The author says:
A man leaves his planetary defense system in hopes of joining the planet’s police force. What he finds out changes the course of his life and the planet. This is a SciFi novel set on a planet in another galaxy. The target audience would include Star Wars fans.
Nathan says:
I’ll be painfully honest: If I had seen this for sale on Amazon, I’ve have posted it on LousyBookCovers.com. It’s completely underwhelming, especially for a genre as slam-bang as space opera. The font, Times New Roman, is the most common one in the world. The moons are dull and featureless — and the upper one is visibly “stretched,” instead of being spherical. Even the starscape is boring.
What would I do? I would awesome it up! Use a mechanical or futuristic font, and then add flares and rivets! Texturize the moons! Add a rainbow nebula to the starscape! (Did you know that every photo on the NASA website is free for public use? They’ve already been paid for with your tax dollars.)
If you don’t feel at all confident in your abilities to use PhotoShop or a similar program to get the results you want, the other option is simple: A quick search for “space opera” on DeviantArt.com gives me over 6,000 results. Find some pre-existing artwork you like (it shouldn’t be hard, as the cover you already tried had very little content that related specifically to you book), message that artist and offer him/her fifty bucks for the use of their art on your book. They might even put in the title and byline for you.
Good luck!
In addition to everything Nathan said, why is the text overlapping the top moon? There’s plenty of empty space between the two that you could have utilized.
This needs a whole lot of everything to be honest.
If you really want to make it yourself, do you have Photoshop? I found a great tutorial (complete with free brushes) for making realistic or fantastical stars scenes. It took about 10 minutes in total to make myself a nice star filled background with a moon no less. I have used that brush for stars ever since.
If there is only going to be two moons on this cover, they better be the most amazing moons ever. 🙂 Overlay in Photoshop (or other layer styles) can get you something that looks really good. You don’t need to worry about painting one.
Finally, that moon is squished. If it is a round moon, fix it, (but if it is supposed to be wonky and squished due to the story, then it needs to be squished more, and probably titled, so it doesn’t look like an error.)
Thank you for your feedback. This is my first attempt at a cover, and I was pretty happy with my first draft. I made some changes based on your critique and resubmitted.
AJ, I did not like the look when the moon was lower, it did not seem to have enough separation. After I redid the moons, there was more dimension, and it looked to be more in the distance.
Waffles, thanks for the tip. I don’t know if they are the most amazing moons ever, but they are much more amazing than they were.
I look forward to seeing the revisions.
Not happening, is all I can say, I’m afraid. No offense but this one is a total miss to me. The author needs to get online or into a bookstore and familiarize him/herself with what successful writers in the genre are doing on their covers. After that, start from scratch if you feel up to the task of creating a cover that compete with those you researched. If you are not confident that you can meet the challenge, there is no shame in that. I am an accomplished artist and there are covers I would not even attempt myself. In any case, if you cannot achieve the desired result yourself, hire someone who can. It is too important.
Best of luck to you.
If it was competently done, meaning moons that look like moons, and starry sky looking like starry sky, it would still be a tad underwhelming and static. Maybe add a spaceship or a man in a spacesuit or something. But first the spacescape should be done properly. And for fonts I suggest at least first readding Design 101 entry about fonts in this site.
I can hardly agree more with everyone else. The cover is static and uninvolving.
There is nothing wrong with being this graphic with a book cover, but the simpler something is the more critical every detail becomes.
Probably the simplest thing for you to do is avail yourself of the thousands of free, high-resolution images available from NASA via its Photojournal http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html
or from the Hubble site (though there are fewer planetary images) http://hubblesite.org/gallery/
Another vote for what Nathan said.
As a sci-fi fan, I can say without hesitation that this cover does not capture my attention. Your cover doesn’t convey anything that implies “rebellion”. There is no conflict apparent on your cover.
If these moons on your cover have no atmosphere, then craters should be readily apparent along with possible cities or settlements where said rebels should live.
If the cover moons do have atmospheres, their dull, monochromatic appearance makes them look like the air above Beijing on a smog alert day. Even Titan, which is shrouded in organic haze, has at least some allure thanks to its orange color. But even so, one would still need something to liven up the cover.
But you have a consistent light source, so that’s good.