The author says:

For months Mark has been bugging his friends to try this gaming system he is enamored with. Skills, Archetypes, and Demons. This system has a skill for everything and even different approaches for some skills. Instead of levels, he tells them, each skill has its own experience and level. “As true to real life as a gaming system could be.” at least it says on the box. When the group finally break down and decide to play it, they head over to Hunter’s house to start. Next thing they know… trapped in the game. Everyone dreams of being trapped inside their favorite game. Abusing the mechanics and becoming OP AF. No one ever dreams of being trapped in a crappy system. One ladened with rules and so much record keeping it almost becomes tedious.

The book is LitRPG genre, so I want part of it to look like the cover of an old RPG book from the ’80s, but also look like a modern fantasy type of cover. I’ve written a couple of short stories/novellas that I plan on selling and using as reader magnet so branding the series is important. Skills and Demons is the name of the series. looking for thoughts and I hope it isn’t complete crap.

Similiar books in the genre, The Land: Founding, Ascend Online,  Dungeons of Strata

Nathan says:

The artwork works well. It could use some refinement (the shadows on the foreground figures seem haphazard), but I don’t think that’s essential. I’m guessing that this is a pre-existing piece of art that you’re licensing rather something custom, yes? So don’t worry about it if it’s not within your control.

Are those the only dimensions that it comes in? Because the black bars above and below very clearly say that the art wasn’t made in the right dimensions for a book cover and you didn’t know how to fix it.  If not, you can still use a gradient and texture that blends into the edges of the art to fill out the rest of the cover. Five-minute redo:

People aren’t going to notice it up front, because those areas will be dominated by…

The typeface! You really need to up your game there. As early as the second print editions of the First Edition rules for AD&D (yeah, it’s confusing), the type designs had character and panache:

Don’t make it so ornate that it’s not readable, but give it a smidgen of class and magic. If you need help with specific typefaces, there are others here who have suggestions at their fingertips.

Anything else?

The author says:

A writer working in the corporate world receives the ashes of his friend and the manuscript they’ve been working on together. To celebrate his life, the Karaoke writer drinks his way through memories with the help of friends and the girl of his dreams who works behind the bar.

Nathan says:

I’m confused as to the readership you’re aiming for. Is this a fictional memoir? A lit-fic novel about a writer (because aren’t they all)? A high-falutin’ romance?  Without knowing whom you’re trying to attract, I can’t easily tell you if the covers sends out the wrong signals — all I know is that the cover doesn’t tell me who the book is meant for, which is a big problem.

However, I can still comment on a few technical issues:

• Even at full size, the cursive writing against the busy fabric background lessens the title’s readability, and the odd placement of the title directly on her chest prompts an “My eyes are up here!” reaction.
• While you’ve deployed this particular Photoshop filter more skillfully than 99% of other instances, it still creates problems; her left eye and the left side of her mouth/chin are the biggest areas of concern.

Other comments?

The author says:

Eloise is a princess in hiding, an orphan, and an heir to the throne her uncle wants. In her grandfather’s day, Uncle Frideric would have staked her out for a dragon’s meal. Two birds with one stone, so to speak. Fortunately, virgin sacrifices to the dragons are passé now. Until the day she rescues a baby dragon, whose parents are searching desperately for him. Then she might just be food for wyrms, if they don’t realize she’s their heroine first…

Nathan says:

A lot of authors have found that using a sigil or symbol is a good substitute for the other, more expensive kind of fantasy cover (one which uses custom illustration), so I don’t fault that instinct.

Most of the problems here are readily apparent from looking at the thumbnail: All of the filters and ornamentation make both the dragon symbol and the text harder to comprehend/read; the chrome treatment on the dragon ends up looking like a hood ornament.  The lack of contrast between the yellow patch in the background and the ornamentation on top of it just exacerbates the problem.

And that title font… (It’s close to Flair Roman, but not the same. Our resident font expert, Hitch, will identify it instantly.) It’s not really strong enough for the title, and stretching it top-to-bottom doesn’t help.

My fix-it advice: Turn off all of the beveling etc., up the contrast, and check it IN THUMBNAIL  to make sure that both words and symbol are instantly understandable. Only add back any filters one at a time, and check them IN THUMBNAIL each time to make sure that you aren’t doing more harm than good.

Other comments?

The author says:

Hostaged in the hands of technology, the seski beings have long forgotten their cultural values and an integral part of their history. In an attempt to reclaim their lost past, an expedition force makes use of dimensional portals to outrace the light and land on a human habited planet, Iven, to stargaze into the afterimages of their planet – 300 years in the past. Some missteps and the seski beings’ identity are compromised before the human inhabitants. The human beings are intrigued by the discovery of a new sentient race but threatened by the intrusion, creating hostility between the locals and the expedition. Meanwhile, the seski expedition is intrigued by the cultural values of the humans but threatened by their hostilities. The humans try to defend their own in a preemptive strike, while the seskies try to defend their own and recapture the human culture through an aggressive one. The 33rd Century Wars commence.

Nathan says:

Here’s the first thing I saw:

The cover is full of terrific elements for a perfectly serviceable (if slightly generic) SF cover, but the layout needs work, as everything is unbalanced.  The text treatment on “Afterimage” is also a bit of a problem — I can read “Stellar” in thumbnail (just barely), but “Afterimage” is a complete loss.

Here’s the five-minute version of where I would go with the layout:

The byline seems, well.. having the surname be initials only comes across as too precious.

Other comments?

The designer says:

An on-location film crew is making a monster B-movie, but the incantation that raises the monster in the script raises a real monster when delivered by the actress. (The rusalka in this book is a female Slavic water spirit, which may or may not be relevant.)

Client has asked for a cover that resembles a B-movie poster from the 50s, and loves the current version, but I don’t. I know it should be a true illustration, but client insists that I, a photo manipulator/compositor, am the best person for the job. At this point I have spent too much time with this cover to be at all objective (except to recognize it’s Not Right.)

Nathan says:

All rightie! This is right up my alley — not only did I review B-movies and cult cinema online for a dozen years (for a site which the internet has unfortunately swallowed), and not only do I have an archive of 65,000 movie posters and video covers on my computer, but I’m in the middle of making a B-movie-flavored cover for a project of my own. IZ MY JAM.

The problem here, as I see it, is that you’re trying to take an image perfectly suitable for a modern ebook cover (although not in itself particularly horrific or spooky), and then retro-engineer it into a B-movie poster.  The problem is that old B-movie posters were built differently from the ground up; the entire layout philosophy was different, and it’s a difference which even the most casual viewer will instantly recognize even from the thumbnail.

Here are a smattering of B-movie posters from the era, to show what I mean:

There are several cheats here — Cry of the Banshee is from 1970 and definitely shows a psychedelic influence, Flesh Feast is from 1970, The Day of the Triffids and The Body Stealers (“Galaxy Horror” on the Italian poster) and The Plague of the Zombies are from the 1960s, Night Monster and Calling Dr. Death are from the 1940s — but I think they all demonstrate the same aesthetic.

And that aesthetic is OVER THE TOP. Don’t hint that something unsettling might be going on; portray MENACE and MONSTERS and COME TO THE DRIVE-IN BECAUSE YOUR BEST BABE IS GONNA WANT TO SNUGGLE UP TO YOU DURING THE SCARY BITS.

Even more so than with other covers critiqued on this site, where the general advice is to follow the visual trends that other covers in a particular genre have used, I’m just gonna say: Steal. Look at old poster layouts in thumbnail like this, so you can see which ones still manage to convey their content at such a size (since you still need a cover that sells on Amazon), and then swipe that layout.  Trust me, anyone who recognizes that the cover of Rusalka is a direct homage to (for example) Terror From the Year 5000 is going to be more likely to look at it, not less.

Other comments?