The author says:
What would it take for you to discard everything you believed in and give up your sacred honor? What would it take to make you rise up and fight when all the odds are against you?
Chief Warrant Officer Benjamin “Benno” Sanchez has devoted over 20 years of his life to the Alliance of Liberated Systems’ Navy, defending his colony world from the continued encroachment of the Terran Union. His young daughter has been virtually orphaned for years, but his time away is coming to an end. His debts are paid, their lives and prospects have been secured, and he will soon achieve his dreams of freedom and a better life for his child.
On Adelaide, fourteen-year-old Mio Sanchez chafes at the limitations placed upon her. With her father away and her mother long since passed, she struggles with an indifferent foster family, too young, too poor, too female to be taken seriously. She yearns to leave her simple life and join her father in the Alliance Navy…or be anywhere but Adelaide.
Now, with all-out war underway, Benno’s devotion and sacrifice have been betrayed—Adelaide has been invaded, and his Mio is under threat by the implacable Terran forces. And the aristocrats of the Alliance plan to do…nothing. Benno must now make a choice: Honor his oath and leave his daughter’s fate to chance…Or do the unthinkable and rise up in mutiny against his own. And on Adelaide, Mio must also make a choice: Keep her head down and survive…Or fight against the invaders and endure hardships, horrors, and dangers far beyond what a “just a girl” is prepared for. Sacrifices must be made…but how far will a father and daughter go to be reunited?
Nathan says:
This one just begs for a five-minute redo, because it’s sooo close.
The two problems:
- The art is visibly stretched horizontally.
- The colors and contrast are muted.
I also think that the type could be stronger and thicker, especially for the title.
So here’s the five-minute redo:
(more like 90 seconds, because I didn’t try to modify the type.)
Other comments?
The five-minute re-do did it! I’d say you are good to go.
Absolutely the only thing I would do is something extremely minor: I’d make the figures’ guns firing. At the moment, the pair looks a little static. This would add a little more action as well as imply a threat or menace.
Indeed, when I saw the thumbnail for this, I thought maybe there had been some glitch in the display program. Our host says this looks like it’s been stretched horizontally, I say it looks like it’s been squashed vertically; pot-ay-to, po-tah-to. The point is, this looks to be a perfectly decent science fiction book cover… that someone put through a wringer in transit.
Our host did a decent job adjusting the aspect ratio, but it still looked a little distorted; for my five-minute revision, I figured it might be a good idea to look up the original picture or closest thing to it for the proper ratio. The original image still looks a little misty, so I also added some contrast and saturation and fiddled with the color balance a bit as well as cropping it, but I think the final result was superior by far. About the only problem with it now is that the byline and title aren’t properly anti-aliased since I was doing this on my laptop and didn’t have access to the transparency filters on my desktop’s advanced image editor; since you’ve presumably got access to the best version of the original picture and font, replicating and surpassing this revision shouldn’t be particularly difficult for you.
Well, bummer. From the book’s description I had honestly thought that the author had commissioned original art, since the cover seemed so very appropriate. Sadly, it seems to be found art…which means, I fear, that probably nothing can be done regarding any additions or revisions to it.
No, it is original art for this book. I think RK may have pulled that from my website. (please let me know if that’s wrong, at improbableauthor.com) I did as Nathan suggested and refreshed. It looks MUCH better, thank you! The cover with Titles that Konstantin sent after sharing the original full frame was very low contrast. I don’t know if that was for print or not, where the covers print much darker and with lurid contrast relative to how it looks on the screen.
Mind, I got that picture from the author’s Twitter account; and that art is “found” from the author’s page. That said, it looks like the author pretty much already had the cover made the way it should be while this was sitting in the queue. It makes me wonder whether maybe somebody was playing a prank on both the author and us by squashing up the front cover and submitting it here.
No prank. When I submitted it here last week, that was the only version of the cover I had, submitted as is. It was the ebook cover.
I did have the full-color digital painting, but not as converted to the cover version. I received and made up the version of the cover here alongside what I submitted here after the submission. No shenanigans intended. I do appreciate the advice, but also appreciate that it has the desired effect and should not need too much additional change, unless you have other recommendations.
So the squashing comes from the e-book designer’s auto-fitting of the cover to a template, eh? That’s why I don’t trust those designer programs to do any of the legwork: “smart” programs are still pretty stupid. The results are kind of like the visual version of what happens when you run text through a machine translator into some other language and then back again into your own.
No further recommendations for the image, since the revised panorama is fine as is, but I do have some minor aesthetic preferences concerning the synopsis on the back. When using ellipses for pauses in a sentence, put a space at the end of them… like this. Also, for variety’s sake, I’d recommend using an em-dash in place of some of those ellipses—like this.
Moreover, while your description on the back is appealing enough to the eye with the text centered, I should point out that just about every professionally published book I’ve ever seen typically has the text justified to the margins to make all full lines an equal length. I don’t know whether there’s any hard-and-fast rule in publishing that descriptions on the back cover have to use margin justification, but that seems to be the common practice. When in Rome, do like the Romans, yes?
Good call on the justifying.
Here is a link to the full cover after I did as suggested: https://improbableauthor.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/mutineers-daughter-print-cover1.jpg
Glad to hear that the cover art was commissioned specially for the book! At least that explains why it looks so appropriate! It’s a beautiful illustration!
I do have two comments, though: one old and one new.
I still think that the art looks too static. There is really nothing going on, no sense of threat or danger. The two figures are posing, rather than reacting to something. When the entire spread is seen, there is even less going on. The figures are standing all by themselves on an open hillside. The only indication of action are the two little red lines connecting the spacecraft in the distance, which I assume are laser beams or some such thing. I think there needs to be some additional element that overtly connects the two characters with the “all-out war” you describe as being central to the story.
The second suggestion relates to the back cover blurb, which seems to be awfully long and detailed. Perhaps half that space might be devoted to a few words about the authors.
Thank you. Yeah, initial version had them both firing, with dense cover all around and some thought to having more going on the ground, but it did not make it into later iterations. I also wish the scene was brighter or had more contrast, but there was a mood aesthetic my co-writer liked about this. We can also see about revising the cover blurb on back. We’re not really “name” authors though.
@Thomas:
Please tell your coauthor this:
Your cover is clickbait. It is nothing else. It does not exist to tell the story; it does not exist to have some future life in the Louvre. It has one purpose in its relatively short life–and that is to make. people. click. Nothing more.
And CONTRAST and bright colors aid mightily in that effort. If you mute the cover’s colors, to make it more “arty” and to set a “mood aesthetic” are you making your poor cover work harder than it should have to. Don’t get confused about the cover’s job; don’t make it work to succeed in spite of its authors and publishers. Once the prospective buyer has clicked, the cover has done its job, and has no other purpose. Then it’s time for the description, reviews, and the LookInside to do their jobs.
I would also consider brightening the title font’s color, a stronger yellow.
FWIW.
One additional comment–as BL and some of the others have mentioned, I’d have a continuous laser blast from the girl’s gun, going off the edge of the (ebook) cover, and continuing around the spine and back, through the description, for the wraparound cover.
Also–you fixed the mixed-up text alignment, on the rear of the cover, is that right? In the one you listed, as the finished cover, it’s justified half-way down, and then centered for the last 3-4 paragraphs, which is a bit discombobulating.
I have to disagree with Hitch on one point, “Your cover is clickbait. It is nothing else.” Yes, your cover has to grab the attention of your potential reader. However, your cover paints a picture that gives your reader an expectation on what is in your book. I’ve been burned many times by books who’s cover suggested one thing, and the story delivered something else. Even if the book was good otherwise, it did taint the experience for me, and left me feeling cheated. Sure, some people may think this unimportant, but not everyone. Why unnecessarily frustrate a reader who did buy your book? No, the art doesn’t have to end up in the Louvre, but it should relate to the story you are telling. If avoidable, it should not contradict elements of your story. To do so is false advertising. As far as I can see, with the corrections already made, your cover captures the potential reader’s attention, and seems true to your story.
Clickbait isn’t misleading or deceptive. It grabs the attention of the person who would WANT to read the article.
@Tom Wright:
I’m curious–in what comment, or what post that I’ve made, did I say a single word about misleading the prospective buyer? I didn’t. Nor would I. The entire purpose of CC.com is to aid author-publishers in a single thing–selling more books–not pissing off prospective buyers.
My post was to the submitter’s co-author, who was getting caught up–as so many do–in the “artsy” factor, in wanting a “mood aesthetic.” It was getting in the way of fashioning a cover that does the job it is supposed to, which, again, is clickbait. Period. I do not and never did say, “put a picture of some naked babe on the front, just to get them to click on your historical assessment of the development of the Free Market.” What on earth would be the purpose of that sort of boneheaded tactic?
Lastly, I seriously hope that most buyers at least read the description, and the LookInside, before buying. I’m more than a bit surprised that you had the experiences you had. I can honestly say that while I know that I, like all other humans, have been attracted to a book by its cover, I’ve certainly never bought one based solely on the cover–because otherwise, yes, you might well have a disappointment, or a complete surprise. Using “bait and switch” tactics has been a part of publishing since Gutenberg, and it’s not something I’d endorse.
Sorry, Hitch. I never meant my comment to be a personal attack, and never said you made a comment about misleading prospective buyers. The very term “clickbait,” however, does that by itself. My point is simply that a cover image DOES make a promise to the potential reader about what happens within the book. Anything on a cover that contradicts what actually happens within that book, in my humble opinion, makes some of us (probably more than some) feel cheated. I just finished a book like that. The cover grabbed my attention, the blurb solidified my interest, and reading the example first few chapters hooked me into buying it. The problem was, even though the cover image did reflect elements of the book, it also set up an expectation that the story never lived up to. The cover, blurb, and first few chapters all told the readers that the story was centered around uniquely genetically engineered humans. Sadly, those beings ended up being more of an afterthought to the story, and could have been eliminated completely and the author still could have told the same story. The cover did do as you suggested, got me to not only read the blurb and first few chapters, but it ultimately lead me to buying the book. My feelings of being cheated were very real, and very strong. And, because I know the author made the ultimate cover decision, I doubt I’d buy another of his books. I make this choice not out of spite, but because I can’t trust that any other of his books won’t do the same thing. I can forgive a bad font choice, or not quite up-to-par artwork, but I can’t forgive being mislead.
Much improved, but I agree. Perhaps a few criss-crossing beams streaking past the soldiers, with one of them returning fire (I vote the BFG).
I also agree the blurb is far too long. Readers don’t want to read a book before they read the book. Also, the weapons fire between the ships could be highlighted. Than can be done with something as simple as layering a lighter version of the beams on top, brightening them, and giving them a Gaussian blur.
Well, I can understand where your co-author is coming from, but a book cover is not really meant to be an illustration like you might find in the interior but rather a means for selling it. It is packaging–and to succeed at that it needs to not only say something about what sort of book it is and what it is about, but to attract potential readers in the first place. There is nothing wrong with a somber mood piece with little action or conflict—but that does not seem to be in step with the book you describe. The present cover certainly may convey a “mood” but it does not do a very good job of conveying any sense of the “hardships, horrors and dangers” Mio must endure, no sense of “all-out war” or a “fight against invaders.” It is, as I said, a painting of two people posing on a hillside.
I think the overall color scheme of the cover is excellent. It succeeds in getting across a grittiness and somberness and seriousness. But your characters really do need to be doing something or having something done to them.
I would not worry overmuch about not being “name” authors. Even a sentence or two about yourselves would be of interest to readers.
Small tips:
-Unstretch it
-Different font. Something bigger, probably sans serif. Think Bebas (which doesn’t have an apostrophe in my version), or Zing Rust.
-Recolor it, even just a subtle curves adjustment would make a huge difference, as Nate mentioned
—
Here’s my 10-minute take
https://i.imgur.com/QRai5rG.png