The author says:
Story details Italians migrating to America, then one of them becomes a citizen and is drafted into the navy during The Vietnam War. It’s a true story. It’s a historical love story about my parents meeting thanks to the migration, and also having to be apart because of the war.
Nathan says:
A cover has two main functions: Tell you what the name of the book is, and indicate what it’s about — and both of those have to be done at a glance.
The upper image above was the largest I was sent, but I think that exemplifies the weakness of this cover best: YOU CAN’T READ ANYTHING. There’s plenty of text, but it’s undifferentiated (really, is “Inspired by True Events” just as important as the title?), and the background keeps me from reading any of it easily.
If I discern the battleship on my first glance, then I may understand that there’s war involved, probably 20th century. But I don’t get “love story,” I don’t get “immigrants,” I don’t get the specific period (the Vietnam era is worlds apart from either of the World Wars, for example).
You have just an instant to hook potential readers before their eyes drift along to the next cover in line. If you can only convey ONE important thing about the subject matter in the single second (generously) of attention that your cover will get, what’s that one thing?
- Is it the Vietnam war milieu? Use the typeface and images to convey the period and setting.
- Is it the immigration drama? Use images of Italy and America in contrast.
- Is it the love story? Use the typeface and color scheme (sunset colors, for example).
- Is it the fact that it’s a true story? Use documentary-style typefaces like Trajan and faded photographs.
And just a note: You don’t want a colon in your byline. In fact, unless the title of the book is also a proper name, you don’t even need “by.” readers understand that, if there’s one name on the cover, it’s the author’s.
Other comments?
I suggested that the author send his book into Cover Critics. Since he already has my thoughts about it, I will abstain from making any further comments here (other than that I agree with you, Nathan).
Hi: I see. So, the author approached you, or is known to you; you gave him your thoughts and you suggested that he come here for some input. Alrighty, then.
Even if I could see the full cover, I suspect I wouldn’t be wild about it. I see a background which says “water.” I see pretty unreadable text, regardless of the size, but aggravated at smaller sizes. And then I see a very small rectangular image that implies a coastal town on the Med, and a ship. Maybe, if I stare at it, I can tell that’s a warship, but…so what? That could, as Nathan rightly mentions, mean anytime between the late 1930s through today. I can’t get a sense of the time, the era, what’s happening…I need MORE.
If it’s an historical love story–find an image of a couple falling in love. Find them on the Coast, or wherever. Show him in a navy uniform from WWII (that’s my guess here) and her in a nurse’s uniform, or duds from that era. Hell, the national archives have images of WWII. Anything would convey that sense of time, space, urgency, danger, better than simply the tranquil coast (of Italy?) and the water. (Look at this list from Amazon, of video posters, book covers, etc.: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=WWII+love+stories&rh=n%3A283155&dc&qid=1620249124&rnid=2941120011&ref=sr_nr_n_6 there is no doubt of the era.)
I don’t wish to be mean, but this cover doesn’t work. Even if the background images were perfect–which they aren’t–the color combinations and text make the title and byline information unreadable, even when zoomed, and that’s the kiss of death right off.
Is this written as a non-fiction retelling, third-party, or a first-person memoir? I get no indication from the cover.
You can’t tell what the area of interest is, the genre–nothing. This book could be about absolutely anything, anywhere, anytime and due to that, people who are shopping for books will go right past it. It’s not evocative, it’s not provocative.
Most importantly, it’s not Click-bait. And that is your cover’s single job–to be clickbait and this one is not doing that job for you.
Sorry. I would strongly recommend that you go book shopping at Amazon. Go to the same category that this book would use and do nothing but look at covers. See how they are conveying the genre, the area, the era, the storyline…that would be more help to you than anything that someone here could say, I suspect. I know, it’s hard to hear stuff like this–but we really are trying to help.
Hitch
Eh, the title and byline and taglines aren’t bad—if anyone could actually read them without having to squint and linger over them much longer than anyone in your target audience is likely to. The imagery is impersonal and has no immediately obvious meaning to anyone who doesn’t already know what’s in the book, and the layout is dreadful; no matter what the genre of the book for which you’re designing your cover, the cover image should always be one thoroughly integrated image, not one on top of another as you have it here. Really, the text on this cover is the only part you should keep for your next draft, and that in some font other than the ones you seem to be using entirely haphazardly here.
This being a tale about your family legacy and specifically how your parents got together and the adversity they faced after they did (some of which presumably involved your arrival into our world in the midst of all this turmoil), I would focus on getting a photograph of some of your mother and father’s personal effects with any old photographs of the happy (or not-so-happy) couple you may happen to have from the era in which this takes place carefully laid on top of it. Anything to do with their immigrating here to the U.S.A. from Italy, for instance—you and your family have been keeping at least some of the paperwork from your parents’ immigration and naturalization on file, I hope?—and maybe your father’s draft notice? Of course, if you’ve got an old photograph of them from their wedding day, that would be an especially appropriate item to put on top of the pile before photographing it for your cover.
When doing a story from real life, what’s most likely to draw your prospective readers’ attention is these artifacts that stand as proof of your story’s historicity. Even if your and your parents don’t happen to be particularly famous outside of a small circle of your friends and relatives, showing some literal documentation of their personal legacy front-and-center on the cover to your book will immediately establish in casual browsers’ minds the kind of book this is and whether it’s the particular kind they want to read. While biographical documentaries aren’t exactly the most wildly popular genre, you’re at least likely to get a nibble from historians and scholarly researchers looking for some personal perspectives on various historical eras and events from some of the people who lived through them if only they can see that’s what your book is offering them; for that, you need to get up close and personal, not just slap what looks to be some wholly random stock image of some city with some vaguely military warship floating on the ocean in front of it on your cover.
I agree with all the above comments. Number one is to make the text easy to read – the color, the typeface, and the size. Number two is to make the background image good. I didn’t even realize it was a battleship until I stared at it a while, much less Vietnam.
I really agree with RK about using historical photos. You could even find an old photo relevant to the story, cover the entire background with it, and put a simple title and author with a clear, large, readable typeface.