The author says:

Genre: Urban-Fantasy/Soft-Cyberpunk

We follow a seventeen-year-old girl named Winter den Haag. She lives in Frankfurt on the continent of Germania Magna. A Planet Earth nearly identical, yet vastly different. Once more bullied before the summer holidays, and her father hospitalized, Winter eventually finds herself in tears on her bed. Deep in the night, Winter receives a message on her phone from an app that she doesn’t remember installing, asking her if she wants to change her life. From there on, we follow her as she forges her legend, and eventually becomes a pillar of the Free People of Germania.

Nathan says:

The artwork is very competent, but not at all dynamic. She’s literally just standing there with her hands in her pockets; it’s practically a placid scene. And while it looks urban and gritty, there’s nothing there that tells the reader it’s an alien world, or even that it’s science fiction — that’s a pretty contemporary car right there.

The type is a disaster.  Sorry, but between the collection of fonts and the size, it’s an unreadable mess.  I’m still not sure I know what the main word in the title is — I think it’s “Aeternum,” but that’s only after rejecting “Afternun” and “Aftermum.”

If I were going to try to fix this cover (instead of scrapping it and starting over), I would:

• Rotate it by 10 or 15 degrees counterclockwise, placing the central figure on an angle.
• Play with the color so it doesn’t look like she’s standing under warm studio lighting.
• Add a spaceship to the sky behind the lightpole.
• Redo the type, focusing on readability first, and make the byline bigger.

Other comments?

The author says:

GENRE: Sci-Fi action story, present day, moving into the past.

STORY: Neo-Nazi German terrorists attack the lab of time-travel scientist Peter Waylan. To save his life, he sends himself through his untested portal. It sends him on a reverse trajectory, streaming backwards through time. The Germans create their Fourth Reich and conquer not only the future but the past. Waylan is the only one who can correct this nightmarish timeline, but first he must somehow change his trajectory while on the run from Nazi assassins from the future.

APPEAL: fans of time-travel sci-fi and steampunk

Nathan says:

If you’ve got a novel about time-traveling Nazis and you only reference time travel on the cover (or just time, really), you’re doing yourself a disservice.  Especially as both clocks and swastikas are radial designs, you should be able to work a visual Nazi reference in there with moderate effort.

And I’m sad to say that the “clever” backwards type doesn’t work for me at all. Confusing the audience isn’t the same thing as intriguing them, and I think the flipped letters work against you, especially because it’s inconsistent: only some of the letters are flipped, and in one case they’re out of order too.  I think this probably works better in your head than on paper.

Other comments?

The author says:

Genre: Dystopian, Adventure, Satire

All of humanity disappeared in the blink of an eye. With constructions and monuments gradually losing place to nature, a mixture of domestic and wild animals fight for survival in a strange, new environment. A group of animals in central Brazil, with the lead of the mutt Tobi, tries to discover what happened to their old masters. Will it be possible to even survive to find those answers?

Target Audience: Distopy readers, Young Adults/Adults, readers of fictions that relies on contemporary issues and thoughts.

Nathan says:

The description sound intriguing. Unfortunately, none of that intrigue shows up in the cover. At best, a potential reader would guess that there’s something to do with animals in this novel, but your target readers will be more attracted to the other books they see that more firmly proclaim, “This book is for you!”

Using the “print” motif, my idea would be to have human tracks (footprints and tire tracks, for instance) with animal prints criss-crossing and covering them.  But even that would have to contain some of the hallmarks of dystopian book covers, like textures and a distressed typeface.  You’d have to invest to get that kind of custom cover, naturally, but it would definitely increase the potential sales.

Other ideas?

The author says:

This is a somewhat darkly satirical take-down of the premise on which the movie Teeth (2007) was based, mainly intended to appeal to its detractors (and people who probably would be its detractors if they’d seen it).

In this story, the girl April Winters has a literal “snapper” down below: a fully functional vagina dentata complete with retractable teeth. While this provides her with a very effective rape deterrent (as one might expect), she gradually comes to realize it’s not very useful most of the time to a girl who doesn’t happen to be living in a Lifetime Movie of the Week, and actually quite a hazard to both her romantic prospects and the children she’d like to have someday.

Nathan says:

Well, THAT’S a niche audience!

I think the biggest problem here is the disconnect between the clean, blocky icon and the scratchy font used; a handdrawn font with more solid lines would tie it together better.

Beyond that, I think I’ll let the usual commenters do the heavy lifting. Have at it!