The author says:
They story about Houdini’s great apprentice that history forgot. Charles can still hear his mentor’s words; “It is the names and faces history forgets that often turn the tides.” In order to avenge his the murder of his mentor he must first disappear! He silently writes history as he encounters: Jack the Ripper Harry Houdini Fred Russell (“The father of modern ventriloquism”)
Nathan says:
While I sometimes come across as a defender of A.I. images here, my attitude is simply that A.I. illustration is simply one more tool in a designer’s toolbag, like the advanced version of a stock image catalog. My rule of thumb is this: If a reader can immediately identify it as A.I.-generated, you need to change it. (Why? My assumption is that the reader will identify the originality (or lack thereof) on the cover with the originality (or lack thereof) of the contents.)
Pay attention to the odd finger placement and the lack of background. Those are two of the obvious identifiers of A.I. illustration.
Other problems:
The image doesn’t have any convenience open space for title placement, which is why it’s awkwardly across the body, and in a font and hue that keeps it from standing out.
You really don’t need a colon on the cover; font placement and size should be enough to mark the separation.
You don’t need “by” before the byline; if people see one name on the cover, they assume that that’s the author.
Other comments?
Two issues right out of the gate: The patently AI-generated image. It’s just not working. The other is the unreadable title. One of the reasons for the latter (aside from the poor choice of color) is that the AI image generator left you no room to put a title anywhere (professional human cover illustrators will leave at least 1/3 of a cover available for type), so you were forced to put the title wherever you could. A third problem with the cover is that the eye goes directly to the object the character is holding…and there is nothing significant there. As for the colon and the “by” I second Nathan’s comments.
Typography is the least understood of cover elements
It is certainly the least understood, the most-ignored and the most-abused of all cover elements., Oh, and did I say the least-planned-for? (FWIW, this also applies to interior illustrations in kids’ illustrated books! Same exact problems, as you may all easily envisage.)
I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had to deal with very angry, obdurate, etc. authors insisting that “of course” we can use this image or that image that they love madly, and we can “make it work.” (I guess that’s my Tim Gunn moment there…).
We can, but it looks ludicrous because the image with which they fell in love has no business being used, as it is being used for a cover. There isn’t that infamous third for type—not even for the title, half the time. It drives me bonkers. Very frustrating!
(And then there’s the “I am not paying for some font” group, too. They’ll only use free fonts and their interpretation of what FREE means or what “commercial” means wouldn’t get past an L-1’s professor for love nor money. (sigh).
Credit where it’s due: until you get down to the hands and that… pamphlet? small package? miniature guidebook? …the parlor magician character is holding in that odd telltale way, one could easily mistake this artificially generated picture for a professional stock photo. Even if it had been a better picture, however, the amateurish lettering of the title and byline and that odd white bar running up your cover’s left edge (what’s up with that?) would have marked this draft as a rather amateurish attempt at a cover. While hitting the “regenerate” button on an AI image generator might eventually get you a better cover image, you do need to brush up on your typography skills in the meantime.
Speaking of stock photos, don’t let the existence of flashy new technology blind you to the possibilities of an old-school approach: at the very least, one thing those stock image sites were often good at providing was pictures with ready-made spaces for putting captions and other lettering (such as titles and bylines). Particularly in the case of pictures of people, they’ll even sometimes have the models holding up signs or placards or the like. While stock image sites may or may not have a picture of a Victorian Era stage magician you can use, you can at least get some ideas for how to advertise your book there.
Speaking of advertising, if this story is indeed set in an era before color photography was invented (and if your character is going to encounter Jack The Ripper, at least part of it most certainly is), did it occur to you that maybe your book cover could be designed to look like one of that era’s playbills? Around here, we’ve always said book covers serve much the same function as billboards or movie posters or internet banners, and playbills for live events were basically the forefather of all those other forms of advertising (and they usually used a highly legible and instantly recognizable kind of font). As a bonus, a playbill-as-book-cover would allow you to slip in some taglines disguised as some of the bombastic superlatives a lot of those old playbills used, e.g. “For One Night Only: Charles [whatever your protagonist’s surname is] Bamboozles Your Senses!” “The greatest magician of whom you’ve NEVER heard!” “Can this hitherto unknown master of illusion help us apprehend Jack The Ripper?”
In short, try thinking “out of the box” a little bit: like all advertisers, cover designers do have to stay within certain familiar boundaries (in your case, this specifically means your cover must be taller than it is wide, have at least a title and byline, and have nothing too explicitly obscene or otherwise offensive to the public on it); yet at the same time, some of the most effective advertising is the kind that gets people’s attention by doing something unusual and showing them something from an odd perspective they might not have considered before. Photographs (or AI simulations thereof) are exceedingly common on book covers these days; fancy playbill illustrations from the Victorian Era, not so much. Try experimenting with some retro advertising on yours.
I won’t get into the AI debate, but something more interesting with the title MUST be done. Also I agree, you don’t need the “by” and the author’s name should be larger.
https://imgur.com/a/tB8Vh0F
just for fun