The author says:

1942/1959 historical time portal adventure.

Jim’s parents are on the verge of splitting up, and he’s obsessed with finding a girlfriend. Then dead Uncle Buddy emerges from a stain in the wallpaper and takes Jim back to the Battle of Alamein, to fight in WW2. Buddy helps Jim deal with life’s problems. Back in 1959, Jim runs away and is saved from drowning by Old Beardy, the beach hermit, who acts as Jim’s second mentor to get him on the right track.

Intended audience: baby boomers.

Nathan says:

That last sentence of your description stopped me cold, because this is definitely NOT the cover for a book aimed at baby boomers. It’s got all the visual markers of a YA novel.

I was going to comment on things like the needlessly hard-to-read title or the muted colors of the head in front of the bright portal, but I think that would be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. If boomers are your target audience, you need to make this book look like the kind of book that boomers look at and say, “Oh, that’s for me!”

Try some more market research and start again.

The author says:

A Civil War sharpshooter is tasked with helping hunt down an enormous mountain lion picking off immigrant workers building the transcontinental railroad in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas in 1868. He finds himself caught in the middle of a battle between the immovable presence of nature and the unstoppable force of modernization. Hunter becomes the hunted as he toils with the idea of picking a side in this eternal conflict. Historical fiction novella addressing the themes of the cost of modernization and how those least responsible are often left to face the consequences of progress.

I’ve been toying with three cover ideas inspired by vintage travel posters and 19th century news headlines/posters.

Nathan says:

Of the three, I like the bones of the third one best; lighten the background, then use a halftone of the reddish hue for the mountain lion in the first two to make the lion pop in this one.

I question the wisdom of using “Gaia” in the title of a historical novel, though. While I know that it’s the name of an ancient Greek goddess, to a current readership it immediately brings up post-1970s environmentalism, and thus seems like an anachronism.

Thoughts?

[original submission and comments here]

Nathan says:

Definitely a much stronger execution of the concept than the original. Mostly what we’re into here is fine-tuning.

• The knife still doesn’t pull its own weight; as you can see in the thumbnail, it ends up being semi-invisible in the thumbnail. Part of the problem is that the knife you’re using this time has a shorter blade compared to the handle, and the blade is the only part that’s visible as the “i” in “Lies.”
• The drop shadow on the knife is a little weird, too; viewers can accept shadows on letters against unconnected backgrounds, but this instance means that a knife is casting a shadow on the sky.
• Something about the color scheme makes me worry that people will see “slasher horror novel” rather than “police vs. serial killer novel.” I can’t support it rationally, but something makes me think that tweaking the city lights to be slightly more yellow; and making the lights at street level clearer — especially a couple of dots of blue-and-red police lights — would make a big difference.

Other comments?

The author says:

I am the author as well as the cover artist.

PERLGATE is a young adult sci-fi. The chief of security of a space federation is forced to discharge his best friend after he becomes commander under suspicious circumstances. Longer description on cover.

Issues I’m aware of: I know the earth’s curve doesn’t line up; the program I used to make this (Clip Studio) doesn’t allow multiple artboards to be used in the same file unlike Adobe Illustrator, so I had to eyeball it. I also know my art style makes this look like a graphic novel when it’s really a regular written novel.

Nathan says:

This is going to sound really savage. Please remember that I bear you no no personal malice; I’m just giving you the blunt truth.

If you know that your art style is wrong for this cover, why are you using it on the cover?  Your excuse about Clip Studio vs. Illustrator gives me a clue: You don’t think you can afford better. But here’s the point: READERS DON’T CARE. You won’t be able to stand next to every potential reader and comment, “Hey, I know the cover’s not right, but the novel’s really good anyway.” Your cover has to be able to stand on its own, with no excuses. If it can’t, you’re sabotaging your novel sales, and no number of excuses will make up for that.

The second part of the question is, why are you sending us the cover to critique if you know it’s wrong?  I think I can answer that: You want affirmation.  You want us to say that it’s okay.  I get that, I really do; we all want someone to tell us that our mistakes aren’t as important as we think. But that’s not what we do. We bear you no animosity, but we have no soft spot for you in our hearts either. We’re not your Aunt Gladys, who thinks everything you do is just wonderful.

I get being stretched thin and having to decide whether to put money into a cover or make rent. I really do. In this case, maybe you’ll have to settle for a cover that is less customized to your story in favor of it being professional-quality, if slightly generic.

Tough love. That’s what we specialize in around here.