The author says:
Sophia wakes in a dilapidated museum believing she’s been kidnapped and abandoned. She isn’t the only one… As she and four others struggle to understand their new reality, they discover the museum boarded with no obvious exit. Who brought them to the museum and why? How can they escape? Their only link to each other is a mysterious woman named Blair, who they each encountered before blacking out. When Sophia is drawn to one of the other captives, their attraction plunges the group into suspicion. Allegiances shift as pieces connect. But is the real danger inside or outside the museum?
Nathan says:
I can suggest a few tweaks, but I wonder if the cover concept doesn’t seem more “lit fic” than “suspense.” I’ll let others debate that in the comments. But if you were to go with this cover, I would definitely:
- move “The” from left to right so it doesn’t blend in with the image behind it.
- tilt the mannequin so it looks less natural.
- either increase the byline font size or deepen the contrast with the background (or both) so that it stands out more.
What say you, hivemind? Does the concept work?
I have absolutely no idea what is supposed to be going on in this cover (let alone what all of the black shapes are supposed to be). On top of it all, the title is almost illegible, being mostly dark gray against black. Indeed, the overall effect of the entire cover is a kind of murky grayness.
But the most serious problem with the cover is that I don’t see even a hint of the book the author describes. I certainly would have not the slightest clue that the book is about a woman who “wakes in a dilapidated museum believing she’s been kidnapped and abandoned. She isn’t the only one… As she and four others struggle to understand their new reality…”
A mannequin (seen from the back yet), a pile of fabric and some odd shapes floating around are not sufficient to convey the nature, idea or themes of the novel.
I really think that this needs to go back to square one.
Yeah…I agree. To me, it looks as though it was intended to be the cover of a book involving fashion, not a museum. More non-fiction than fiction. It doesn’t say suspense, in any way to me.
I would revisit this so that you convey that claustrophobic sense that your description is trying to convey; trapped, confused, etc. The fonts are not saying thriller or suspense or mystery, and the imagery certainly isn’t. My entire reaction to this was “nice dress,” and even then, that was after I had to check twice to make sure that the mannequin wasn’t wearing draperies. I just don’t think that this attempt is helping the book.
@Ron: those seem to be images, which makes this picture look more like an art gallery than a museum.
Well, what do you know? I guess they are! I had to really scrutinize the cover closely to see that!
Over on Lousy Book Covers, this cover would probably land firmly in the random imagery and mystery meat categories: neither the mannequin nor the (difficult to see) pictures on the walls of what appears to be an art gallery suggest that this is even supposed to be the interior of a museum, much less anything about what’s supposed to be taking place there. What kind of imagery you should have depends, I think, on whether the “suspense” in this story veers more toward mystery or horror: if the former, you’d probably do best to study the movie posters for Night at the Museum (2006) for inspiration; if the latter, then KillerKiller (2007) may suggest the better way of handling it. As for books, the only story with a plot anything like yours which comes to mind for me is William Sleator’s House of Stairs which, as you can see from the link, had to be both literal and a bit abstract for its cover illustration.
Basically, you’re going to have to think outside the box a bit and figure out whether this story is more about the mystery the characters are trying to solve, or about how the characters react to being forced to solve it. In House of Stairs, the story was more about the latter; in fact, the mystery basically doesn’t get solved until the end when the people who trapped the protagonists in the titular “house of stairs” finally release them and explain it to them. KillerKiller likewise is more about how a number of serial killers react to being trapped alone with each other in their insane asylum than about how they came to be in this situation (though the end of the movie does more or less answer that question). Night at the Museum is more about the mystery, and the adventures the protagonist has while figuring out what’s going on in that museum. If you’re going to do a story about the mystery, then I recommend following Night at the Museum‘s approach and showing a distant shot of your characters standing in the middle of some kind of potentially exciting museum exhibit; if it’s more about how they react, then follow KillerKiller‘s example, forget about the setting, and focus in very closely on your characters’ faces looking confused and scared and seemingly ready to take knives to each other’s throats at the slightest provocation.
Alternatively, consider the possibility of some abstract symbolism: if the woman every one of the characters met before awakening to find themselves trapped in this museum is manipulating them (as your summary seems to imply), you could portray all your characters as marionettes on a stage with strings attached to them and show her hand(s) pulling those strings. If the boarded-up museum building manages to be all kinds of menacing all by itself, you could simply show the dilapidated old building from the outside with eerie beams of supernatural light shining out through gaps in the boards on its windows and maybe some kind of vaguely horrific tagline (e.g. “Get out, or be lost in history!”). Another possibility would be to show your protagonist Sophia at the moment of her awakening in that museum if she happened to wake up somewhere interesting (e.g. sitting up and rubbing her head and wondering what she’s doing lying on an old four-poster bed in the middle of a decaying “Bordellos of the Old West” exhibit).
Basically, try thinking how you would advertise your book if it were a movie. (The Museum is already as good a title as any for a by-the-numbers supernatural horror flick featuring people trapped in a titular piece of architecture; The Church is already the title of one such movie.) Think what kind of scenes or imagery you would put in the trailers and on the posters if you were trying to intrigue people without spoiling any big twists, and then put one of these images on the cover of your novel.
Yeah, this isn’t conveying the right information at all. This looks like a lit fic book about museums or fashion. Let’s get a thriller look here–bold, thick fonts and dark high-contrast colors.
Thank you