Cover for My Next Book - Yes or No?

[BoTox]

I'm thinking of using this for the cover of my next book, a collection of stories that includes The Best Parking Spaces and similar.

Is it too subtle, too bold, too boring or too Halloween/Fall themed?

[ValentinesStuff]

 

Put something like that where the book and cuffs are. Leave in the gavel.

[Skara]

I have a few suggestions. If it was my cover, I would centre the title on the blue background, and change the colour of the yellow-brown slightly to make it more like bronze. I like the general layout, though I would make more room for the picture in the middle. I might also do something to subdue the picture's colours slightly or make them cohere with the blue and yellow scheme more smoothly. Just some thoughts, hope it helps.

[BoTox]

OK, not sure if this is getting better or not.

[ValentinesStuff]

I like this better.

[PeculiarChangeling]

I'm extremely late to the party here, but I may as well throw in my 2c. I'm going to be pretty harsh here, so please keep in mind that I'm saying all this to help improve your covers, and I understand that you're a writer first and not a graphic designer. 

Firstly, I'll mention that cover art for AB/DL books on Amazon is largely not very good, and trends towards 'very bad'. 

Second, my bona fides: I self publish novels on Amazon under a pen name, (not AB/DL, and I will not be linking them here,) and I have experience interacting with cover designers and doing market research. 

Now, with that all said...

I don't think either of these covers are particularly good and, more generally, I glanced at your Amazon page and I think your covers in general all share a similar vein of problems. 

 

Generally speaking, there are two things that are absolutely critical for a book cover on Amazon: 
1, Make it clear what the book is about, and specifically what the main selling feature is. 

2, The artwork, images, and design should be legible, professional looking, and easy to parse. 

 

At a glance, this cover doesn't do either of these things well. Keep in mind that, when people are scrolling on Amazon, you're usually going to get a second or two at most before they decide if they want to know more - They'll glance at the cover and either keep moving or decide to click based on extremely crude first impressions.

For Point 1, Adding diapers as a background element helps from the original, but it's still not eye catching, especially as a thumbnail. Keep in mind that when people are scrolling through Amazon, the cover image is going to be 1" tall on most phones and maybe 2" on a computer. More than half this cover is just block colors, so the actual image is half that, and your selling feature - the fact that the story revolves around diapers - is hidden behind the gavel.

 

For Point 2, there are a lot of issues. The top font looks like it's in the vein of comic sans, which just doesn't look very good, and it also doesn't match either the concept of the 'Law and order' style punishment you're shooting for. That particular shade of dark red text over the blue background isn't easy on the eyes in general, making it harder to read at a glance than it should be. You're also using two different fonts which clash heavily and don't complement each other at all. The image appears to be poorly cropped, so there's a dark bar running along the right side. The diapers are poorly composited and are clearly just sort of floating in the background. (As a rule of thumb, big blocks of dark greens, browns, and oranges don't tend to look very good for erotica and romance covers.) 

Generally speaking, there's just nothing enticing about the image. You would do just as well to have the title over a blank white screen, because other than conveying the title, it doesn't accomplish much else. 

 

I want to contrast with another AB/DL author who I found while doing a bit of research so I could respond to this better. I know almost nothing about her, except that her stories are relatively popular for AB/DL fiction on Amazon, and that her covers generally look really good relative to the competition, with 10+ reviews on a lot of her novels: https://www.amazon.com/Nanny-Chloe/e/B07JNWWLXK

First off, note how all the images that she uses very clearly showcase diapered characters in some sort of predicament that's relevant to what the story's about. These are nice looking, striking images that some sort of filter has been applied to so that the colors really pop. The kink element is front and center, and it's easy to tell in an instant what the book is going to be about - or, at least, you can guess what the book is going to be about. (Sidenote: I'm going to give Nanny Chloe the benefit of the doubt and hope that she asked for permission to use these photos. Don't use artwork or model photos without permission.) 

Second, the design and the text. Chloe has a uniform design across nearly all of her books - Large text in an easy-to-read, bold font. The most important part of the title is larger than the rest - For one of her series, the word 'EXTREME' is larger than the rest of the title combined, but even in subtler cases, part of the title is emphasized so that it really sticks out.

There's generally also a subtitle and some additional information on the cover, (the use of light, pastel colors for all her backgrounds and text is a nice touch,) but that is only there for once you've already clicked on it: From those first two design elements, you already know in a second what the book is going to be. One book shows a character in diapers + bondage and has the word EXTREME highlighted? You know it's going to be a fairly hardcore punishment story. An image of a professional looking character standing over a diapered person on the floor with the bolded text 'BRATTY BABYSITTER' is all you need to know for that story. 

 

I'm not suggesting that you just rip off her style, I just wanted to highlight an example of what I think is really good, Amazon-friendly cover design. I hope this helps!

[ValentinesStuff]

@PeculiarChangeling

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. I read a lot Kindle self published books, and only a tiny fraction are because the cover art caught my eye. A good title is better, but the blurb is most important. Of the AB titles I've bought, it's been because of the author. I do wish I could block some authors on Amazon.

 

Even more important is to write a good story. And write in the format of a regular novel. I don't need a list of characters, with ages and descriptions. I don't need the characters age, hair color, and cup size in parantheses after their name. 

[PeculiarChangeling]

32 minutes ago, ValentinesStuff said:

@PeculiarChangeling

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. I read a lot Kindle self published books, and only a tiny fraction are because the cover art caught my eye. A good title is better, but the blurb is most important. Of the AB titles I've bought, it's been because of the author. I do wish I could block some authors on Amazon.

 

Even more important is to write a good story. And write in the format of a regular novel. I don't need a list of characters, with ages and descriptions. I don't need the characters age, hair color, and cup size in parantheses after their name. 

I should clarify that I'm not speaking for all readers. 

You're right, that a lot of people don't care about covers. However, for those people, (yourself included,) it doesn't matter if it's a bad cover or a good cover. Making a cover to people who don't care about covers won't effect anything. 

However, *some* people do care about covers, or rather, they end up being influenced by covers. My advice was targeted towards that second group, because they're the only group for whom cover quality matters.

 

BoTox was asking for cover feedback, not general marketing, and I gave the answer that I hope will help get BoTox more sales from that second group. Answering the question, "Is this cover good?" with "Covers don't matter to some people" wouldn't be very helpful.