[original submission and comments here]
Nathan says:
I definitely think we’re getting closer — we’re now entering the zone of personal preference, where several of us might agree that it needs something, but disagree on what that something is.
My suggestions would be:
- Add color into the flag, about half as strong as in RK’s revision.
- Make the female figure slightly warm-toned — not all the way to sepia, but just so the photo looks slightly “historic” and less like a stock image.
Other thoughts?
I don’t see much that I would add to Nathans suggestions. The only thing that comes to mind is that the cover really doesn’t suggest anything significant about the book. The tagline says “A Novel of Korea” and, well, there’s a Korean and a Korean flag. There’s not much that conveys anything specific about the book, its idea or theme.
Ah, so there was more to that picture. Well, as our esteemed host says, a little more color on that flag would definitely help; especially since without its colors to differentiate the two parts of the um-yang in its taegeuk at the center, the Korean flag just looks like the Japanese flag with a few extra symbols on it. Do note that in my revision, I was mostly just guesstimating where the blue and red should be as I could not tell their shades of gray apart in the black-and-white image; I hope your colorization can be a bit more precise.
As Ron Miller notes, the girl and the flag and the tagline all establish that this is a book set in Korea (and from the crowd pictures, during a politically volatile era), but not much else about its contents. Since the crowd and flag and girl are quite sufficient to establish the Korean setting and the general mood of the time, how about using the tagline to hint at the rest of what’s in the story, e.g. “A tale of international love in turbulent times” or something like that? Since you evidently don’t have room to show the guy together with the gal, that tagline’s going to have to do some of the heavy lifting.
Also, maybe you could make your byline typeface more consistent with the title and tagline’s? There’s no need for it to be so squished vertically when it’s got some room to spread out now. These are all relatively small tweaks, but the cumulative effect would make everything a good bit more pleasing to the eye and immediately comprehensible to the casual browser from your target audience; all of which means a higher likelihood of making the sale.