The author says:
In late 1999, Deak and Marie work for different businesses in the same office complex. At the big Halloween party, they each meet a heartthrob from the other’s office. Once they discover this, they decide to help each other spy out clues to win their crushes before New Year’s Eve arrives, and the dreaded Y2K bug destroys us all.
This is a light-hearted romance — not sauna steamy, just a portable tea kettle. I’m trying to appeal to people of any age interested in art, games, and computers (aka nerds and geeks like myself.) It’s strictly Teen YA, and I intend to let my 6th grade daughter read it.
Nathan says:
There are no huge problems, but I think you can see what needs to be fixed by looking at these smaller versions: The type is hard to read, and the background fades into irrelevance. Remember, most readers are going to see your book cover first in thumbnail, and only if that hooks them will they click through and see the rest. So make the type larger and easier to read from a distance. Can the background do something more than just be there? Maybe a pink color scheme, or something to help indicate the romance story?
Other comments?
Looking at the front cover by itself (which is how most people will first see the book), the image doesn’t convey much. It’s mostly a relatively empty, dark space. What little of the computer circuitry that is visible is just a few colored lines. Other than suggesting “computers” in a very generic sense, there’s really nothing that relates specifically to the book you describe…that is, a light-hearted romance. And there is always a problem with the slightly over-clever idea of crossing out one word in the title and substituting another: What is the actual title? After all, you have something different on the spine. Your main issue, though, is to get an additional visual element into your cover that conveys the nature of this book, its idea and theme.
Well, from my perspective, it’s too dark, far too busy, and it doesn’t say genre to me—not which genre, or if it’s genre, if it’s LitFic…I can’t get there from here.
But the thing that grabs at me is that when I see it, all it says to me is the question, “What is the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything?”
And the answer is…42..
Just sayin’. That’s what the Y2 looks like to me–forty-two. Sorry. (H/T to Douglas Adams.)
Hitch