Comments for Cover Critics http://covercritics.com In self-publishing, nothing is more expensive than a bad cover. Tue, 23 May 2017 18:42:21 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.5 Comment on The Worst Man on Mars [resubmit] by katz http://covercritics.com/?p=1838#comment-3060 Tue, 23 May 2017 18:42:21 +0000 http://covercritics.com/?p=1838#comment-3060 Comments from editors and agents can be extremely flattering, and it’s SUPER tempting to quote them. But by convention you don’t use those comments as blurbs, because they ultimately decided to pass on it and therefore must not have thought it was THAT good. (Particularly with self-pub, you want to give the impression that you chose that route because it was the best option for your book rather than because you ran through every trad pub editor and none of them wanted it.)

]]>
Comment on The Worst Man on Mars [resubmit] by KristopherGrows http://covercritics.com/?p=1838#comment-3059 Tue, 23 May 2017 15:58:58 +0000 http://covercritics.com/?p=1838#comment-3059 A review from a publisher is somewhat of a grey area as to if it would be a saleable point. It sends kind of a mixed message though. they know their business but they also aren’t publishing this book.
Since the quote wasn’t itself published the statement can’t be verified and might appear as a baseless claim. I’d leave it out because of that.

]]>
Comment on The Worst Man on Mars [resubmit] by Blue http://covercritics.com/?p=1838#comment-3058 Tue, 23 May 2017 13:34:04 +0000 http://covercritics.com/?p=1838#comment-3058 It certainly conveys the genre well. I agree the title could be bigger and more readable.

As for the picture, it might just be me but I feel like it could be tweaked a tad. What bugs me is that the main guy is just holding onto the other astronauts – who I presume are dead – but it doesn’t strike me as it being the result of his clumsiness or incompetence. Maybe I’m totally wrong on this assumption but judging by the title I figure he generally causes the funny mayhem? And why is he holding onto them at all? I think if he (the main character) showed a bit of a silly “aw crap I messed up” feel in his posing it could sell it more. It’s kind of a detail I guess but his current body position makes me think he’s smiling for the camera under that helmet.

On the plus side, I love that tagline.

]]>
Comment on The Worst Man on Mars [resubmit] by Corben Duke http://covercritics.com/?p=1838#comment-3057 Tue, 23 May 2017 13:27:50 +0000 http://covercritics.com/?p=1838#comment-3057 Nathan – Thanks. Very useful. I’ll work with your suggestions and give the text more punch.

Hitch & Ed – Maybe I should remove the HarperCollins quote. HarperCollins used to have an imprint called Authonomy and the comment comes from a manuscript review by the editor. Unfortunately they closed Authonomy shortly after reading the book. I rather like the editor’s turn of phrase but perhaps it doesn’t belong on the cover.

Thanks for your comments.

]]>
Comment on The Worst Man on Mars [resubmit] by Hitch http://covercritics.com/?p=1838#comment-3056 Tue, 23 May 2017 03:03:19 +0000 http://covercritics.com/?p=1838#comment-3056 I had exactly the same question. Because HarperCollins is a book publisher, it made me think that this was a made-up blurb, intended to be funny–or not. The first idea would be humorous, but the “or not” made me wonder, for a moment, if someone was trying to put something over. After all, if that’s what HarperCollins said–they’d publish it themselves, wouldn’t they?

I ditto the font comments. I also think that the gold/yellow needs to be a bit brighter. To stand out more.

Other comments coming later.

]]>
Comment on The Worst Man on Mars [resubmit] by ed http://covercritics.com/?p=1838#comment-3055 Mon, 22 May 2017 16:43:57 +0000 http://covercritics.com/?p=1838#comment-3055 as a book buyer, i would want more context on that blurb – is it from a book review of this book? and isn’t HarperCollins a book publisher?

]]>
Comment on ??? by peggy nehmen http://covercritics.com/?p=1835#comment-3054 Mon, 22 May 2017 14:24:03 +0000 http://covercritics.com/?p=1835#comment-3054 I agree with the above comments. At first glance, what does it say? Besides, typography, read this article “The Most Important Marketing Decision You’ll Make as an Author.” https://goinswriter.com/book-title

]]>
Comment on Death Divers by Tuula http://covercritics.com/?p=1832#comment-3053 Sun, 21 May 2017 11:59:25 +0000 http://covercritics.com/?p=1832#comment-3053 In firefighting, it is known as smoke diving, so there may be some stock photos somewhere? I found some pics from training exercises, like https://twitter.com/insmokediver – not very good pics for this, but something like that could be a starting point.

]]>
Comment on ??? by RK http://covercritics.com/?p=1835#comment-3052 Sun, 21 May 2017 04:38:42 +0000 http://covercritics.com/?p=1835#comment-3052 Well, it seems you’ve given what Hitch calls the “Miller Test” (after Ron Miller for being the one who suggested it on here) its first field tryout: can we determine what kind of novel your cover is trying to sell if the title’s in a foreign language? A title composed in a font with ambiguous characters that might be letters or numbers certainly might as well be in Hebrew for how well we can understand it. I would recommend changing the font to help your prospective readers disambiguate whether the title is SYRIN or 5421N or SHRIN or GYRIN, but not before we determine whether the artwork can sell the cover.

My analysis: in both thumbnail and closeup, your cover is beautiful and intriguing, but much too generalized; a picture of a pretty glittering gal who seems (on closer viewing) to be partially composed of fiber-optic cables, set against the background of a star field with a bright nebula in the middle of it, generally suggests either fantasy or science fiction (though I’m leaning strongly toward science fiction based on the apparent fiber-optic cables and somewhat hi-tech-looking font)… and nothing else. While a pretty gal against a star field is reminiscent of old-school illustration from the early days of pulp sci-fi when anything with a rocket or a pretty girl against a starry background would sell, this is more like the cover for an anthology or a monthly publication for short stories than for any single specific story. All I can conclude from this is that your story features a pretty gal in an outer space setting, a description which fits about half the space opera science fiction stories ever written.

While you need not put the entire story on your cover, I’d recommend pulling back to show more of this gal than just her face. Having her not filling so much of the cover should leave you more room in the background to show a space station in orbit around our planet (making the setting a bit more specific than just anywhere in outer space), and indicate whether she’s just a regular human with some futuristic enhancements or maybe one of those “fantastic beings” mentioned in your description (and as such, either doesn’t need to breathe or doesn’t need to have air to do so when in the vacuum of outer space). Just those few changes by themselves would help clarify and specify so much.

Once that’s done, then you get a less ambiguous tech font to help solve the riddle of what the title’s actually supposed to be. (In fact, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if it did turn out to be some kind of L337 or visual-pun title, something like Van Halen’s album OU812.) Once the picture’s sufficiently improved, an intriguing (or at least clever) title needs only be icing on the cake.

]]>
Comment on ??? by Kata http://covercritics.com/?p=1835#comment-3051 Sat, 20 May 2017 10:16:40 +0000 http://covercritics.com/?p=1835#comment-3051 I agree with everyone that the title is ambiguous to the point of unreadability, but I do think it’s great you’ve looked at doing something interesting with the words. A graphic treatment of a title can often be what elevates a cover into looking professional. You’re just going to need to work more on balancing the aesthetics with the readbility.

Overall I think the problem here is that this cover just doesn’t communicate much at all. The futuristic SF genre comes across but in the broadest, blandest way possible. Certainly nothing of the interesting society or plot you talk about comes across here. It also sounds like your book has a different tone from what this cover implies – the book is intelligent plot-led, actiony thriller it sounds, and the cover looks melancholic and a tad boring.

And your title is already a bit uncommunicative (even if it were readable it’s still a pretty abstract title, telling us nothing concrete about the book). Nothing wrong with that, mysteriousness can be its own selling point.

Here’s a cover I really like of relevance you your case, Railhead by Philip Reeve:

https://53dde335a2dce2ca942c-498c68ea2e9d4fdb160dd89f86b552f2.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/v1/large/9780/1927/9780192742766.jpg

On the face of it, it’s quite like your cover: a mysterious word for the title, a female figure posing, a SF-y bakcground. But you see how much information and excitement the cover designer has put across? The treatment of the title hints at dynamic action, the background is full of hard-to-pin-down but enticing detail. The girl might just be standing there but she’s a visual focal point – her red outfit is a great contrast to the overall blue tones – and her ambiguity is lifted into intriguing mystery by having her face away.

Now it might be this case would still be a bit vague for online sellers. Because this sells as a physical book, the publisher has been able to rely on people reading the pull-quote on the front which establishes genre as well as praising the book, and the blur and further imagery that is on the back. But you see how even a physical book which has that luxury, and is actively playing to ‘confident and mysterious’ still tells us an awful lot in terms of tone, pace and setting?

I also mention this as a case study because Shutterstock is explicitly credited on the publishing page as part of the cover design! Alongside a professional illustrator, sure, but it does demonstrate that even using pre-existing imagery you can create something fitting and unique.

]]>
http://covercritics.com/?feed=comments-rss2
covercritics.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-22
23392
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:FVIYUFQOMEOL3QMV6OOO6ARALWDZBS6N
<urn:uuid:c81bef72-23de-4abf-aa5e-506f90352cd0>
2017-05-23T18:49:08Z
50.87.146.45
application/rss+xml
sha1:DGIBMKTGWXLNXAVTP5H4QL4FLX566IQP
<urn:uuid:4da7460e-abcf-4e0e-b048-a9649e977256>
http://covercritics.com/?feed=comments-rss2
length
response
<urn:uuid:7e30eb7f-1367-454f-998f-781bb72d3a2f>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-185-224-210.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-22
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for May 2017
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf