Healing Plates: Anti-Inflammatory Recipes for Wellness

Covers

The author says:

Discover the power of food to heal and energize with “Healing Plates: Anti-Inflammatory Recipes for Wellness”. Packed with 100+ mouthwatering recipes, this cookbook is your ultimate guide to reducing inflammation, boosting vitality, and reclaiming your health—one delicious bite at a time.

Nathan says:

I really have no complaints about this, especially if the main focus is to sell physical books. (It might be a little cluttered to look good in a thumbnail for ebooks.) There’s no reason that the byline couldn’t be bigger, though. And “Edition 2025” is in an awkward position; it could probably replace either the cup of sauce to its left or the bowl of soup in the top center.

Other comments?

Snatched

Covers

The author says:

Hannah Tree, ex crim Private Investigator gets kidnapped three times while investigating a kidnap case she thinks is con. She’s right. But the kidnappers hire her to find a gangster’s daughter whose fake kidnapping they also arranged. The only real kidnapping is Hannah’s.

Nathan says:

I hope that you were typing that on a phone and that it’s not indicative of the quality of prose.

Any time we look at a book later in a series, we have to balance improvements directly to that cover with the branding for the series as a whole (sometimes the ideal solution is simply to redo all of the covers at once, but that’s obviously a bigger undertaking).  Here are the other covers in the Hannah Tree: Private Detective series:

There’s good consistent branding across the series, without being so tight that it’s constrictive.

This fifth entry tries to follow the same elements, but… Have you changed designers? Or have you decided to ditch the designer and just do it yourself? Because there are a few things that stand out as differing in this fifth cover from the previous four:

  • Byline is similar, but the font and (especially) size are different.
  • Series title now follows the style of the byline instead of the book title.
  • Book title isn’t as bold, nor is it rendered in shades of red.
  • The artwork is less central, less colorful, and honestly less professional.

I think in this case, the changes you could make to improve the cover and the changes you could make to better follow the series branding are, fortunately, the same.  Changes you make to help this cover look like the previous four are also changes which will improve the cover overall.

The biggest single problem I saw, even before I looked at the other covers in the series, is that the image used is too easy to ignore, especially in thumbnail. I understand that you were going for a feeling of stark loneliness; however, the image elements get lost in the sea of blackness, and it doesn’t make much of an impression on the casual browser on Amazon. Look at the ways that contrast and bold colors arrest the attention on the previous four covers; that’s what you need on the fifth.

Other comments?

Hexes & Hijinks

Covers

The author says:

Genre: cozy paranormal mystery Readership: anyone between ages 14 to 81 Trying to attract a cozy audience.

Premise: Danika Dreary has a secret: she can psychically tell when someone’s lying. When her grandma Elsie is accused of murder after a matchmaking gone wrong, Danika must use her unique gift to sift through the quirky residents of Mystique, California to find the real killer.

Nathan says:

It really seems to hit all the bases for the genre. I’ve got no suggestions for improvement. Anyone else?

The Veterinary Dog Health Encyclopedia

Covers

The author says:

This is a first attempt at the cover for a diagnostic reference book for veterinary students and/or dog owners. It features 101 dog ailments that a vet would typically work with on a professional basis. It contains the disorders, the symptoms, the diagnosis, and the treatment for all 101.

Nathan says:

The textbook and reference space is a little different.  One assumes that the target audience isn’t swayed as mightily by cover graphics, as they don’t find their purchases by random browsing; a vet who needs reference works on dog health will search for books that fit their description, and base their purchases on how complete and authoritative the book looks according to the description. (That’s why so many reference books have stolid but boring covers — they don’t want their books to seem TOO trendy and market driven.)

But while this book’s marketing would rely less on the cover than, say, a genre novel, I can still make a couple of suggestions:

  • The color scheme comes across as awfully science-fiction-y. Experiment with desaturating the blues, while still allowing the pink brain to “pop.” (Now THERE’S a sentence I never want to see taken out of context.)
  • There’s no reason that byline should be style differently from either the title or the subtitle. Pick one of those two type styles and use it again on the byline.

Other comments?

Fat Chance

Covers

The author says:

A sarcastic New York private eye gets stuck in a small New Mexico town full of wacky characters where he has to solve a missing persons case. Humor/cozy mystery

Nathan says:

This may sound like I’m taking out my frustrations on you. I’m not, exactly, but your cover is an opportune occasion to remind everyone of some basic facts.

Your cover isn’t meant to be art to tickle the fancy of intelligentsia in a gallery showing.

It’s advertising.

It’s a billboard.

It’s supposed to instantly convey to the target audience, “Hey! This is a book you’d be interested in!” Which means you need to know how that target audience is normally signaled to.

Look at your cover. Is there ANYTHING that says it’s full of wacky characters? That it’s a humorous cozy with a sarcastic private eye? Heck, that it’s even a mystery?  Without “A Novel” on there, we wouldn’t even know where it falls on the fiction/nonfiction divide.

You are doing nothing to attract your target audience. Your cover is a net negative.

This isn’t even an occasion where you need to start over with a different concept. You just need to start over with A concept. You need to brainstorm with someone: How do I let the readers of wacky cozy mysteries that this book is for them? How do I get them interested?