The author says:
Keisha Rose has a curse. She’s an empath, able to feel the emotions of everyone around her, overwhelming her, forcing the young woman to live a life of isolation. When a race of alien telepaths invade her colony world, they do so by projecting overpowering waves of despair. They quickly capture Keisha, and unwittingly unlock her full telepathic potential. Keisha Rose must not only come to grips with her own curse, but must now deal with the fact that the fate of all humanity now rests on her ability to control her mental powers and use them against the invading “Mind Assassins.”
This is the first book of a trilogy. The novel is science fiction. The submitted cover is a test of concept.
Nathan says:
If I look at it full-sized, I can see that the background is actually a distorted starscape, so I can sorta see there’s a “space” angle here, but that’s only if I’m already looking, and in thumbnail that’s entirely lost. And an eye is not enough to convey “empath” or anything like it. So especially when seen at thumbnail size, the cover fails to convey anything which would capture your target audience.
If I’m looking for “alien attack on a colony world,” I expect to see futuristic buildings amid alien plants, or alien spaceships descending from a sky with multiple moons. I need to see some immediate, “cool” signifier of genre — otherwise I’ll never look further.
(Also, “Assassin” is misspelled.)
Other comments?
I am afraid that this might be a misfire.
I had no clue what the background was supposed to be. Until I read what Nathan posted I thought that the whole thing was some strange alien animal.
The eye centered over the psi makes the two together look like a flower.
I imagine that the Greek letter is supposed to suggest psychic or “psi” abilities, but that may be a little too subtle.
However, at bottom, the main problem is that the cover really doesn’t convey any sense of what the book is about.
By Nathan’s response, I can see I have an issue with the title. I’ll need to change it. Ravaged Worlds seems to give an expectation of battles and destruction, which the story does not contain except for a small dose at the end. The real story is the character’s struggle with learning and accepting the necessity of her empathic/telepathic abilities. The conquering aliens invade using overpowering emotional attacks, which renders their victims powerless to resist, and is actually seen very little in the story, except for a few times when Keisha is forced to confront them. What I’m having trouble with is figuring out how to give a graphical representation as to the nature of Keisha’s struggle. Hope this additional info helps stir up some thoughts and suggestions. Thanks.
It wasn’t even the title — the phrase “a race of alien telepaths invade her colony world” did all the work. You’ll also note that none of my imagery suggestions had any “battles and destruction” in them.
Point taken. Background aside for the moment, what I truly need is a way to portray the idea of Keisha’s struggle with her empathic/telepathic ability. I am finding this extremely difficult. I welcome all suggestions. See the link in my post below for a quick revision of my original idea, just in case it might help. Thanks.
I’m sorry–I thought it was a cow eye. It looks like a human-ish eye, planted in a cow head, wearing makeup. I can’t unsee it now. I suspect that the hair effect is supposed to be…I don’t know, swirly or swooping stars? But it looks like hair to me.
It makes me think you’re writing a psychic cow-face girl, and to me, that’s just not a character I want to read. Obviously, I’m a cow-face bigot, but, there y’are. The Psi symbol looks out of place, and the “Mind Assassins” kinda lays there. Any chance that the “Mind Assassins” have some other name, like “Kyros” or some sort of word that you made up? The Mind Hammers, or something?
Anyway…I would suggest another pass at it.
I also got the sense of “furry face.” That said, I did look at this and think “story about someone with psychic powers” (though not the space aspect), so it’s not a total misfire.
I think the details are the weaker part: The font is boring, white on black is a really plain color combo for sci-fi, there’s not enough space between words, and the weird texture on the psi isn’t working.
(I’m going to slightly dusagree with Hitch about one thing: While I agree that “mind assassin” is a clunky term, it does at least convey the right information. If you switch to a less indicative term, the cover art will need to do even more heavy lifting. So if you use a different term, I’d make sure it’s still an easily understandable one–“psi reavers” or something like that.)
In all candor, my first impression upon seeing this was “extreme close-up of a female Wookie.” The star field I didn’t even initially recognize as a star field at all; in thumbnail, it could just as easily have been the graininess of an old-fashioned photograph. The titles and other lettering, meanwhile, didn’t mean anything incredibly specific to me; my memories of which letters are which in the Greek alphabet is a little rusty.
Even if your protagonist Keisha Rose actually is a female from some kind of species of very hairy humanoids like the Wookies (which might have been nice to mention to us in your synopsis if so), this cover neither shows nor tells us anything the least bit interesting nor intriguing nor worth knowing about anything in your book. To extend the analogy a little further, imagine if this really were a licensed Star Wars book about Wookies (maybe somebody’s attempt to rewrite the first part of the Star Wars Holiday Special into a good story) in which an empathic Force-sensitive Wookie by the name of Keisha Rose has to deal with a bunch of mind-raping Sith-trained alien assassins who’ve captured her and performed strange experiments on her that accidentally unlocked her Force Empathy abilities. Could you tell this book was going to be about anything like that just by looking at this cover?
Of course, maybe my eyes are deceiving me and your protagonist isn’t a hairy female humanoid and your story isn’t really much like what I’ve just described at all. The point is, whatever the nature of your protagonist and her world, what this cover clearly needs is a little visual world-building: a background with some alien-looking landscapes and/or infrastructure in it, maybe an odd moon or planet on the horizon or up in the sky, and maybe a space ship or two somewhere in there as well. Before you add any titles or byline or lettering at all to the cover, you need a picture that tells your prospective readers this book is in their preferred science fiction genre.
For that matter, extreme close-ups of anything are pretty dubious imagery for any genre; were fiction not so much more common than non-fiction in book stores these days, I could just as easily have mistaken this for a cover to one of those fruity New Age “improve your cosmic spiritual aura by stuffing crystals injected with rare-earth magnets down your pants” guidebooks. In short, do yourself and everyone else a favor: pull back, and give everyone a better view of your protagonist and her whereabouts. Readers and reviewers alike will be grateful to you for giving them the bigger picture.
I have to laugh at how the background horribly fails, giving the illusion of a creature instead of a wormhole distorting space. (LOL: female Wookie.) I made the following quick changes, just to give a more accurate representation of my original idea. Again, this is just a test. I’m open to suggestion of completely new ideas. I just have to find one that actually portrays what my story is about. (As in, no space battles, no destroyed or under attack cities.) Thanks again.
Revised Image
I’m sorry, but I still hate that. As a woman and one who wore professional makeup in her youth, that eyeliner is so freaking ghastly it makes me want to jump up, grab a makeup wipe, clean her face and fix it. I get where you’re trying to go, mind’s eye and all that, but for me, it’s failing on pretty much every front.
There’s also something about the font that I can’t quite pin down; oddly enough, even with the sans serif, the title is hard to read.
I’d like to kindly suggest that you need to completely revisit this.
Hitch, LOL. Love your urge to “fix it.” I didn’t quite like the eye makeup myself. It strangely made me think of Cleopatra. I chose it only because it was the first image I found that had a black woman’s eye large enough to work with on my proof of concept cover. I’d originally intended to pay a model to pose for a photograph if I decided to go with the concept. I would have had her actually be free of all makeup, to fit with the hermit nature of my character. What I’m actually going to do is still up in the air, hoping comments here would inspire a better cover idea.
Well…
https://pixabay.com/illustrations/depression-woman-burn-dark-thoughts-1241819/
or
maybe this might be workable, somehow: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/burnout-match-burned-down-disease-2158532/ or
https://pixabay.com/illustrations/woman-face-contour-burnout-blank-73403/
https://depositphotos.com/stock-photos/mystical-woman.html?qview=42307577 or
this chick (sad to lose the tiger, though): https://depositphotos.com/stock-photos/mystical-woman.html?qview=65251411 (and her skin color isn’t so easy to discern);or her cousin: https://depositphotos.com/stock-photos/mystical-woman.html?qview=94401306 (LOVE that image, but the floaty eyes might be too too);
Ditto, this girl could be a WOC: https://depositphotos.com/stock-photos/mystical-woman.html?qview=70992449
This gal, no skin color discernible: https://depositphotos.com/stock-photos/mystical-woman.html?qview=99194186 or THIS one: https://depositphotos.com/stock-photos/mystical-woman.html?qview=103543874
I mean, all those DP.com images are dirt cheap. I have an account there and if memory serves, I pay a whopping $1/image. You could use almost ANY of those and score a way, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better cover than Wilma Wookie there.
If the regular, walk-in off the street fees are too pricey, reach out to me at my site and I’ll buy one for you, if you want. On the house. Gimme the URL and I’ll give it to you. I just can’t look at that eyeball any more. (You think of old Cleo because of the blue, but primarily because of the thickness and angling of the eyeliner. Go back and view images of Liz Taylor playing her and you’ll see the same eye m/u, albeit done far, far better than that.)
Remember, Mystical Mama is better than Wilma Wookie. If you have to, use some chick that’s imperfect, if the image is beautiful. Everybody loves gorgeous covers. It doesn’t matter if it’s accurate. It’s just clickbait.
Wow. Didn’t even think to use the term Mystical in a search. That gives a whole lot of interesting options. Thanks for the suggestion. This, along with the suggestions about the character overlooking an alien landscape has gave me an idea for a different approach. Will take some effort to create a new proof of concept, but am excited about it. Thanks to you, and everyone else for their suggestions.
Well…
If you are looking for a cover image that conveys what your story is about I think you might want to consider abandoning the eye/psi imagery. While these are obviously meaningful to you I don’t think that they really convey anything significant to the uninformed potential reader. (Apply my test of imagining the title in a foreign language you don’t understand—would you come away with any idea of what this book is actually about? Or even that it is fiction, for that matter?) You need to come up with something that is more specific to this book and its themes and ideas.
If you want to convey that it’s an introspective personal journey type of sci-fi, how about a wide shot of your girl sitting on a hill or cliff overlooking an alien landscape, and she’s levitating something or there’s a psychic third eye on her forehead or whatever?
(I know, that pretty much requires custom art. But it would communicate the right ideas.)
Your description reminded me of this one I did http://www.black-cat-studios.com/black-cat-press/Firebrands7/IMAG006.JPG
Yeah, something like that.