The author says:
The army seals off a village in the night, and disappears the inhabitants. A factory fire begins to spread a radioactive cloud. As the first UK ISIS cell spreads destruction, DCI Strange must stop them before London is contaminated—and at the same time, rescue his girl from the clutches of Sheikh Maulan.
Nathan says:
Is it a graphic novel? Because the assumption of 99% of the people who see this cover will be that it’s a graphic novel.
It’s not a bad idea and the execution is not too bad. The main problem is a lack of focus. I think you are trying to depict too many things from the novel instead of zeroing in on one significant image.
You are probably depending too much on a casual browser picking up on all of the tiny details—the body hanging out the window, the radiation hazard symbol, etc.—which is not going to happen in the split second glance someone is likely to give the book.
None of the images you’ve chosen remotely suggest to me anything of what would seem to be the actual nature of the book as it is described.
The overall darkness works very much against the cover, too—as is evident when it is seen at thumbnail size. Even a light source such as the helicopter’s searchlight, which should be bright, is grayed down.
I think you need to pick one key scene from the book, one scene that not only represents the book’s idea or theme, and focus solidly on that.
Agreement on the graphic novel point.
More generally, I think this cover is trying to cram in way too much. The entire story description is there in the image: nighttime military assault on a rural English building, raging fire with a pluming cloud, abduction by a man with something radioactive, vaguely Muslim sounding title. Every element of the story is present, crammed in and fighting for limited space. The result is that nothing is visible in the thumbnail, and I expect the spotlighted kidnapping needed to be zoomed-up into an inset because it wasn’t visible even at full size.
I would suggest going with something figurative or symbolic to communicate the themes of the story rather than a literal depiction of the premise like this one.
No, it’s not a graphic novel. I really don’t like photo-based covers, is that what’s expected these days? The cover depicts a scene in one chapter, it was hard to decide which scene to use.
It’s not so much that photo-based covers are expected, but that ink-line art with mostly flat coloring is pretty much ONLY used for graphic novels.
The idea that the cover *must* illustrate a specific scene is a fallacy, though. While a scene *can* lend itself to a good cover, the most important function of your cover is, simply stated, to attract the attention of your target audience and get them to read the back cover or ebook description. Sometimes that can be accomplished by depicting a certain scene from the book; at other times, a non-literal representation of characters or situations works well, or even just a combination of type, color scheme, and icons or symbols that signal to the target audience that “This is the kind of book YOU’LL like!”
Often, for writers who don’t have either name recognition (the most important feature of the cover of a Stephen King novel is the big “STEPHEN KING”) or a huge ad campaign to familiarize the audience (the iconic covers of the TWILIGHT books work largely because of media saturation), the most effective strategy is to look at how books in the same genre and with the same target audience are marketed, and use those other covers as a guideline.
On top of that, Ron’s comments above about “lack of focus” are spot-on. Remember, 99% of your target audience will see your cover at thumbnail size, and with other books covers displayed at the same time. You need to hook that first eye-blink of interest with cover elements which are easily seen and understood at small size and split-second cognition.
To add to what Nathan’s said, all of which I agree with:
Okay, so you don’t like photo-based covers; that’s your personal taste. But when’s the last time you bought a novel, yourself, with a cover like yours? I’m going to say if not never, damn near never.
There is no reason on earth that you have to portray a scene from the book at all. In fact, largely, that’s where cover designs go wrong. And like yours, they tend to go wrong by trying to cram in everything (a famous one from the archives of cover design at Booknook.biz was a cover about a kidnapping, and not only did the customer want a very specific type of house with a specifically-facing-in-this-direction garage, but the driveway had to go down a hill from the garage door. Then, there could be no other houses visible; there had to be a certain brand of baby carriage, at the bottom of the driveway, visibly empty, with a specific color blanket, and a specific type of rattle in it, laying at a certain angle across the blanket [in the carriage]. There was more to it; those are the most memorable items.
Suffice to say, she got exactly the cover she wanted–and no, it didn’t sell. We redid it 6 months later in a thematic way and then, finally, it started to sell.)
The reader won’t notice all of that. Not a whit. You need to distill down the idea, the concept, and think about the emotion, the idea you’re trying to sell. You’re selling an action-adventure Cop novel. Got it, with terrorists as the perps and radioactive threats, too. So, when YOU go to Amazon or B&N, and YOU look for books that might appeal to you–and you browse that category (presumably, you write what you like to read), what covers appeal to you?
I can pretty much guarantee that 99.99% of procedurals, action-adventure novels, etc. don’t have covers like yours, for the reasons that others mentioned–because the assumption by the prospective buyer will be wrong. They’ll assume that it’s a comic book or graphic novel.
I’d say just…take a step back. Go look at the category on Amazon, and browse yourself. Find the covers that appeal to you, that would make you click. Notice what they have in common, their use of space, what elements they have included, colors…etc.
That’s my best advice. And don’t get caught up in the whole “scene in the book” thing. That usually generates less-than-stellar results.
The title’s fairly effective, and the generally violent imagery on the cover does bring terrorism and/or war to mind, so good job on that; but yes, the old-school line drawing artwork does suggest a graphic novel. This not being a graphic novel, if you don’t want to use live-action photography (though I don’t see why you should be so biased against it), you should at least go for painted or penciled artwork that looks more solid and in-depth. Case in point: probably one of my favorite pieces of book cover artwork ever is for the cover of David Palmer’s post-apocalyptic novel Emergence; check out the solid and in-depth—and yet obviously drawn rather than photographed—portrayal of the wind-swept empty streets of an abandoned town there.
Now obviously, your novel is on a slightly different subject, but that’s no reason why it couldn’t do with a similar artistic treatment. While your current cover draft has the right general kind of imagery (albeit in the wrong artistic style), it’s a bit lacking in the specifics or “focus” as Ron Miller puts it. The shot of what might well be an otherwise mundane and serene town house in some London suburb somewhere on fire and under assault from what looks to be some unidentified military force is pretty striking, to the point that the embedded closeup shot of the distressed gal being pulled away almost seems redundant.
Your summary of this story suggests to me the plot is something like an updated British version of the 1984 movie Red Dawn, which is all about middle America (geographical as well as demographic; the story takes place in Colorado) suffering from an invasion of its enemies. One of the most striking images from that movie (which I could swear I saw on a movie poster or two for it, though it was used more as a publicity photo) is that of some godless Commie invaders from the Soviet Union with one of their tanks standing in front of a big old all-American capitalistic McDonald’s sign. Like your picture of a military (or at least militaristic-looking) assault on a town house, what really sells the imagery (and the work to which it’s attached) is the contrast of the mundane with the terrifyingly unexpected; it’s basically saying “Yes, your sleepy neighborhood (and specifically your dwelling/favorite eating establishment) could come under a deadly assault from invading soldiers/terrorists at a moment when you least expect it.”
With either picture, I’d say the portrayal of trained troops (be they actual military or just terrorists disguised as a military) terrorizing a civilian place in this manner is more than sufficient to sell the story without any further details. Like the distressed damsel on your cover, Red Dawn had a very heart-wrenching scene showing one of the fleeing protagonists’ Hispanic neighbors crying out to them from the streets right before a bunch of Soviet (and Cuban) invaders run him down and drag him away to intern and/or execute him in a gulag; yet you’ll notice nobody thought it necessary to embed that in with the shot of the Soviet troops and their tank standing in front of the McDonald’s. Likewise, you should dump all other imagery from your cover to ensure your prospective readers’ focus is immediately and exclusively on the wholly-realistic-and-yet-hard-to-believe-because-it’s-so-unexpected picture of military-style atrocities being perpetrated on a familiar civilian locale; even if that distressed damsel in the embedded closeup is somebody important like the hero’s girlfriend or whatever, the readers don’t really need to see her reaction to get the gist of the cover, as they should already be reacting that way themselves.
In short, you’ve got the right idea here, but you’re trying a little too hard to get all the highlights from your story into it. Focus on portraying just the one most emotionally gripping part of your story on the cover, and don’t allow other secondary—though also emotionally compelling—parts to distract you or your prospective readers from it. On covers for this kind of story, staying focused is everything.
Very interesting. I had always heard that the cover should reflect the contents of the book… but now I’m hearing other opinions. I took a look for terrorist novel covers. I really liked “Army of God” which appears to be illustrated. And “The Recruit” which is a graphic novel. You see, these graphic novels haven’t existed long, as far as I am concerned. I regard them in the same light as comics, and I stopped reading The Beano an awful lot of years back! Sorry… There are some very strange examples such as “The Association Of Small Bombs”.
Depends on what you mean by “reflect.” A cover shouldn’t “summarize” a book — it really can’t, and will fail if it tries. But a cover can and should “advertise” the book, or more accurately, advertise the *appeal* of the book. If I’m the target reader, you’ll pique my interest if you advertise “danger” more than you will by advertising “romance” or “drama” or… But since you literally have a fraction of a sentence for catch the reader’s attention before they look to another book, you need to convey that strong appeal instantly — enough so that the target reader will stop and pay attention long enough to read the title and byline, and then be interested enough to read the description of the back of the book.
When we say “reflect” around here, we generally mean give you the gist of it. This is not quite the same thing as summarizing the story, though the gist of a story might very well serve as a super-short summary. As I say, though the art style’s wrong for your book, I think your depiction of guys in soldier uniforms attacking a civilian house gets to the gist of your story very well; that being “Terrorists attack the people of London.”
Note that “Terrorists attack the people of London” includes almost none of the details in your pitch at all: no mention that they’re Islamic terrorists specifically (though your book’s title is a pretty big clue to anyone who’s ever heard of that term before), no stating that the evil mastermind of these attacks is a sheikh who’s holding the hero’s girl hostage, and no reference to an arson at a local factory producing a cloud of radioactive fallout to threaten the population either. It doesn’t include all these admittedly fascinating details because it doesn’t need to; when you’re trying to get prospective readers interested, “Terrorists attack the people of London” is all they really need to know. Likewise, “Terrorists attack the people of London” is all the imagery on your cover needs to show.
Well, it seems to me that you made an effort to find the two covers in the Thriller/Action-adventure genre(s) that looked somewhat similar to yours. As near as I can tell, neither are graphic novels, unless “The Recruit” you looked at is different than the one I saw.
When I suggested that you peruse the charts and sales pages, I meant more to see what other, good-selling authors and publishers are doing.
In terms of not telling the story–it’s the book’s job to tell the story, not the cover’s. It’s the cover’s job to induce the browser to look and click–to get them to your sales page. That browser, that person, at that point, doesn’t need or want all the nitty-gritty about the story. What they need is a cover that says “this is a book in your favorite genre, that you’ll like.” Excite their interest. Once they click into the sales page, then the description takes over; then the LookInside. It’s a domino effect.
Lastly–don’t forget, that while it’s important that you like the cover, what YOU like doesn’t really matter, in terms of sales. It’s what the buyer likes, what they’ll click, what they are accustomed to and what they expect. And if you look at the Thriller–>Action category, the illustrated covers you’ll see are more realistic, not stylized/comic. (Ask any trade-published author and they’ll tell you how many of their covers they loathed–but they were happy to deposit the checks.)
BUT…people here can only give you advice. 🙂