man who haunts them.

REWRITING SINGULARITY (62,680 words) is an adult fiction with multi-genre, magical realism twist and gay protagonist with Walter Mitty’s imagination.

Nathan says:

While I like the idea of showing a manuscript being redrafted as the cover and title, I don’t know that it works here.  “Rewriting Singularity” is such a counter-intuitive phrase to begin with, and then having one of the words be crossed out confuses the reader as to what the title actually is. Is it Rewriting Singularity, or just Singularity because “Rewriting” is crossed out?  If you want to use the same concept, what I would do is have two words in a typewriter font crossed out and two new words written in, and then in another ink color have THOSE words crossed out, and your actual title beneath them. (Although I still question whether the title you’ve chosen is a good choice; it doesn’t convey to the reader anything about the book.)

It’s also a good idea to have some kind of border or edge treatment on a cover with a white background, as most book and ebook vendor sites also have a white background, and you want a visual cue of where the cover ends.

Your description doesn’t actually say the word “comedy,” but I get a comic vibe from your synopsis, so my next comments will be informed by that assumption. If I’m reading it wrong, mea culpa.

Comedy is hard to convey on a cover without going over the top… so go over the top.  Ham it up.  I usually tell writers not to use “by” in their byline unless they need to describe the book — “A Novel by,” “An Adventure of the Far Future by,” etc.  In this case, the idea that popped into my head was “A Paranormal Gay Romance With Ninjas* by”… and then at the bottom, “*contains no ninjas.”

But like I said, if comedy isn’t actually a major element, that won’t help at all.

Other comments?