The author says:

This book chronicles the steps the five terrorists of Flight 77 (that hit the Pentagon) took in suburban Maryland in the two weeks prior to 9/11.

Nathan says:

The subject matter of this one practically demands that the cover content be (1) an airplane, and (2) pictures of the five hijackers.  You’ve got that part.  Now, what should you do with it?

1. Lose the swirly filter. Seriously, I don’t even know why they include that with PhotoShop, because it’s impossible to do anything good with it.  The look you want here is “stark” — deep blacks, bold contrasts.
2. Those cover elements, being obligatory, don’t need to be the dominant elements in your cover.  That should be your title. Nonfiction covers have an advantage over fiction covers in that regard; readers don’t mind if your cover tells them with words what the book is about. If it were me, I’d have the title take up fully half of the real estate here.
3. While your title font choice isn’t necessarily bad, you’ll notice in other covers that as the subject of the book becomes more serious and worthy to be remembered, the title fonts tend more toward serifed fonts in capital letters.  Why? because a font that connotes two thousand years of history says, “This is important. This is permanent.  This is worth being remembered.”  Trajan Pro (aka “The Movie Poster Font”) is becoming too overused to clearly give that connotation, but there are other serif fonts that can give that same impression.
4. Your subtitle font clashes with the title font — and I suspect, would clash with a serifed Roman font.  Try using the same font that the book text uses.  (Also, “driving tour” sounds waaay to idyllic for this subject. You’re not sending people on a terror-tourism family vacation here.)
5. The title is centered, the subtitle is centered, the airplane is smack-dab in the middle, the five headshots are center-aligned… Why isn’t your byline centered?  I understand the impulse to add some variety, but it just ends up being the odd element out.

Other comments?

The author says:

A werewolf lives through the violence that is human history starting in medieval times and eventually finds himself working for the United States Government, they don’t let him leave when he wants to quit and then he has to team up with other movie monsters, a vampire, alien, demon, and frankenstein monster, to stop an evil robot from destroying the world.

Nathan says:

No.

This looks like a tumblr meme, or something you slapped together in five minutes to display your makeup FX selfie. This will NOT sell this book, or any book.  You may think I’m being cruel, but that’s the way it is: If you expect readers to spend money on, and time reading, your book, you need to demonstrate that your book is a professional production. This doesn’t do it.

Hire a professional.  Even a cheap one.  The fact that you’re submitting this here for critique means that you do not have the grounding in basic design needs to recognize the deficiencies in your abilities.  Just go pro.

The author says:

Welcome to the Weird Wild West. There are people here who are not as they seem and others who watch them. Supernatural and mortal alike unite to reach what peace that can be found between them as hunters can become prey and prey can become the hunter. This is their story.

Nathan says:

Nope.

Those pre-made Cover Creator templates look exactly like what they are.  They scream, “I’m self-published, and I tried to save money on a cover!”  At least the image you chose doesn’t clash horribly with the template — the diagonal of the paper background intersects in an interesting way with the diagonal of the roofline — but still: Nope.  It looks impoverished and amateur.

On top of that, the image you chose is Western, sure, but there’s nothing weird or paranormal or off-kilter about it. You miss your entire audience if the cover looks like “a happy market day in the Old West.”

If you just found a Western-themed photo or illustration (preferably one that concentrates on an individual or some other central image, instead of a town) and then applied a color scheme that you find on horror novel covers (stark contrasts, lots of shadows) and a distressed Western font, you’ve be about 400% ahead of where you are now.

Best of luck.  Other comments?

The author says:

YA Fantasy trying to turn the fantasy tropes on their heads. The main character doesn’t win the trial to become the hero and has to live with all that entails.

Nathan says:

More than anything else, we’re seeing a particular flaw with the book covers submitted here: They don’t look like the kind of book they are.

Take a look at this cover: Does ANYTHING about it say “YA fantasy?” No. I would guess that it was some lit-fic coming-of-age story, or maybe a memoir of child abuse. In other words, if I were a reader who would enjoy a subversive YA fantasy, nothing about this cover would tell me that it’s for me.

You need to rethink the concept, and you need to do it like a marketer: “How do I attract the readers who would enjoy this book?” Because otherwise, having this cover on this book would lose you more readers than having no cover at all.

The author says:

A comedy sci-fi set in the far future when humans have spread across the galaxy. The book revolves around a hunt for an elusive ring, which turns out to be a portal. The book has absurd humour in it and the target audience is probably young adult, I’m going for the audience that enjoyed hitch-hiker’s guide to the galaxy.

Nathan says:

So where’s the funny?

Here’s a rule of thumb (I have many more of them than I have thumbs): If your book’s a comedy, something on the cover needs to tell us that.  If the title isn’t absurd at first glance and your name isn’t Douglas Adams, then the art or type need to clue us in.  Your title, while not non-humorous, isn’t funny in and of itself — and the font you chose makes it hard to read anyway.  And while the subtitle edges more toward comedy, it isn’t visible from thumbnail size.  You’re left with something vaguely science-y.

My own inclination would be to start over with a new image, but even if you didn’t do that, there are tons — oodles — craploads of humorous fonts you could try. Like this one. Or this one. Or this one. Those are from a two-minute browse through the top 100 fonts at only one font site. (And I’m sure that Hitch will show up in the comments with other recommendations.)

If your readers can’t tell that it’s a funny book, your cover is doing nothing for you. So funny it up!

Other comments?