The author says:

“Saving Foxwood” is a Regency romance, so the target audience is primarily women, especially those who like Georgette Heyer. It’s about a woman who marries beneath herself to save her home.

Nathan says:

I’m definitely not the target audience, but my perusal of the genre strongly suggests that most successful covers feature definite romantic imagery — the couple in question, or at very least one of the two romantic participants.  If your novel is actually a Regency romance (as opposed to, say, a historical novel which contains a romance), you probably want to use your cover image to brand yourself as being solidly in the genre.

There are definitely other problems here — the lack of contrast between “Foxwood” and the background, the blank space at the top that gives it an unbalanced feel, the unnecessary “by” in the byline — but I think you need to step back and revise the initial concept first.

Other thoughts?

The author says:

Riven Calyx is about a young ambitious knight who has been commissioned by the king to find a wizard. The knight doesn’t get all that he expects and soon find that he and the wizard have different agendas.

[original submission and comments here]

Nathan says:

The artwork is like night and day. Now you just need to figure out what to do with the type.  Given the proportions of the artwork (unless the artist cropped out some background that you could use), you have roughly this much space for the title and byline:

(If you have a series tagline or subtitle, you could use those open areas to the left and right of the wizard’s head.)

Good luck!

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?