The author says:

Keisha Rose has a curse. She’s an empath, able to feel the emotions of everyone around her, overwhelming her, forcing the young woman to live a life of isolation. When a race of alien telepaths invade her colony world, they do so by projecting overpowering waves of despair. They quickly capture Keisha, and unwittingly unlock her full telepathic potential. Keisha Rose must not only come to grips with her own curse, but must now deal with the fact that the fate of all humanity now rests on her ability to control her mental powers and use them against the invading “Mind Assassins.”

This is the first book of a trilogy. The novel is science fiction. The submitted cover is a test of concept.

Nathan says:

If I look at it full-sized, I can see that the background is actually a distorted starscape, so I can sorta see there’s a “space” angle here, but that’s only if I’m already looking, and in thumbnail that’s entirely lost.  And an eye is not enough to convey “empath” or anything like it. So especially when seen at thumbnail size, the cover fails to convey anything which would capture your target audience.

If I’m looking for “alien attack on a colony world,” I expect to see futuristic buildings amid alien plants, or alien spaceships descending from a sky with multiple moons.  I need to see some immediate, “cool” signifier of genre — otherwise I’ll never look further.

(Also, “Assassin” is misspelled.)

Other comments?

The author says:

A short erotic thriller focused on an innocent girl being drawn into her boyfriend’s wealthy family and discovering their dark and twisted sexual relationships.

Nathan says:

The biggest problem here is that you’ve chosen an image with the girl as the aggressor; that sounds like the complete opposite of what you want.  Start with a different image, on in which the female figure is in sexy peril.

The author says:

The attached file is my latest and final submission.

The book blurb for what it’s worth: Sometimes you have to break in in order to break out… Raphael, the world’s first superintelligent AI, has gone missing from its lab. If the security tapes are to be believed, it has simply vanished into thin air. A case of tech-theft or something far more sinister? Its creator, Andy, has complete faith in the security protocols he built into his AI, but others are not convinced. Confined to his home, he is now in a race against time to set things right, all the while staying one step ahead of the skulduggery and infighting within a company that seeks nothing less than control of the new economy. Dive into trolley problems and machine morality in this sci-fi howdunnit of Ex Machina meets Rear Window as you try to figure out whether Raphael is a guileless automaton or a monster that will do anything to get what it wants.

[original submission and comments here]

Nathan says:

Gosh, it does my heart good when someone submits a cover, gets constructive feedback, and follows through on that feedback. Well done.

My two comments:

• The way the title overlaps the sun’s glow is a little awkward; I would either tweak the layout to get rid of the overlap, or add a dark outline to the title to separate the red of the title from the orange of the sun.
• I would both enlarge and separate the robot and wheelchair figures, letting each take up more real estate closer to the edges. Especially with the robot, there’s nothing to be gained by leaving all that blank space behind it.

Other comments?

The author says:

(Prototype with two possible versions; has Shutterstock watermarks.) This is a 32K word story in the “LitRPG” or “GameLit” genre in which characters are playing some sort of roleplaying game with specific rules. Similar authors: Michael Chatfield, M. H. Johnson, Travis Bagwell. In this one, there’s a post-apocalyptic (21st century) village. Its people learn about a tower built by a game-obsessed AI who challenges them to go there and fight their way to the top, past robots.

Nathan says:

If you’re going for a post-apoc vibe, the second cover is DEFINITELY the way to go.  Not only is the figure drawing on the first cover a little off (perspective is hard), the initial impression is one of fantasy, not sci-fi — you have to look longer to realize that there’s actually some tech in the faery-like body armor.

Concentrating on the second cover: I’d see what can be done about making the title bigger; having title and byline the same size is visually confusing, and unless your name is “Stephen King” etc., it’s the title that should probably be larger.

The two layouts I’d play with are one with the title at the top (on two lines), and the subtitle left-justified to the left:

…or maybe subtitle at the very top, and title to the left in that open space, left-justified:

Other comments?