The author says:
Help me with my decision please!
Adult or YA suspense Amish: What Will Be Made Plain: Classic themes from Hamlet are played out when young Leah Mohn’s charismatic father moves a whole community two counties away to make a fresh start in a secluded survivalist community. At first, Leah finds much that is comforting and secure in the new locale. But her dead mother appears to her in dreams, urging her to some sort of action, and no one can help Leah figure out what her heritage says about such supernatural visits. Handsome visitor from another survivalist commune, Matthew Lescher, is Amish and should be “safe,” but his input about the undead —and his own involvement with the Goth culture—leave her with even more questions, and an inevitable head-on collision with her heritage and her sanity.
Nathan says:
The problem with both of these covers is that they’re made to look good (a) at full size, (b) to someone who’s already read the description. That’s a problem because 95% of potential readers will first encounter the book (a) at thumbnail size (b) without having any previous familiarity with it.
Just looking at the thumbnails above, nothing says “Amish” to me at first glance, or “supernatural-tinged thriller,” or “Hamlet,” or… In the first one, I can’t make out either the photograph OR the title — so I basically get no information from it. In the second one, I can see the starburst pattern, and while that makes reading the title difficult, it’s not completely illegible; however, the starburst pattern doesn’t look like a quilt unless I look at it larger, so it will miss the attention of those readers who would be attracted to Amish themes.
My suggestion: Start over with the thumbnail in mind. A cover which features a young Amish woman in a suspenseful color palette (lots of shadows, the rest dominated by a single strong color) and a readable title might not be as “artistic” a design as either of yours, but I bet it would attract the target audience a lot better… which is the point of the cover.
Other thoughts?
I have to agree with Nathan on most of his comments and suggestions.
Readability is certainly an issue, especially with the first cover, which is difficult to decipher even at large size. The second cover is more attractive (very much so!) and easier to read but both covers share the problem of not really conveying any real sense of what your book is about. They certainly don’t reflect the book you describe in the blurb. There is no suggestion of suspense or the supernatural, for instance. One thing that might be interesting would be to contrast your two characters: Amish Leah and Amish-Goth Matthew. But whatever you decide to do, you should try to inform your reader about the specific nature, themes and subject of your book.
As a cover designer, if I were designing this cover I’d ask you to clarify the target audience. Ya isn’t adult. I think you’re going for New Adults, the 18 and up crowd, and the cover for that would be designed much different than for the younger crowd.
I recommend you go for a pretty Amish woman with a angsty expression and give her some glow to say supernatural. Maybe throw in a foggy cemetery behind her and some distant hills for the seclusion.
I agree with the other suggestions. Based on the pictures alone, I thought the first one was about refugees, and the second about quilting (and not Amish quilting, which tends to be unpatterned fabric – pedantic, I know, but if I was really into Amish stuff it would irritate me!)
I assume your main character is a teenager? If so, a picture of an older woman and young child doesn’t fit.
I only initially got to see the first cover in thumbnail, so I may be a little biased here, but I probably would have considered it better than the second even if I had gotten to see them both simultaneously. As I can testify from seeing both the original and the updated cover to Don’t Check Your Brains At The Door, a concrete image beats any of a hundred abstract ones for some kinds of covers. In short, definitely go with photographs (or drawings if you can’t get any of the kind you’re seeking—I don’t imagine a picture of an “Amish Goth” would be the easiest thing to find) over patterned quilts or any other such abstractions.
The picture itself? Well, I did think from looking at the thumbnail this was maybe some kind of family drama, which the story… kinda is according to your description, so it does have that going for it. On the other hand, the kind of family drama the cover brought to mind was maybe something to do with pregnancy, or wife-beating, or child abuse, or a mother dealing with a problem child, none of which seem to be the focus of the story according to your description. Also, “Amish” anything wasn’t the first description to come to mind from looking at that picture either; in thumbnail, those dark brown/burgundy bonnets could just as easily be Islamic hijabs or those babushkas commonly seen on stereotypical Russian peasant women.
Now I get that maybe the “supernatural” aspects of the story aren’t that important to portray on the cover; I’ve experienced a dream about my late mother that might have been such a visit, and if I were writing an autobiography, I wouldn’t bother trying to portray anything about myself as being particularly supernatural. The protagonist’s own brush with someone from the afterlife may likewise be merely a way of kicking off a kind of coming-of-age story, throwing her (as it did Hamlet) into doubt about what she’s been taught and forcing her to reexamine her professed beliefs (presumably with that Amish Goth guy as her sounding board) and see whether she really believes them or not. Whatever manner of religion and philosophical worldview she ultimately chooses to embrace, therefore, it’s proper not to mistake the plot device for the plot itself.
What your current cover picture is presently missing is A) something that obviously marks the protagonist as Amish and B) an image of her maverick Amish Goth sounding board/potential love interest Matthew Lescher. For the former, I recommend making her bonnet a bit more obviously an Amish bonnet; cliched as it may be, a white bonnet on a virginal looking young gal (especially appropriate if she is in fact still a virgin in accord with her Amish beliefs) is still what says “Amish gal” to the vast majority of the general public these days. As for the latter, it occurs to me that as long as he’s always wearing all-black clothes and a somber look all the time (not that tall of an order for the Amish), the protagonist’s new male friend actually might not have much trouble reconciling his appearance and apparel to Goth fashions (apart from wearing that distinctively Amish hat and maybe having a full bushy beard where most Goths would only tend to have a goatee if they had any facial hair at all).
In any case, before you deal with anything else such as the title and byline (which are the only parts better done on your alternate cover in my opinion), you need to make sure Leah and Matthew are prominently displayed and that anyone can tell at a glance they’re Amish. Everything else can be reserved for when people actually click on a thumbnail for a closer look at your cover, and for when they take a look inside at any previews you offer them on the sales site. Other than that, since any potential romance between these two is probably meant to be peripheral to the story (romances being a quite common but not absolutely necessary element of coming-of-age and midlife-crisis stories) just make sure the protagonist and her pal are both looking properly chaste and well-behaved enough to keep prospective readers from mistaking this book for being a part of the burgeoning (and cheesy) new “Amish Erotica” genre.
The quilt one would be a good concept if it was women’s fiction, but it’s homey and comforting, not suspenseful. The first one is better…but the living mother and young daughter seem wrong for a story where the mother is dead and the daughter is a teenager/adult. (Plus clearly they’re not reading as obviously Amish as they should.)
So yeah, let’s get a nice photo of an obviously Amish teenager/young adult (yes, do bear in mind which age category you’re going for) looking suspensefully over her shoulder while standing in a scary dark field. Standard thriller stuff. I do think your typefaces are on the right track, although the textures make them hard to read.
PS “The Color Of Sorrow Isn’t Bluett”?