The author says:

In Bologna, Italy 1600 Katsi Cataldi is betrothed, but when a Queen is killed almost a continent away. It has far reaching consequences for her family. She will team up with a reluctant royal, Rhea Von Holt to clear her parents name. But the witch Drusilla has other plans for them.

Nathan says:

Before I read the description, before I knew anything about the book, my very first thought on glancing at the cover was, “Flame doesn’t work that way.”  Even after figuring out that they were swords of fire, my initial impression sticks.

More than that, though, I think you’ve got a cover that doesn’t advertise the book you’ve written. 17th-century Bologna is an opulent, visually enticing setting; some of that should be visible on the cover.  What you’ve written leads me to believe that romance is a big part of the book; I should be able to see people on the cover.  And not only does the font you use say “LOTR-flavored high fantasy” rather than “Italian fantasy,” the three variations you use — spaced, vertically stretched, horizontally stretched — don’t work well together.

(And this is beside the point, but I hope that the book itself is much better copy-edited than the description you gave me, which a half-dozen punctuation and grammar problems in 50 words.)

The author says:

This book is about a young woman get to know her mother’s long hidden secret through the red dress that her mother owned but never wore.

Nathan says:

The illustration’s very good.  I can’t tell from your pitch who this book is aimed at, so I’ll tell you what I see: This looks like it’s aimed at the chapter-book demographic (middle-grade or so)l it’s a style of art you find on that shelf.  If that’s not the target audience — if, for instance, this is a dark 300-page tale about family secrets and inter-generational drama — this is not the right cover for this book.

(I assume that “Arthur” is a jokey placeholder for “Author.” I would very strongly advise you to switch out that font for something that feels more like the rest of the cover.  Perhaps the upper-and-lowercase version of the title font.)

Anyone disagree?

The author says:

Elevator Pitch- Geo (a rock) and his friends (also rocks) leave their underground city for the first time to try their hand at camping. After proving themselves to be utterly incapable of such a task, they end up lost in a wilderness full of strange beasts for which they are ill prepared. As they struggle to find their way home, some long-held secrets make Geo wonder if he even wants to go back.

Setting- Remote island with uncommon levels of biodiversity. Present-ish day.

Genre- Middle Grade Adventure

Audience- 8-12yrs

Nathan says:

So… when you say that he’s “a rock”… I mean, you realize that what’s on the cover isn’t just “a rock,” right?  it’s a mostly-cubic rock-creature, I guess, but…

Actually, I like it. I like the cover a lot more than I thought I would when I read the description.

I may not be competent to judge the cover of a book in which the protagonists are rocks, but there it is. I like it as it is.

I’ll leave it to someone else to say something of possible use.

The author says:

Stressed-out lawyer Ellie dreads having another nervous breakdown. When she passes out in a museum after touching an ancient artifact, Ellie finds herself in Viking-age Iceland, certain that she’s just dreaming while her over-worked body lies in a hospital bed somewhere. But after meeting sexy berserker Aron Hrossbjorn, she is thrust into a war that is more real than she could imagine. Sparks fly, but can their relationship withstand the powerful forces pulling them apart?

This is a full-length novel with paranormal elements (including shifters), based loosely on a story from the Icelandic Sagas. A sweeping romance for fans of Outlander with a Viking twist. (I have not decided on a subtitle yet, but I will be adding one to the cover.)

Nathan says:

Again, we’re running into the fact that I’m not a fan of the genre, so everything I say must be received with that in mind.

That said: How did “man looking at his own junk” become a cover pose?  I’ve seen it on a dozen books, and I’m still puzzled.  My own inclination would be to have a man looking straight out, or off to the side like a catalog model, but if genre conventions mean that he has to check to be sure he’s still packing, I guess run with it.

All right, useful comments:

1. One too many fonts.
2. No Viking fonts.  Couldn’t one of them look at least a little bit runic?
3. The tattoo doesn’t look like a tattoo. (If it’s supposed to be a brand instead of a tattoo, that’s another whole problem — I don’t think brands that cover so much skin leave the skin looking so smooth.)
4. I have no idea what that thing is behind him, and if it takes up so much real estate it really ought to be something identifiable.
5. From the thumbnail, you can see that it’s a little murky. I know that ancient Northern Europe was a cold, bleak place, but maybe adding some bronze highlights to his skin would help it pop.

I’ll leave it to the other commenters to tell how on the mark I am with my suggestions.

The author says:

20 years after nuclear war collapsed civilization and unlikely heroes Hood and Whiskey defeated the despotic Kaiser, new kingdoms and factions have arisen in the rebuilding civilization of the Americas. Whiskey’s life as a Ranger for the Sons of Liberty has been thrown back into war again, a war he refuses to fight after the harrowing trauma of the first war so many years ago. When someone from Whiskey’s past makes themselves known in a cryptic message, Whiskey must range far into the borderless lands to try and answers, and some sort of redemption.

Nathan says:

Because this is the second book of a series, I went looking for the cover of the first book on Amazon:

While I have some complaints on the first one — mostly having to do with the byline font which clashes with the rest of the type — I think it’s generally a solid cover, by virtue of (a) the central image and (b) the color scheme.

Unfortunately, the second cover does away with both of those positives, and brings nothing in their place.

(a) The image: It’s entirely pastoral and uncivilized.  There’s nothing to signify the post-apocalyptic milieu, or indeed any milieu; if I were to guess without the benefit of “a post apocalyptic novel,” I’d think it was a memoir of backpacking or other wilderness travel, or at best a Jeremiah Johnson-style frontier tale.  The rag-wrapped gun from the first cover, which is the visual clue as to genre, has no counterpart here.

(b) The color scheme: I cannot think of a more peaceful, idyllic, conflict-free color scheme — and that doesn’t sound like it matches your novel.  The color that dominates the first cover suggests both military drab (the color of choice for post-apoc cosplayers) and the sickness of vegetation undernourished and past its prime.  By contrast, the second cover could easily be used for a CD of meditation music.

And there’s still the clash between byline font and the rest of the type that was my main complaint about the first cover.

Other thoughts?