The author says:

Immaculate Days is my debut poetry collection

Nathan says:

“Poetry” doesn’t give us much to go off — that’s a form, but it doesn’t really tell us much about the content. That said, I’ve noticed that most poetry collections published today share a lot of sensibilities with lit fic collections, in that the covers don’t want to be too attractive or enticing, lest they be seen as “pandering.”

But still, it wouldn’t hurt to put the word “poetry” on the cover, right?

Simply in terms of visual aesthetics, the biggest problem — and if you can’t see it in the larger image, you can definitely see it in the thumbnail — is that there’s not enough tonal contrast (dark vs. light) between your title text and your image.  Even though it’s red letters against a green background, the text still doesn’t stand out.  You can really see it if you desaturate the colors:

Other comments?

The author says:

Safety and Liability Analyst Craig Shannon finds himself investigating the deaths of two people on the water-filled world called Teardrop. But the deaths were no accident, and all evidence points to a conspiracy against the peaceful alien natives known as the kell. Craig must search for the truth behind the plan to terraform Teardrop to not only save his own life, but the life of an entire planet.

This is a replacement cover to my existing novel. It is science fiction with elements of mystery and adventure. This is the finished cover. Because of the mixture of genres, I’m not sure which author’s readers it would appeal to.

Nathan says:

Because it’s a replacement, I decided that looking at the current cover would be instructive:

You’ve made changes, but I don’t think you’ve made improvements.

What you describe above is “SF” and “suspense.”  So what are the elements common to each? What are the visual cues that let readers of suspense and science fiction (and especially suspenseful SF) know at a glance that this is a book for them?

Suspense: Dark, shadowy settings with high contrast. People in shadow, or similarly lit in high contrast. The subtext of danger and flight.

Science fiction: Technology, space, alien fauna, SOMETHING that tells us we’re not in Kansas.

Both: Strong type.

So here’s the problem with your revised cover: You have none of that, except the “space” part — and even that isn’t easily discernible; in thumbnail, the planet could as easily be a rubber ball.

So: Pick a strong, clean font (probably sans serif). Let it dominate the cover, as opposed to sliding into the layout innocuously where it won’t intrude.  Use an image with stark contrast.  If you want to play up the novelty of the water-planet setting, make it a “wet” image.  (Drowning imagery works well for “being in over your head.”)

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The author says:

1 Common Thread is the history of a African American family struggle for freedom. Still, others will uncover that they’re able to connect to their ancestors with this text.

Nathan says:

I honestly don’t know if this is really a cover that’s being sent for critique, or a mail accidentally sent to the wrong address.

Treating it in good faith as a cover seeking critique: It tells me NOTHING about the book.  It doesn’t even tell me that it IS a book — it looks like a photo accompanying an article in the newspaper. As a book cover, I’d assume it’s either by or possibly about the man on the cover, and maybe a municipal angle; there’s nothing to tell me that it’s about family or ancestors.  Heck, I don’t even know the TITLE of the book — I pulled the title of this post from the file name, assuming it was something close.

Seriously. You must have friends; explain the book to them and ask them for ideas for the cover. Whatever they come up with has got to be better than this.

The author says:

This work book accompanies our Can Cubs sessions and is a great way to review some of the content from class. Alternatively, it can aid kindergartens and home learning too! This workbook covers 10 different topics/themes, they include:
On the farm
Autumn I’m a little teapot
Old King Cole
Pirates
Circus
Jungle
Manners
Five senses
Shapes
Read | Talk | Solve | Write | Colour Together!

Nathan says:

I know that Comic Sans is a very readable font for young readers, and teachers have an inordinate fondness of it. But isn’t there some other handdrawn font you can use that doesn’t give adults hives?  Especially when you use it for everything…  (Maybe using a handdrawn font for the words that you’d expect preschoolers to read, and a different for for other text, such as “Preshoolers workbook.”) (By the way, is there a reason that “workbook” isn’t capitalized?)

The placement of the type doesn’t seem to have any awareness of the picture it covers. I didn’t realize that there was a person in the foreground holding the map until waaay too long.  If you’re not going to make the person visible, just excise the person and map, and move the pirate ship up so the grays bands behind the text don’t do it violence.

Speaking of those gray bars: I understand they can make the text more readable for young readers by isolating the letters from the cover image. Hover, there’s not enough difference in luminosity between the gray and the green of the word “Green” — the word becomes unreadable.

Other comments?