The author says:
All sitcom writer Jacob Grey wanted was story credit. Instead his partner betrays him above and below the covers: He steals Jake’s pilot, sells it to ABC, and sleeps with their bimbo agent. That’s when Jake leaves and ends up at a quirky Green Bay bed and breakfast. Nothing at the bed and breakfast is normal. Jake’s confounded by mysterious bangs and clangs inside the walls, and how despite writer’s block, his new sitcom writes itself while he sleeps. He’s not even sure if the owners are human. But he is sure there’s something about one of the owners. Hector Lodge, the man Jake calls Mr. Mumbles, is one big secret-a secret Jake wants to know better. When Jake sneaks into a hidden passageway between the walls to learn more about Mr. Mumbles, he finds more than a bedroom. A music box plays just for him with a journal tucked inside that he’s drawn to read. A story unfolds that binds two strangers’ pasts with his present. After Mr. Mumbles confronts Jake about his snooping, he confides in Jake. Yes, the house is haunted, and yes, the journals could answer why. But when Jake hires two private investigators to uncover information about the journal’s author, Jake also has them secretly look into Hector’s past. What they discover unravels the family’s hidden history and links them to the man who haunts them.
REWRITING SINGULARITY (62,680 words) is an adult fiction with multi-genre, magical realism twist and gay protagonist with Walter Mitty’s imagination.
Nathan says:
While I like the idea of showing a manuscript being redrafted as the cover and title, I don’t know that it works here. “Rewriting Singularity” is such a counter-intuitive phrase to begin with, and then having one of the words be crossed out confuses the reader as to what the title actually is. Is it Rewriting Singularity, or just Singularity because “Rewriting” is crossed out? If you want to use the same concept, what I would do is have two words in a typewriter font crossed out and two new words written in, and then in another ink color have THOSE words crossed out, and your actual title beneath them. (Although I still question whether the title you’ve chosen is a good choice; it doesn’t convey to the reader anything about the book.)
It’s also a good idea to have some kind of border or edge treatment on a cover with a white background, as most book and ebook vendor sites also have a white background, and you want a visual cue of where the cover ends.
Your description doesn’t actually say the word “comedy,” but I get a comic vibe from your synopsis, so my next comments will be informed by that assumption. If I’m reading it wrong, mea culpa.
Comedy is hard to convey on a cover without going over the top… so go over the top. Ham it up. I usually tell writers not to use “by” in their byline unless they need to describe the book — “A Novel by,” “An Adventure of the Far Future by,” etc. In this case, the idea that popped into my head was “A Paranormal Gay Romance With Ninjas* by”… and then at the bottom, “*contains no ninjas.”
But like I said, if comedy isn’t actually a major element, that won’t help at all.
Other comments?
You are absolutely correct that this is a comedy. I love the idea about the ninjas. So funny, which is what I want to convey from the cover but wasn’t certain how. Also, the book’s title is the name of the sitcom that magically “writes itself.”
I actually installed typewriter fonts that I liked for this and was going to cross out the words (or XXX them),then used handwriting with the cross through. Should have gone with first instinct.
Will work on to perfect.
Also, want to thank you for the tips and critique. I appreciate the specific and constructive feedback.
Nope. For one thing, I see absolutely nothing of “an adult fiction with multi-genre, magical realism twist and gay protagonist with Walter Mitty’s imagination.” All of the elements in your cover may make perfect sense to you, but you know what the book is about. To someone who does not have this special knowledge, the cover really conveys nothing of what the book is about. You need to rethink this from scratch, coming up with an image that better conveys the real nature, themes and ideas of your book.
I agree with above.
Seeing just the cover, I thought ‘Bridget Jones Diary – but rathar bland colour scheme.’ There is neither magic nor mystery.
I am tempted to say ‘needs more gay’ – reading te blurb, I think it needs more life in any case., with some humour? For the genre, look up Tom Holt and Robert Rankin’s book covers for example, The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse is my favourite, despite being mostly text.
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Heh, well, it’s a good idea to wait for more critiques than just our host’s before thanking us; just sayin’. Apparently, what you’ve got here is a story that’s a bit tricky to classify, but this cover’s not making comprehension of that or anything else easier for prospective readers: my first guess on seeing it in thumbnail was that this was some kind of book about how to write a book in this revolutionary age of online indie publishing. “Singularity” also has the misfortune to be a faddish corporate buzz word something like the “Cloud” and the “Internet of Things” before it: popular terms that don’t actually mean very much, but which people in the office frequently use to show off how clever and innovative and on the cutting edge of technological progress they supposedly are.
As with the writer of a bit of meta-fiction a few covers ago, I’d say what your cover needs is something to distinguish this book’s titles from each other: the one being the actual title of this book, and the other being that of the story-within-the-story that your main character is writing. Having Rewriting and Singularity in the same font (even with Rewriting crossed out) is a mistake regardless of what font you’re using: if Singularity is supposed to be the name of a TV sitcom, we ought to be seeing that show’s logo and maybe the entire poster advertising it, with Rewriting in some completely different font altogether. I mean, imagine if this story-within-the-story were a television series known to people here in the real world: if it were Rewriting Friends or Rewriting Baywatch or Rewriting The Office, wouldn’t you use something from one of the advertising posters for those shows on your cover?
Apart from that, the main problem I see here is that your book appears to be about writing rather than a writer. When people see a book cover with a pen and paper prominently featured on it (case in point: Angela Knight’s erotic writing guide Passionate Ink), they’re pretty much conditioned to expect it to be a guide about writing even if (as in her case) the pen is an old feather quill and the paper is aged parchment. Hence my own mistaken first impression, which you can expect many others to replicate if you publish your book with this cover.
If you want to make clear this story is about a writer, then the writer in question is who (and what) you ought to be showing. For that, I recommend taking cues from the movie poster for Trumbo which is another great piece of fiction about a writer (who was actually a total Hitler-and-Stalin-worshiping commie traitor douchebag in real life, but as I say, it’s great fiction). Your story evidently being set in more contemporary times, your protagonist would probably be sitting at a computer keyboard rather than a typewriter, and would probably be vaping rather than smoking if he uses any tobacco products; in all other respects, however, the layout could be pretty much the same.
For humorous aspects, you can basically put something funny in the background or in the title or in both. Your writing a story about a guy who writes stories strikes me as being inherently humorous in a metaphysical way for being so seemingly solipsistic; or to put that in layman’s terms, your story might strike your prospective readers as being inherently funny due to their having the creeping suspicion that a story about a guy who writes stories is mainly intended to stroke its author’s ego. If you don’t mind poking a little fun at yourself, you could play on this suspicion by changing the title to e.g. The TV Sitcom Writer With An Enormous Penis (or, if you want to play it safe, you could just put that in a tagline).
Apart from that, the concept of a story that writes itself is a bit funny-sounding and intriguing too; maybe you could do a sort of parody of that one Escher drawing showing the hands drawing each other, and show a hand coming out of a television show script on a computer monitor and typing itself into existence using the computer’s keyboard and mouse while the perplexed protagonist watches with a look on his face that says “You have got to be kidding me.” That kind of image would definitely appeal to readers who like to read something a little more experimental and offbeat. I would buy that book.
I might consider–however the artwork ends up–playing with the byline a bit more. You might have fun with:
(obviously, that needs some tweaking, especially the “aided by the house,” but you get the idea.)
(n.b.: Nathan, I’m not sure how that will render, so if it comes out mucky, will you fix it?) or the like. It’s possibly not as funny as the ninjas, but…just an idea.
I’m not a cover designer; my contribution here is typically limited to fonts, so I’m going to wait to add more until you’ve revamped it a bit.
I do want to add that I don’t feel that the title is helping you–sorry about that, but…I just don’t feel that it is. I’m fairly well-versed, decent education, make my living in books, and my first reaction was “hunh?”
I’d love to see the next iteration. It sounds like a fun book, and it would be good to see the cover do it justice.
Although I’ve seen it on several recent covers (eg ALL OF THIS IS TRUE by Lygia Day Penaflor), I’m not a big fan of crossing out words in the title; it leaves me unsure what the actual title is.
The design has some fun elements, but I tend to think it’s not right for what you’ve got here; the plain white background, yellow bar, and stock-photo pen actually make me think “nonfiction craft book”. I don’t really see anything that suggests the sort of cozy mystery/comical ghost story vibe I get from the description.
I’d like to see this whole cover design be on a piece of paper on an old wooden desk, with some other objects that give us a sense of the story laid out on top of it (the journal, a flashlight, etc).
On the technical side, the text should be antialiased, and the hand-drawn cross-out should look hand-drawn and not like a Photoshop round brush. A more naturalistic inkblot would be nice too. It would also make sense for the inkblot, the pen, and the cross-out to all match in color and ink type.
This is what I would try, not saying it would work, just that I would try this…lol
Okay, I’d start with computer on a desk with a part of a sentence and the words ‘The End’ or ‘Scene Five’ followed by bigger letters saying, Written by The Ghost in the Wall.’ Beneath that, at the bottom of the page, I’d have author name in large letters with a caption that says ‘the ghost is a liar’ under it in small letters. The background would be a bedroom wall with a black hole with the title Singularity written across it. If room permitted, I’d add a messy bed with 2 pairs of men shoes beneath it. Just an edge of the bed, not the full thing. I might even add some feet or naked legs depending on space available and angles. I’d keep fonts and the colors fun, bright computer greens, etc except for the darkness from the wall.
Nathan’s tag line might be added at the top, it would depend because of all the other words.
I had another idea. How about a ghostly hand or pen reaching from the hole in the wall and typing on a screne or notebook?
I love the brilliant simplicity of that idea!
Me too. That would grab my attention.
Mies van der Rohe had no idea that he was talking about book covers when he coined the phrase, “Less is more.”
I really love this idea, and all this incredible feedback and ideas.