The author says:

Colleen’s rural life in Kilkenny was predictable. She loved shepherding her sheep and daydreaming by the river bend. But war has come to Tudor Ireland and all must pay a new tax to help the crown fight the rebels. A tax that will work her father to an early grave. While she mourns her father, men clamor to marry Colleen, for she is the beauty of the town. But Colleen cannot escape the conclusion that her father was cheated by the land lord. She needs proof, but no one will help her. Will she continued her search for justice, or be content to be a farmer’s wife? Colleen is a novella about an Irish country girl growing up in a man’s world and what that mean when all you have is your looks.

Nathan says:

No.

Sorry, but putting elements across a face like this never works.  You could have the seaside castle showing in the background in the upper left (you could even scoot the face further to the lower right to make room), but this kind layering disparate images (with the title and subtitle impinging on her fact, to boot) is just a bad, bad idea.

Other opinions?

The author says:

A collection of short stories and flash fiction ranging from Fantasy to Science Fiction as well as Horror. Some of the flash fiction is memoir based from years gone by. Basically, this is an all around short story lovers book, targeted just for those people who love reading a start to finish in a short time.

Nathan says:

Since this is Volume II, I took a look at the cover for Volume I:

Frankly, the first cover is far superior, even though it took me a minute to figure out what that is behind the type.  The type is readable and appropriate, and the entire effect is intriguing.

By contrast, Volume II’s cover is plain. The font you chose might indicate a military theme to the stories, but given that it’s not backed up by the color scheme, probably not.  All that the cover really says is, “I’m so damned interesting!” — and given that most of your potential audience doesn’t already know you, that’s not much of a selling point.  (Nobody’s going to see the dragon reflection in your glasses in thumbnail.)

My advice is to jettison this design entirely and mimic the first one: a semi-sci-fi image (a toy robot, maybe) in a muted but high-contrast color scheme, dominated by clear, bold text.

(And while you’re at it… give a serious edit to your cover copy.  Misspellings and misused punctuation are not the way to convince anyone of your writing skills.)

Other opinons?

The author says:

Sci-fi novel and series debut. In a galaxy struggling to rebuild after an interplanetary war that ended with the destruction of the neutral world of Teleev, a task force is formed to apprehend the vengeful survivors of the shattered planet. This is the final draft of the cover.

Nathan says:

Aw, don’t tell us that it’s the “final draft,” because that means all you want to hear from us is, “Good job, don’t change a thing.”

I think it’s a solid foundation, but it looks awfully murky thanks to the color scheme.  Giving a deep navy tone to the non-explody parts would lend some much-needed color contrast.

I don’t understand why both the title and byline are so small — there’s so much space to play with (see what I did there?), and it’s not like you’re in danger of covering up an important detail like a character’s face.  And that would help with readability; a relentlessly square font like this is in danger of causing eyes to skip across the letters.  Not that you have to change to something with upper and lowercase, but even some space between letters might help slow down those skipping eyes.

So the byline is “Fen and Frances Ixx”?  That’s… an awfully hard surname to read, and the size doesn’t help.  You might want to change that font to something that (a) has upper and lower case, and/or (b) looks less like a Roman numeral.  Unless that’s supposed to be a Roman numeral, in which case I’m hopelessly confused.

Other advice?

The author says:

This is a text/reference book and is the 5th book in the series on health and safety – this time focussing on the construction industry in the UK. I have recently had this template made which I will use for rebranding the other 4 books that have gone before – and selling them as a boxed set – so the design is for each book. The book includes law references, case studies, best practice and my experiences of advising the construction industry at a senior strategic level. My other books haven’t sold very well so wonder if I can make the book series more appealing. Do you think I should add an image of a crane or digger in silhouette somewhere on the page? Any comments gratefully received.

Nathan says:

This subject matter isn’t really one that depends on “curb appeal” for book sales (it’s definitely not recreational reading, nor is the field as super-saturated as, say, paranormal shifter romances); the only thing that the cover needs to convey is professionalism, which I think is covered well.

That said, couldn’t the template designer have included something that connoted construction?  A blueprint or schematic, a photograph of heavy equipment or workers in hardhats… It just seems to me that the template was constructed with the conscious intent of avoiding any portrayal of the subject matter.

But still.  A professional reference manual is not one which depends on cover design to attract potential buyers, so you’ll get a lot less mileage out of cover redesign.  If covers have been slow, you might do well to concentrate on other marketing efforts: direct mail to contractors, industry association endorsements, etc.  Best of luck.

Other comments?