The author says:
The army seals off a village in the night, and disappears the inhabitants. A factory fire begins to spread a radioactive cloud. As the first UK ISIS cell spreads destruction, DCI Strange must stop them before London is contaminated—and at the same time, rescue his girl from the clutches of Sheikh Maulan.
Nathan says:
Is it a graphic novel? Because the assumption of 99% of the people who see this cover will be that it’s a graphic novel.
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?