Tulpa

Hi Max,

We don’t offer constructive criticism on the book covers here for a couple of reasons:

1) Most of these authors are never gonna see it; it would be the equivalent of talking back to the TV.

2) Most of these authors aren’t LOOKING for criticism or advice, as evidenced by the quality of the covers. There are forums (fora?) for indie-published authors all over the web, and at most of them authors could ask for tips and pointers on their covers, but so many are convinced of the rightness of their artistic vision that they go ahead and publish it without any feedback. Authors find their covers here from time to time, and their reaction is usually not, “How could I make it better?” but “You faggots living in your mothers’ basements are terrible human beings! WAAAAH!” (You may think I’m exaggerating. I assure you, I’m not.)

3) These books are ALREADY published. They have been placed in the public marketplace of ideas, with a price tag attached; the publishers are announcing to the world that their wares are as ready for the public and worthy of the readers’ money as any other book on Amazon or Smashwords. In the life cycle of retailing, the time for constructive criticism is past.

4) Frankly, the problems with most of the covers here are self-evident, and I and other site participants would get very, very tired delineating in detail what’s wrong with each cover for the benefit of other site participants who can ALSO see for themselves what’s wrong with each cover. There are helpful tags at the bottom of the post, which label the cover’s problems. If this cover’s case, the tags are “bad font choice” and “filteriffic.” I’ll go into more detail for you:

“Bad font choice”: Avatar is hard to use and have it look good (check out the gaps in spacing — typographers call that “kerning” — between the T and U, the P and A, the T and O…). It’s also the kneejerk font choice of so many beginning and amateur designers that professional designers avoid it entirely. And while it looks vaguely ancient, it doesn’t really match the horror genre which your book falls into.
“Filteriffic”: Photoshop filters can be great tools, but they are too commonly overused to try to “jazz up” what they’re applied to. Case in point: the beveling around the type on your cover, and the patchy photonegative effect on your image. It ends up looking like some teenager playing with Photoshop saying, “Look what I can do!”

Other criticisms, not encompassed by those tags:

– You placed the type, which is already artificially “busy,” over the highest-contrast part of the photo.

– Your image is of a cat. Not a particularly horrific cat — it looks like a housecat — nor is it an ominous cat. It’s a cat who’s had its dqueaky-toy taken away. Not scary.

Now. For your edification, this site has a sister site, CoverCritics.com, at which self-publishers are invited to submit their covers for constructive criticism (usually before publishing, but sometimes authors are ready to revise their covers and want to figure out what to change). You’re welcome to submit this or any other cover over there and see what the hive mind of helpful commenters have to say.

Good luck.