The author says:
A collection of short erotic stories which, broadly, have some religious element in them.
Nathan says:
Well, you’ve definitely overcome the problem of “not sexy enough” on your last cover!
I think that, if the religious element is part of the appeal, it needs to be played up more. Romance novels often use religious terms like “sin,” “heaven,” “angel,” “devil,” etc. in their titles, so that alone doesn’t really give the reader an inkling of religious flavor in these stores. I think adding some gentle religious imagery to the background might help, like so:
I don’t think this particular fresco works especially well — it’s just one I grabbed from Google as a demo.
Other thoughts?
“What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect.” — https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A1KT4ANX0RL55I
All of these are unofficial Amazon no-no’s:
–Naked female torso including front view or sometimes side view. Side boob inappropriate.
–Arms or hands across breasts.
–Naked butt. On one occasion, upper thigh close to lower butt cheek was unacceptable.
–No naked people in a clinch even if they aren’t “fondling.”
–Any sexual position that implies penetration (Missionary, doggie-style, etc).
–No naked characters straddling each other.
–No handcuffs on wrists. Handcuffs being held is fine.
–No “O” faces.
–No nudity.
–No women on their knees in front of men (as in implied fellatio).
–No men between women’s thighs (as in implied cunnilingus).
–No men’s faces on breasts.
–No graphic violence as in murder or rape- Dead bodies after the fact seems fine. People holding weapons as long as they aren’t pointing at other people seem fine.
The problem is there are no hard and fast rules other than:
The image must not contain:
Pornographic or offensive materials.
Sexual Content
Some sexual content such as nudity and sexually explicit images or descriptions is restricted because audiences within our Community may be sensitive to that content.
Their official rules are incredibly vague, but I think your chosen image would cross their imaginary line because it’s a nude. I’ve been rejected for side-boob. The model was dressed but had a bit of skin showing. If you’re flagged, your book will be removed for sale. You will be notified by email. You can change the offending bits and resubmit. But it takes a few weeks.
If it were me I wouldn’t use this image. It’s a boring image even if it passes. gray on gray isn’t very engaging.
Well, before I comment on anything I think I had best wait to see what the reaction to Savoy’s comment is. If the image is going to be something entirely different, then anything I might say now would be moot.
Put simply: This cover looks like porn. It communicates “here’s a book where hot women bang,” and that’s all.
If that’s what you’ve written, then fine. But based on your first cover, it looked like you were going a more literary direction. If you’re writing erotica–stories that have more literary merit and realism, and a theme or idea beyond just getting people’s rocks off–and particularly if your audience is broader than that particular swath of horny straight dudes, then you need a cover that also communicates that.
Well! It’s hard to miss what kind of book this is from looking at the cover; I’ll give you that. My first reaction to the thumbnail was “You’ve heard of a little concept called subtlety perhaps?” When I realized you were the same author as the one who brought us that Little Darlings cover, it occurred to me that maybe you were overcompensating for that cover’s blandness here.
My advice remains the same for you here as for the last cover: even if your stories technically are NC-17, your cover should never go for a harder rating than R. Also, as Savoy notes, this much nudity on your cover might just get your book banned from Amazon, though that place’s enforcement of its policies is notoriously arbitrary, capricious, and inconsistent. Smashwords’ TOS (for comparison) likewise strongly recommends covers remain at about PG-13, and forbids “graphic images of nudity” and sex acts both on the cover and inside the book (though I notice it says nothing about graphic descriptions thereof). (I think Smashwords’ policies are rather selectively enforced too: I’d give this book’s cover a pretty hard R rating, for instance, and that definitely looks like a sex act in progress there even if the participants still have their underwear on, but… well, use covers like that at your own risk.)
Another minor point: even with everything else in grayscale, the red letters in your title are difficult to read in the thumbnail; even in that spidery font, the white letters are easier to read. Either thicken and border the title font to make those red letters stand out better, or choose a different color. Also, don’t use such tight compression on a JPEG image; there’s plenty of space for large image files on the internet these days, and the compression artifacts on your particular cover are all too visible even in the thumbnail.
As ever, always take pointers from the covers of other successful authors in the same genres. In your case, one such author would be Esmeralda Greene. You’ll probably notice that in this example’s case, she’s got a bit of a theme going on a lot of her covers; also that she’s apparently managed to slip some awfully questionable material (such as the cover for her Roboterotica compilation, which violates a number of the rules Savoy mentioned) past Amazon’s censors, probably due to that rather lax and inconsistent enforcement of its TOS I mentioned.
In short, you might get away with posting a book with this cover (or one like it) on sales sites, but should you really be trying to? Even really sleazy readers often appreciate a little subtlety on the cover of their erotica. For best results, I recommend you try pursuing the principles of the Theiss Titillation Theory here.
From an artistic POV, I have to disagree with many here. I believe the nudity is tasteful and reminiscent of nudes printed in many art/photography books I’ve seen over the years. The only thing, in my humble opinion, that deviates away from the tasteful, is that the woman’s head was cut off. Showing just the body is enough to suggest a dehumanizing factor to the image. I even like the image being black and white. I think it would be less artistic in full color.
That being said, however, it is a sad truth that Amazon caves into the simplistic, prudish tendencies of the modern American culture. As much as I think your photo image (edited to put the woman’s head into the frame) would make a very appealing cover, you have to succumb to the immature nature of the people who would never buy your book anyway, but who would raise a mountain of hell if it passed in front of their narrow-minded eyes. You’ll have to find an image that suggests nudity, without actually showing it.
Lastly, I agree with Nathan about the inclusion of religious symbols. I even liked his redo. The background images were subtle enough not to overpower the image of the woman, and the contrast between the muted colors of the symbols and the black and white of the woman, suggested a clash between human sexuality and religion.
Good luck finding the needed woman image.
https://imgur.com/a/77xlAg8
you need a girl more like these. Something that says sexy and sin.
I really love the girl in the jeans. These pictures can be bought at deposit photo
I prefer the girl with the snakes surrounding her. It’s personally funny to me because the snakes are Ball Pythons, known in the reptile world as the ‘kitty cats’ of snakes. 🙂