Brutal Adaptation

Hint: decorative typefaces should be used with caution and discretion. The first rule is that a book title be easily readable.

Bio in red, just for comparison

https://i.imgur.com/fxwyCEd.jpg

The real problem as I see it is that you’re basically doing a non-action story in a genre suited mainly to action stories: most movies about viral outbreaks are (of course) zombie movies like 28 Days Later (which is largely to blame for the overuse of that bio-hazard symbol) and even those that aren’t, such as No Blade of Grass (in which a virus destroys most of the world’s food supplies) are usually Mad Max ripoffs in which survivors engage in violent struggles with each other over the dwindling resources. If this is more a story about the medical research going on at a laboratory or the political squabbling going on in the halls of government during the outbreak than about the common people rioting in the streets, then it needs to be presented more in the style of a clinical investigation story like The Andromeda Strain or a “chatty” political drama like Fail Safe. You’ll want to steer clear of the more vaguely military-themed symbols common to action movies such as anything involving stenciling; which includes that bio-hazard symbol, incidentally.

So the symbol’s going to have to go; what about the little girl? Unfortunately, due in no small part to horror movies like David Cronenberg’s The Brood, showing little children with stuffed toys on the cover in any context whatsoever is pretty much out of the question: their mere presence hints at threatened innocence, and hence at the horror genre you’re trying to avoid. Therefore, sad to say, you’re going to have to remove the kid and her teddy bear from your cover as well.

What to put in their place? In medical dramas dealing with epidemics, even when the story is mostly about all the arguing over what to do about the disease, any kind of equipment used in quarantines generally serves as a good visual shorthand for the central conflict. Take a look at the third act in the movie E.T. in which the government quarantines the protagonist family’s home, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what kind of equipment that is: bio-hazard suits, breathing masks and hoses, medical gloves and sterile containers, and miles of transparent/translucent plastic draped over everything.

Basically, you could get a lot of mileage out of a simple shot of some medical gloves, or the head-covering of a bio-hazard suit, or a sterile container with some used swabs in it. If you’re looking to make this a “News at Eleven!” kind of investigative drama as well, you could also throw a reporter’s microphone or a press pass or the like into the shot. As long as everything’s at least somewhat relevant to the story, a simple montage of objects like that should clue your target audience to this being both a medical and investigative reporting drama.

Concerning fonts, legibility in the thumbnail should be your top priority, but I can see why you might want to use distressed lettering for the title and byline of this kind of drama. Generally, I recommend against using pre-distressed fonts, however: as with this example, the uniform appearance of every repeated letter betrays how artificial and prefabricated the distressing is. A better way to get distressed lettering is to use some kind of clean-cut simple font when typing out the title and byline, and then apply the intended distress effect(s) to them before placing them on the cover.

As our esteemed host says, this cover is an improvement over your current one, but it’s still a long way from where you’re trying to go. About the only parts that don’t need improvement are the color scheme and the layout. The irony of telling you that you’ve got a decent cover here and all you need to do to make it work is change almost everything on it has not escaped me, but that’s basically my assessment.