Feedback on cover

[Lmae]

Hello friends,
I'll be honest and say that I was not too sure about what to do with the cover of my book.

I didn't want it to be cool dude with weapon/ magic, or just the mc's face. I see that alot. I didn't have a notable waifu to pose sexily with him. I couldn't just do fancy magic school because it has been done too much.

I thought of the abstract route, but books with organs and bones with fancy text have been done too much.

I wanted it to stand out, so I went with a collage of the key characters and messed around with the color scheme that will pop from a tiny thumbnail. I did get some positive feedback.

One person suggested that I find better font. Another said I should find away to put the magic school int the background.

I recently got negative feedback from someone that it was too out there and unfocused.

What do you think?
How do balance uniqueness and marketability?

 

[Hans.Trondheim]

I'm no market person myself, but I can offer some insights based on what you posted.

The loud magenta color sure is striking, though I'll be honest, it kinda hurts the eyes. But then again, it's the 'striking' part you want, so I guess this works.

I agree on that person who said you should look for another font. I suggest you base your font according to the theme of your story. Since you want the title visible even in thumbnail, try to find a font with balanced readability at small images, and also matches your story's mood.

Fonts with serif usually denotes seriousness and grandeur, while sans serif (no serif, just like your font) is meant for uniformity and modernity. Uneven fonts (like comic sans) is usually used for comedies. This is why isekai stories who want to be taken seriously (like Grimgar), use serif fonts, and comedic ones (like Konosuba) uses uneven fonts. And many sci-fi titles are in sans serif.

The 'unfocused' part can be remedied by making the other characters a bit transparent, focusing just on that guy with a suit (which I presume is the focus). Or make their colors a bit monotonous.

Would also suggest that you try breaking the monotony of the background by applying a few effects, like grunge textures, gradients and even background images. I can see there's a bit of grunge as background, but the spaces are too big one can't fail to notice the spaces.

 

[ElijahRyne]

Hello friends,
I'll be honest and say that I was not too sure about what to do with the cover of my book.

I didn't want it to be cool dude with weapon/ magic, or just the mc's face. I see that alot. I didn't have a notable waifu to pose sexily with him. I couldn't just do fancy magic school because it has been done too much.

I thought of the abstract route, but books with organs and bones with fancy text have been done too much.

I wanted it to stand out, so I went with a collage of the key characters and messed around with the color scheme that will pop from a tiny thumbnail. I did get some positive feedback.

One person suggested that I find better font. Another said I should find away to put the magic school int the background.

I recently got negative feedback from someone that it was too out there and unfocused.

What do you think?
How do balance uniqueness and marketability?

View attachment 47237

Not an artist so take my suggestions as you will. This cover is better than most here, imo. However the only contrast in colors is the purple and blue background and cracks, the blue suits and red ties, and maybe the mustache guys mustache with his face. The green and orange on the guy in the middle doesn’t stand out to me, and the villainous doctor guy is hard to see.

What I would do, assuming you had lighting and background on its own layers, is have every segment of the ‘broken glass’ have its own background color. This will make every character stand out imo, more than they currently do, imo.

However your cover is good enough at the moment, imo.

 

[tiaf]

You have a lot going on in your cover. It's hard to know what to focus on. I'd actually cut the number of charas, if you don't want to then change up their position a bit and tone down on the magenta, it really hurts the eyes as Hans said. I played around it, dunno which chara is important. The blue bubble with title is kinda useless with how hard the title is to read. Just leave it out.

 

[ElijahRyne]

Hello friends,
I'll be honest and say that I was not too sure about what to do with the cover of my book.

I didn't want it to be cool dude with weapon/ magic, or just the mc's face. I see that alot. I didn't have a notable waifu to pose sexily with him. I couldn't just do fancy magic school because it has been done too much.

I thought of the abstract route, but books with organs and bones with fancy text have been done too much.

I wanted it to stand out, so I went with a collage of the key characters and messed around with the color scheme that will pop from a tiny thumbnail. I did get some positive feedback.

One person suggested that I find better font. Another said I should find away to put the magic school int the background.

I recently got negative feedback from someone that it was too out there and unfocused.

What do you think?
How do balance uniqueness and marketability?

View attachment 47237

Not an artist so take my suggestions as you will. This cover is better than most here, imo. However the only contrast in colors is the purple and blue background and cracks, the blue suits and red ties, and maybe the mustache guys mustache with his face. The green and orange on the guy in the middle doesn’t stand out to me, and the villainous doctor guy is hard to see.

What I would do, assuming you had lighting and background on its own layers, is have every segment of the ‘broken glass’ have its own background color. This will make every character stand out imo, more than they currently do, imo.

However your cover is good enough at the moment, imo.

Here is a sketch of what my suggestion might look like.

Wait a sec I am gonna fiddle with the background colors to try and make it better.
Here is the improved version of the color sketch.

It might also look better flipped.

 

[Lmae]

This is odd. I checked this on my phone and it is looking alot more pinker than on my computer. Maybe my screen is not calibrated.

 

[Author_Riceball]

This is odd. I checked this on my phone and it is looking alot more pinker than on my computer. Maybe my screen is not calibrated.

Might be a screen color filter thing. The phone has screen color adjustments to protect the eyes

 

[Zinless]

This is odd. I checked this on my phone and it is looking alot more pinker than on my computer. Maybe my screen is not calibrated.

Your phone probably has an AMOLED screen with better color accuracy, or if you have an OLED monitor, the opposite.

Hello friends,
I'll be honest and say that I was not too sure about what to do with the cover of my book.

I didn't want it to be cool dude with weapon/ magic, or just the mc's face. I see that alot. I didn't have a notable waifu to pose sexily with him. I couldn't just do fancy magic school because it has been done too much.

I thought of the abstract route, but books with organs and bones with fancy text have been done too much.

I wanted it to stand out, so I went with a collage of the key characters and messed around with the color scheme that will pop from a tiny thumbnail. I did get some positive feedback.

One person suggested that I find better font. Another said I should find away to put the magic school int the background.

I recently got negative feedback from someone that it was too out there and unfocused.

What do you think?
How do balance uniqueness and marketability?

View attachment 47237

I personally think the cover is great, but a lot of the characters might blend into the background once it's made into an actual cover on SH, since the site compresses the image quite a bit, and general readers will only see a thumb-sized one on the main page. My suggestion would be making the characters pop more, either by giving them a white outline or change their background colors.