The author says:

I’m comfortable exposing yet another effort because the tone of this site is educational, not one where finding fault is the turn on. Much appreciated by all of us writers without funds and with minimal design sense. You make the world of writing a better place. Thanks.

[original submission and comments here and here]

Nathan says:

Aw, shucks. Thanks. We’re all happy to offer pre-publication advice and support — we save our snark for after a cover has been published to the world.

My first reaction — before any of the technical design stuff — is that, in looking at the three prospective covers, I really don’t know what to expect in your novel. I don’t know the tone, the mood.  I know that it’s “literary,” whatever that means… but is it lighthearted? Leaden with awareness of the futility of existence?  Postmortal existentialism?  The three covers we’ve seen so far could each apply to one of those three, which would each appeal to different readers.

I’ve got several specific pointers about this cover (kerning, position of “A Novel,” etc.), but I feel like it would be rearranging deck chairs on… not the Titanic, but a boat that’s not going where you want it to go.

At this point, my advice would be to get a second pair of eyes.  Find a reader with at least a cursory awareness of book marketing, have them read the book, and then ask, “What kind of cover would you expect to see on this?”  If you want, show them each of the three covers you’ve shown us so far and find out which one best matches the mood or feel of the book.  Then you’ll be able to dive into how best to design that cover to appeal to your prospective readers.

Best of luck.

The author says:

NEW VERSION OF COVER

Michael Greyson awoke one morning feeling better than he had in years. Unfortunately, he soon learned he felt so good because he had died the day before. The upside to being dead was he made it to Heaven. The potential downside was he didn’t believe in Heaven, or God. Although Heaven is the last stop, Mike has one other option. This is a thoughtful story about being dead and Mike’s first ten days in heaven; helped by his guide Pete, no relation to the famous saint.

Audience is baby boomers seeking a better understanding of the meaning of life. It’s literary fiction.

[original submission and comments here]

Nathan says:

I think all of the original criticisms from commenters still hold true here: There’s nothing to catch the eye or indicate the contents. There’s nothing that makes the cover a promo for the book.

You’ve changed fonts, but this one has its on problems: the kerning (spacing between letters) is problematic, so that “FIRST” looks scrunched together while “HEAVEN” has visible gaps (often a problem between A and V).  And the italic version for Personal Wisdom and Simply Bob isn’t a true italic; it’s just that same font, slanted.  I’ll grant you that most readers won’t be able to articulate comments about “kerning” and “true italics,” but they will come away with the impression that, not only is the cover not intriguing or appealing, it’s also not put together very well.

I think your best bet is advice I commonly give: Seek out half a dozen titles in the same genre that you would expect to appeal to the same readers, and examine their covers to see how readers of books like yours are used to being marketed to.

Other comments?

The author says:

Genre: Science-Fiction (colonization)

Back blurb: “Evaline is the shipboard computer on the Miranda Two, a colony ship destined for the planet Karman-III-Delta. She is possibly Earth’s last hope of establishing a working off-world colony. However, her predecessor stopped reporting home, so now she and the colonists must establish what happened to the previous colony.”

Nathan says:

What we’re seeing here is the common problem of being too close to the book. You’re the author and you know it inside and out, so the cover seems appropriate to you because it matches an image that you know is in the book.

But look at it from the perspective a potential reader — one who would enjoy reading the book you wrote — and ask, “What does this cover instantly convey about the book?”

Not much. Something science-fictiony, yes, but that’s a big arena.  In the thumbnail, I can see that there’s technology, and a redhead.  I may not even realize that she’s transparent (or I may just assume that she’s part of a semi-transparent collage — what we call “layers upon layers” over at LousyBookCovers.com).

At full size, I really don’t get much more.  I might understand that she’s a hologram in that techno-industrial setting, and I may even get, from her binary morph-suit, that she’s an A.I., but probably before either of those my takeaway will be that she’s a rendered figure from Poser or similar software… and that will probably be a strike against you, because so many indie publishers think that Poser-generated covers are adequate (they’re not) that they also have their own category of “pseudohumans” at LBC.com.

Nowhere do I get “colony ship” or “mysterious lost colony” or anything that would be an honest draw for your target audience.  (And honestly, the title itself doesn’t help; it tells me nothing.) From the summary, I would expect to see a massive colony ship in space, or — and this would definitely get my interest more — humans in shiny space suits looking down on the overgrown ruins of a colony on an alien world.  (In my mind’s eye, the illustration is by Bob Eggleston. For what it’s worth.)

Remember: Your cover is a movie poster.  Your cover is a daring flash of ankle. Your cover, as an esteemed commenter on this site so succinctly put it, is clickbait.  What it needs to say is, “Check out what’s cool over here!” and show something that the target audience for the book would think is cool.

Other comments?

The author says:

Would you abandon your best friend to save your sanity?

“Have I gone mad?”

“I’m afraid so. You’re entirely bonkers. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are…”

Lissie has long had more than her fair share of problems. For one, her only friend is a six-foot white rabbit called Lewis. Add to that a childhood traumatised by schizophrenia and Lissie generates enough material to keep a whole team of psychiatrists busy for years. If she is to recover, Lissie must be prepared to give up the only friend she has ever known. However, getting rid of Lewis is no easy matter…

Nathan says:

I think what we’re seeing is a common problem when an author designs her own cover: She tries to represent the whole book up front, instead of narrowing it down to a single engaging image designed to appeal to her target audience.

Some specific problems:

• The font Papyrus has been so overused and misused over the years that it makes readers instinctively recoil.
• You misspelled “Lewis Carroll.”
• You have a center to your image, but then you mar it by putting the title right across it — the words and image war for attention.
• The silhouettes in the lower left are not only in a distinctly different style from the rest of the image, but the impression of adults embracing (with one wearing rabbit ears) unfortunately connotes all of those head-scratching paraphilia-porn novels of the last couple of years.  Sad, but true.
• The description makes it seem like a darker version of the Jimmy Stewart movie Harvey; the cover instead paints it as an Alice in Wonderland fanfic (of which the world has far too many).  The readers who would enjoy the first won’t be attracted by a cover that promises the second; the readers attracted by the promise of the second will be annoyed at receiving the first instead.

Other comments?