The author says:
This book cover is the final concept made by me. Not sure if this is eye-catching or not. Set in the current time period, a male human from another planet travels to Earth to become a hero of the people living under a global apocalyptic dystopian tyrannic rule. He wears a nanosuit in a liquid metal chrome texture and calls himself Silverwolf.
Nathan says:
Unless your story largely occurs in space, I think you’re making a mistake with a space cover. Both superhero novels and post-apoc novels are popular right now among Kindle readers — something that indicates both from the cover would trigger a lot more interest than a generic space picture. And it wouldn’t have to be terribly expensive, either — there are cheap stock post-apoc landscape images, and you would just need someone to insert a silvery glowing figure hovering above.
Other thoughts?
Well…
It certainly seems to have little enough to do with the story as described. You need to rethink this from scratch, I am afraid. You need to come up with an image the conveys something of the idea, nature or theme of your story. If it is about a hero wearing a liquid metal-like nanosuit I think you really need to get him on the cover since that would be an immensely striking image. Placing him in a post-apocalyptic landscape would be even better.
I’m a little confused as to how this can be “set in the current time period” and also “living under a global apocalyptic dystopian tyrannic rule.” (Insert comment about current events here.) But regardless, I agree that the image is pretty but doesn’t do much to sell your book. I want that silver chrome figure front and center.
And this is another case where the tagline just adds absolutely nothing. Yes, the story contains a hero. And yes, most heroes are born at some point. Just lose it.
I do like your silver wolf logo, though.
On initially seeing the cover in thumbnail, I rather expected this to be some kind of space opera (like Star Trek or Star Wars) or space military novel (like Ender’s Game). From reading your description, however, these genres seem only tangentially related; your protagonist is evidently a space marine or some such, but all or a majority of the action is set to take place here on Earth sometime soon. (Incidentally, I think by “in the current time period” you meant “in the near future” in the sense of Max Headroom‘s “twenty minutes into the future” tagline, which means “all native technology still quite recognizable to us from our time, but the story itself taking place immediately after certain events that haven’t yet occurred.”) Mentioning a wolf in the title (and displaying an associated logo) in no way mitigates this mismatch in genres: a space wolf could be entirely literal (if there can be a Space Vampire, I figure there can be a Space Werewolf just as easily) or metaphorical (a silver-haired Space Marine whose friends affectionately nickname him a wolf, or maybe a guy who’s named his ship the S.S. Silver Wolf) and the story still be set mostly in outer space.
For purposes of impressing your readers, I agree with Ron Miller that showing us your protagonist in his shiny liquid metal suit would probably be the best way to go. If getting a picture of somebody like that is rather out of the range of your artistic skills (or your artistic budget) for this cover, however, I’d suggest alternatively that you get a picture of something like how your “global apocalyptic dystopian” setting is meant to appear and throw in a shot of your protagonist’s ship streaking down from the skies toward the viewer(s). Showing something arriving from space in this manner will establish that while your story involves somebody or something of an extraterrestrial origin, it’ll be taking place right here on the ground; and it will give readers a quick first impression of what kind of place “here on the ground” is while the title and logo strongly hint at your protagonist’s (presumably figurative) nature.
Gwen Katz is also right about your tagline: it’s too generic. If you really think you need a tagline at all, I’d recommend something more specific and unique; maybe something along the lines of “We needed a spaceman to liberate us!” or “Who could break the tyrant’s hold on us? Only a man from above and beyond…” From your description, this appears to be what Orson Scott Card refers to as an event story: an event is going to disrupt an old order (which in this case sounds like it needed to be disrupted anyway) throwing things into chaos until (most commonly) some new order is established, (much less commonly) the old order is restored, or (least commonly) order is destroyed altogether and chaos reigns supreme; so this cover needs to show us the disruptive event in question, which in this case is almost certainly the protagonist’s arrival on Earth.
It’s been a while since I posted a mockup and this cover idea grabbed my imagination right away. I’d just seen this cool background while browsing.
https://imgur.com/a/VJvH4xu
You can get the guy I used at https://depositphotos.com/6610305/stock-photo-chromeman-starting-point.html
He still has watermarks in this draft so you’d have to go buy the guy before you could use it but the rest of the image is free from pixabay with just some effects added. The placeholder text on the bottom is for a cool tagline or series info or endorsement but could be removed and you could put your fox head graphic there.
If you like the idea and need help pulling it off just drop me a note.
Savoy’s suggestion looks great (of course!). If you decide to do something along those lines, don’t forget to include some of the background color in the figure (since it is mirror-like). This will not only enhance the realism but also help keep the figure from looking pasted-on.