This wins this year’s inadvertent font/text obfuscation Award. I mean…what do people THINK about, when they look at these designs?
Naaman Brown
6 years ago
The only text visible at thumbnail ad size is “Quest”.
Author and title are well camouflaged.
Good tactic on a battlefield.
Not so good on the virtual bookshelf.
Yes I have a thing about how a cover looks at thumbnail ad size.
Hi! Author here. Thanks for the constructive criticism, it’s actually pretty helpful and I’m glad you didn’t just insult it like everyone else. I was a high schooler when the book was published, as was the cover artist, so I’m proud of our work no matter what but I appreciate the points here.
I admire you for trying, but if you want to avoid ending up on sites such as this you need to seek out sites like CoverCritics.com before you publish. The same goes for writing and interior formatting. You clearly have a lot to say but you need to take a step back and look at other books in your genre while seeing constructive feedback for the work as a whole. Your cover is far too juvenile even for high school and your interior formatting contains some unnecessary and even distracting elements. Most books of excess length, particularly those from first-time authors, are in dire need of editing. Although I cannot say for certain that is the case with your book after browsing the LITB, my experience tells me there is at least some editing required to streamline the story. If that’s not the case then it’s one of those rare instances where it should have been divided into multiple books (series from new authors are more likely to be one story padded to create multiple volumes). Readers are far more willing to pay $8 to $12 for each paperback (or $4.99 for each ebook) in a series from an unknown author than $27, especially when there is no digital option. Even well-known authors usually don’t require such a financial investment for a hard copy.
I know some of the comments here are harsh but that is the nature of this site. However, many of these same people will bend over backwards to help you improve your work if you present it in the appropriate forums.
Mr. Alley-
Thank you for your thoughts! You have excellent points in regards to my cover art and formatting. I will say that there is an eBook available from Amazon, B&N.com, etc. of both my novels. In case you did not know, “The Valley Chronicles: Quest” is the second book in my series. I am certain that any length concerns stem from my font size and spacing rather than the plot. In fact, Kirkus Indie spoke favorably on the plotting of my second book, so I do not believe that to be the issue there. If you wish to correspond further on the problems with my books, I am happy to provide an email, but I am sure you are very busy.
Sincerely,
Craig
You can call me B or BL like everyone else.
Looking at the LITB again it looks like your interior is double spaced. I’m not sure how similar Lulu is to CreateSpace but my main text was 11pt Times New Roman and spaced 120%. If that’s the reason for the excess length then it’s an easy fix without assigning a new ISBN.
I am not that busy if you want to pick my brain further. I’m easy to find and contact.
There’s a sister site for constructive criticism, called CoverCritics.com . If you truly want help and completely free, worthwhile advice, you’ll submit your covers there. This site, for better or for worse, is a humor site.
Also…to second BL’s comment–my business formats books commercially. Your print layout really needs work. The running headers are sitting atop the body, the chapter heads are not suitable for adult or YA reading. And double-spacing is dreadfully inappropriate for a print book–it’s like you’re insulting the buyer, sneering at what they have to pay to buy your book, because you’ve flagrantly wasted paper with double-spacing.
Lastly, the pricing–a typical self-pubbed paperback would be lucky to get $12.99 or so. Your pricing is twice what it should be, which may be caused by the double-spacing.
There are lots of perfectly decent, if not custom templates out there that you could download, to redo the book to a higher standard. I strongly urge you to do that. Good luck.
Yeah, the book is technically 1.5 spaced… I knew double spacing was bad, but knocking it down to 1.5 was clearly not nearly enough.
Thank you both for the thoughts. This is information I did not know how to get and it was helpful. I might contact you further BL, but not on here because every time I return I inflate the pageviews more than I inadvertantly inflated the spacing of my book.
There seems to be a marketing opportunity for an LBC Coloring Book series. Each volume will have 50 pages of random distorted images to color in and photograph with a cell phone.
A companion series of the 2000 Lousiest Fonts Ever will feature letters you can color, cut out with scissors, mix in a bowl, draw out at random, and glue on. Adds a special touch to any book cover!
Gag me with a spoon!
This wins this year’s inadvertent font/text obfuscation Award. I mean…what do people THINK about, when they look at these designs?
The only text visible at thumbnail ad size is “Quest”.
Author and title are well camouflaged.
Good tactic on a battlefield.
Not so good on the virtual bookshelf.
Yes I have a thing about how a cover looks at thumbnail ad size.
Hi! Author here. Thanks for the constructive criticism, it’s actually pretty helpful and I’m glad you didn’t just insult it like everyone else. I was a high schooler when the book was published, as was the cover artist, so I’m proud of our work no matter what but I appreciate the points here.
I admire you for trying, but if you want to avoid ending up on sites such as this you need to seek out sites like CoverCritics.com before you publish. The same goes for writing and interior formatting. You clearly have a lot to say but you need to take a step back and look at other books in your genre while seeing constructive feedback for the work as a whole. Your cover is far too juvenile even for high school and your interior formatting contains some unnecessary and even distracting elements. Most books of excess length, particularly those from first-time authors, are in dire need of editing. Although I cannot say for certain that is the case with your book after browsing the LITB, my experience tells me there is at least some editing required to streamline the story. If that’s not the case then it’s one of those rare instances where it should have been divided into multiple books (series from new authors are more likely to be one story padded to create multiple volumes). Readers are far more willing to pay $8 to $12 for each paperback (or $4.99 for each ebook) in a series from an unknown author than $27, especially when there is no digital option. Even well-known authors usually don’t require such a financial investment for a hard copy.
I know some of the comments here are harsh but that is the nature of this site. However, many of these same people will bend over backwards to help you improve your work if you present it in the appropriate forums.
Mr. Alley-
Thank you for your thoughts! You have excellent points in regards to my cover art and formatting. I will say that there is an eBook available from Amazon, B&N.com, etc. of both my novels. In case you did not know, “The Valley Chronicles: Quest” is the second book in my series. I am certain that any length concerns stem from my font size and spacing rather than the plot. In fact, Kirkus Indie spoke favorably on the plotting of my second book, so I do not believe that to be the issue there. If you wish to correspond further on the problems with my books, I am happy to provide an email, but I am sure you are very busy.
Sincerely,
Craig
You can call me B or BL like everyone else.
Looking at the LITB again it looks like your interior is double spaced. I’m not sure how similar Lulu is to CreateSpace but my main text was 11pt Times New Roman and spaced 120%. If that’s the reason for the excess length then it’s an easy fix without assigning a new ISBN.
I am not that busy if you want to pick my brain further. I’m easy to find and contact.
There’s a sister site for constructive criticism, called CoverCritics.com . If you truly want help and completely free, worthwhile advice, you’ll submit your covers there. This site, for better or for worse, is a humor site.
Also…to second BL’s comment–my business formats books commercially. Your print layout really needs work. The running headers are sitting atop the body, the chapter heads are not suitable for adult or YA reading. And double-spacing is dreadfully inappropriate for a print book–it’s like you’re insulting the buyer, sneering at what they have to pay to buy your book, because you’ve flagrantly wasted paper with double-spacing.
Lastly, the pricing–a typical self-pubbed paperback would be lucky to get $12.99 or so. Your pricing is twice what it should be, which may be caused by the double-spacing.
There are lots of perfectly decent, if not custom templates out there that you could download, to redo the book to a higher standard. I strongly urge you to do that. Good luck.
Yeah, the book is technically 1.5 spaced… I knew double spacing was bad, but knocking it down to 1.5 was clearly not nearly enough.
Thank you both for the thoughts. This is information I did not know how to get and it was helpful. I might contact you further BL, but not on here because every time I return I inflate the pageviews more than I inadvertantly inflated the spacing of my book.
I’m not currently writing so I have time.
There seems to be a marketing opportunity for an LBC Coloring Book series. Each volume will have 50 pages of random distorted images to color in and photograph with a cell phone.
A companion series of the 2000 Lousiest Fonts Ever will feature letters you can color, cut out with scissors, mix in a bowl, draw out at random, and glue on. Adds a special touch to any book cover!