The author says:

In a hell world where memories have disappeared, a young woman must rely on two very different men for her survival, little knowing one man already destroyed her.

Setting: hell / purgatory (the characters aren’t sure)

Time: present day

Genre: fantasy-romance

Target audience: fantasy & paranormal romance readers

I created this cover using Canva’s stock images, & please rip it apart and tell me everything wrong with it.

Nathan says:

Quite good. I have a couple of technical quibbles — you should clear some of the grunge and ornamentation crowding “Lethe” to make it easier to read, and that handwriting font at the bottom has GOT to go.

My biggest concern, though, is that the cover doesn’t give any indication of romance.  Even just adding a gray male-and-female silhouette embracing behind the sigil in the top center might be enough.  (You may have to pull back further on the grunge and ornamentation to make it work.)

Other comments?

The author says:

Again is a dark-academia-adjacent mystery novel. Heartsick over a broken engagement, Professor Thea Vance finds refuge while on sabbatical in a tiny college town full of both charm and history. When a former lover, Roman, reappears in her life with a job offer to partner with him in building an immersive video game, she’s tempted in more ways than one. But just as she starts to suspect that something more than meets the eye is going on with Roman, she’s thrust into the center of a disturbing, mysterious death—a death that seems to have Roman at its center. Terrified and confused, Thea works against time to solve the puzzle when Roman disappears.

The mystery only deepens as she tries to unravel the tangled threads that lead to a powerful corporation, a mysterious white-elephant mansion brooding over hidden artifacts, a decades-old friendship and love affair gone bad, a scandal that rocked the gaming industry, and ultimately, a buried secret so shocking, it could change all of history…forever. Will she be able to fit the pieces of the past together in time to heal her heart and absolve her returned love or will she lose everything…again?

Nathan says:

The cover might be good for a dramatic memoir or a lit-fic novel, but there’s absolutely nothing about it that says “dark-academia-adjacent mystery” — so you wouldn’t be attracting your target audience, and the audience who WOULD be interested in your cover would feel put off when they read the description.

I think you need to do what we frequently recommend around here:  Imagine your target reader going on a book-buying binge.  What other books would you expect in that reader’s shopping cart along with yours?  Look at the covers to those books and see how your target audience is used to being marketed to, and let what you learn influence you as you come up with a cover concept.

Other comments?

The author says:

“Pillowside Mirror” is a historical fiction novella that young adults may be interested in. It is about a woman living in the 1920s who learns to confront the toxic office workplace that she enters every day – after a nightmare.

Nathan says:

Wow.

Not in a good way.

From the file name — “Book-Cover-Best-Idea.png” — I assume that you’re only intending this as a concept sketch, not the finished artwork, which is a good thing. But It’s still not good. The combination of images — a face in a pool or puddle; stacked pebbles; a lamp that is, I dunno, spreading seeds or something?…  None of it, individually or as a whole, conveys anything about the book, and certainly has no relation to the description you sent.

The purpose of your cover is to attract the attention and interest of a reader who would want to read your book. Can you honestly say that any part of your cover would catch the attention of someone who wants to read about workplace sexual politics in the 1920s?

Thanks to the art deco movement, the period of the 1920s has some very clear and recognizable visual motifs. Use them.

The author says:

Sara Glen just received wonderful news from her at home DNA testing kit. At least that is what the company personally called to tell her. An emerging disease is robbing children of their memories leaving them shadows of their former selves. She has the key to curing the horrible disease before it becomes a plague but doing so will end her life.

Nathan says:

The synopsis sounds like a medical thriller; the cover seems more like SF-flavored lit fic.  I don’t know which one to believe.

On a pure design note, the type is completely unreadable against that background in thumbnail, and doesn’t really please the eye in full size; you have plenty of contrast in the hues used, but the value (light and dark) is so close that the eye rebels.

Other comments?

The author says:

I plan on hiring someone for a re-design, but I thought it was worth getting feedback on this draft.

The world is falling apart due to climate catastrophe, violent insurrections, and government corruption. Suburban father Howard Hall decides to take matters into his own hands against one of the men he views as responsible for the societal decay; the candy mogul Li Wen. After modifying his RV into a vehicle of war, he leads his family on a siege of the Wen Estate. However, the battle proves to be more complicated than expected when a group of teenage punks show up to terrorize both the Hall family and Wen’s personal army.

This short novel is a satirical action thriller set in the very near future of the United States. The target audience is adult fans of humorous speculative fiction and would likely appeal to fans of authors like Thomas Pynchon, Norman Spinrad, William S. Burroughs, Nick Mamatas, and Carlton Mellick III.

[original submission and comments here]

Nathan says:

It’s an improvement, but not much of one; the title overlapping on the skull pulls focus away from it, and the candy still isn’t recognizable as such thanks to the color filters.  I think hiring someone is a good idea.